Reply to Should MCPS start busing or open enrollment?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was in an elementary down south where they bused in kids from the projects to integrate.  There were days when it was like a scene out of Lord of the Flies. No way would I put any child of mine through that.  I seriously doubt it would do much of anything to reduce any gap, and would be very expensive.  The schools in the good districts are good because of the kids that go there.  [b]I read one study where the performance of poor children improved when they went to a school in a more affluent neighborhood, but only if the percentages were <20%.[/b]  Since 40% of MoCo qualifies for FARMs, it's hard to see it being effective.  In addition, it's been shown that bringing in poorer children also has a detrimental effect on the acheivement of higher performing children.  Not sure how to fix the problem, but bussing sure isn't it.[/quote]

That's not really an accurate summary. The data showed that poor children improved even when the percentages were >20%. Just not as much. Here's the study:

http://tcf.org/work/education/detail/housing-policy-is-school-policy/

[/quote]

From the report: "Children who lived in public housing and attended schools where no more than 20 percent of students qualified for a free or reduced price meal did best, whereas those children in public housing who attended schools where as many as 35 percent of students who qualified for a free or reduced price meal performed no better academically over time than public housing children who attended schools where 35 to 85 percent of students qualified for a free or reduced price meal."

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Yes. But if you read the report, you will see that children who lived in public housing and attended schools where 20-34% were FARMS did better than children with 35-85% FARMS but not as well as children with [u]<[/u]20% FARMS. And it would also have been good to break the 35-85% category into smaller groups, but that may not have been statistically possible. Nonetheless, 35-85% FARMS is a very, very broad category.[/quote]

That's not really how I interpreted it.  The 0-30% group had a slight improvement, but that also included the 0-20% group as well.  To really support the claim you're making they would have had to be able to break out the 0-20% from the 20-30% which I don't think the data supported.  In other words it's entirely possible that all of the gains in the 0-30 group were driven by kids in the 0-20 group.[/quote]

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