District schools routinely win some of the most prestigious state and national competitions, such as the National Science Olympiad. Lower Merion High School, one of the district's two high schools, was one of the Wall Street Journal's top 60 high schools in April 2004, public or private, and given that the median Lower Merion home costs $334,500, it is unsurprising that 94 percent of graduates attend college. With an average household income of $86,373, LMSD can spend $19,392 per pupil annually, more than twice as much as the majority of Philadelphia's schools and more than nearly every other American public school district. For once, the Main Line had some catching up to do. A stunned silence greeted Mosley's remarks the meeting adjourned shortly thereafter without one word of acknowledgement of the gauntlet which had just been thrown down. “It's been going on for generations in a manner that has pushed our children farther and farther behind their peers.” The white Main Line learned what blacks had always felt–that they've been eaten alive by the Lower Merion School District, one of the best public school systems in the country. “Educational inequity is not a new problem,” CBP president Morris Mosley declared. Most of the district's black children were failing by NCLB standards, so the parents decided it was time to deliver a manifesto. They were members of Concerned Black Parents, a 12-year-old organization that advocates for the district's 500 black students (out of 6,684 total), and were galvanized by the No Child Left Behind statistics released earlier that month. Last January, some two dozen angry black residents jammed a school board meeting in Lower Merion High School's library.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |