Diversity: "When The Melting Pot Boils Over"

If you're like me, GreatSchools has always been a bit of mystery.  School profiles are great, but not much of a game-changer no matter how well-written or data-rich.  

But recently I've learned that the GreatSchools profiles are incredibly popular among parents, that there's a new Facebook app that allows parents to find friends and friends-of-friends who are discussing certain schools and neighborhoods, and that there are blog posts like this one (When the melting pot boils over) that address core school reform issues like diversity and gentrification.

"Many middle-class parents enter public schools with a dogged determination to improve them. They want to do good, while also doing right by their children. Yet when such efforts — however well-meaning — carry the taint of entitlement, it doesn’t take much for the ordinary elementary school to become an ideological battleground waged around bake sales and play structures."

It doesn't hurt that I've written about the challenges and opportunities of diverse schools and live in a neighborhood going through massive gentrification right now, or that I met executive editor Carol Lloyd at #EWA13 last week. Image via GreatSchools.

Comments

[Tom]

It seems to me that most of the tension revolves around a lack of resources. If you didn't have to have bake sales to fund school programs, that'd take the edge of most of the conflicts in the story.