Reply to Studies on "integrated schools"

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[quote=Anonymous]In another thread, people provided links to studies showing students overall do better in integrated schools, and use these as evidence for what they think should be done on MCPS.

Here let's look at them and understand how rigorous these "studies" are. I am not going to go over all the links - just picked a few to show my point.

Let me state my conclusion first:

Most of these articles are not rigorous. This is not saying that their conclusions are wrong, and the opposites are correct. This is simply saying that their conclusions are not well grounded. They could be right or wrong, they just did not provide enough evidence to support those.  The studies or reports they cited, may be more rigorous, yet whether those studies or reports give the same conclusions and/or use the same type of language, is an open question. This is quite understandable: scientists doing the studies/reports are typically more rigorous (in their writing) then reporters, and they tend not to give "conclusions"  - they may imply things or suggest things, but not conclude things - when evidence is not strong enough. For reporters, that is a completely different story. They want to draw people's attention and want to make political correct statements.

You may or may not agree but let's see what the facts are and what reasonable conclusions people can get from the facts.

(1) https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/10/19/4460855...enefit-from-integrated-schools

In the article, the author(s) mentioned:[i] "The[b] federal government just released a report [/b]looking at the black-white achievement gap. It found something remarkable: "White student achievement in schools with the highest Black student density did not differ from White student achievement in schools with the lowest density.[/i]"

If we look at that report released by the Fed Government (https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/studies/pdf/school_composition_and_the_bw_achievement_gap_2015.pdf) , we see this on page 4:

[i]
"The research in this report is exploratory. This report examines
whether there are associations between the percentage of
students in a school who were Black and the Black–White
student achievement gap, but  it does not assess whether this
relationship is causal (e.g., [b]this analysis does not and cannot
test whether higher Black student density causes lower
achievement[/b]). "[/i]

Anyone not seeing the contradiction here?

(2) https://tcf.org/content/facts/the-benefits-of-soci...ools-and-classrooms/?session=1 (exec summary of book, most quotes pulled from)

This is mostly a summary. It does not provide the real studies but only gives conclusions. So it is hard to say much about the rigorousness of the quoted studies. I am just going to pick on a few points on the summary itself:

(i) for "Academic and Cognitive Benefits". The article talks about affluent schools vs high poverty schools. However it does not specify the type of schools. In many parts of the country, a "school district" gets its 
funding from the district itself. Therefore a more "affluent" school will of course have more funding.  The situation in MoCo is different where schools in MoCo get funding from the county. Without that clearly stated, one cannot just assume these studies are valid for MoCo schools as well.

(ii) "Integrated classrooms encourage critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity. " For that part, the article suggests: "[i]We know that diverse classrooms, in which students learn cooperatively alongside those whose perspectives and backgrounds are different from their own, are beneficial to all students—including middle-class white students—because these environments promote creativity, motivation, deeper learning, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills."[/i] Yes, we probably "KNOW" that. But this is nothing more than "we know". It does not show any data/facts.

(iii) "Civic and Social-Emotional Benefits" an good example is: "[i]According to one study, students who attend racially diverse high schools are more likely to live in diverse neighborhoods five years after graduation."[/i]
Students who attend racially diverse high schools are more likely originally from a racially diverse neighborhood. When they graduate, there is of course , a portion of the students who do not go to college, and a portion who returns home after college. If that portion is big enough (that depends on the school), it will certainly affect the results of whether they live in a "diverse neighborhoods five years after graduation." Without explicitly taking that correlation out, this does not mean anything.

(iv) "Economic Benefits" here some similar examples as in (ii) where the article uses [i]"university officials and business leaders argue"[/i] yet not providing real data/facts (do I need you to do a study to show me there are people "ARGUING" that? Of course I know that).

(v) in the same "Economic Benefits" section, the article first cites a MoCo study (let's assume it uses the study correctly) showing that "[i]students living in public housing randomly assigned to lower-poverty neighborhoods and schools outperformed those assigned to higher-poverty neighborhoods and schools"[/i]. Sounds good, right? Well, a key question is, how do we know if the students received same level of educational effort from both schools (i.e. same teacher quality, etc.?) This question is very much valid since right after that example, the article mentions: [i]"Integrating schools can help to reduce disparities in access to[b] well-maintained facilities, highly qualified teachers, challenging courses[/b]"[/i] So if there are already "disparities" between the different schools selected in the MoCo study, of course student performance can differ due to that reason (instead of the "integration" effort).

(3) https://equitablegrowth.org/gerrymandered-school-d...ch-is-bad-for-economic-growth/

(i)  [i]"This lack of fiscal resources leads to low-income school districts finding it impossible to catch up. Owens’ research finds that even when funding formulas equalize spending, high-income districts’ residents regularly vote to spend more on schooling, adding additional resources to their classrooms while leaving low-income students in outside districts further behind."[/i]

Here one can see clearly the author(s) are talking about schools that are funded by the district (rather than MCPS where all schools in the county are funded by the county, not the "district" where that school serves). 
Again, analysis on schools with completely different funding models than MCPS can't be used as good examples.

(ii) In the article it says: 
[i]"Another experiment for integration that came to essentially the same conclusion was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which the city refers to as “controlled choice.” It converted all of the city’s Kindergarten through eighth grade schools into magnet schools and required parents to rank choices where to enroll their children. The district then placed students into schools with the goal of achieving a balance that resembled the city as a whole based on race and then further went on to integrate schools based on economic status. It found that 90 percent of students still received their top-choice school and today, the school district remains one of the top-performing in the country."[/i]

Ok, what does this say about performance? Nothing other than [i]"the school district remains one of the top-performing in the country." [/i]

"Remains as one of the top-performing in the country", at most it can say that the performance did not change much. It cannot be used as evidence supporting the main idea of the article: segregation is bad, integration is good (i am not arguing against that. I am simply showing this piece of "important evidence" does nothing to support their conclusion).

Overall, if you believe something, that is fine. Using these articles will neither strengthen nor weaken your believes. Those many small issues show that those articles are far from good evidence to support anything.

[/quote]

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