Equity and School Choice?

I’ve been listening to the first few episodes of Nice White Parents and am looking for better resources. My partner and I (both white, both middle/upper-middle class) just bought a house in a lower-income rural area outside of a mid-sized metropolitan area. We’re not parents yet but hope to be in the next few years. We’re also not rich. We make a decent amount for our area but we certainly don’t have $10k to drop on a school donation like the parents in the podcast. We’re both well-educated and attended grad/law school.

Our local schools rank terribly in academic performance. Grade proficiencies are half the state average. From the numbers, the kids in our assigned schools start poorly, stay behind, and graduate behind peers in other schools. Our assigned schools offer no IB and no AP classes. The school is also 96% Black and Hispanic and 100% low income.

We want to be better than the parents in the podcast. We want to be helpful to our community and improve opportunities for all kids. We don’t want to be the white parents in the podcast that championed integration then sent their kids to private schools.

But... when the odds are so stacked, when our kids would have such dramatically lower opportunities than we had... what do we do? Morally, when does an obligation to justice and serve our community outweigh a parental obligation to provide the best possible opportunities? When is the inverse true?

I guess I’m looking for direction into who else is having this conversation. The podcast echoed some of the conversations we’ve been having in an unsatisfying way and I’m very interested to learn more.

Submitted November 02, 2020 at 02:37PM by AQuickQuestionNC https://ift.tt/2HRKRjX