Reply to Dumb WaPoo Article on Public Schools

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]... I must not have been clear about my suggestion.  I'm certainly not proposing to create racially segregated schools.  I'm just saying school districts might decide to quit pursuing a policy of artificial diversity, and instead focus on educating the children who are in each school.  For example, if a neighborhood school is "H/PBH," the school district could spend its money to try to tailor the curriculum to match what the students are ready for, and hire the most qualified teachers possible for that school.  That's not an effort to short-change those students, but rather to match the education to the needs.  ... [/quote]
Let me put it to you this way:  You are the poor parent of a bright African American daughter.  Do you think it's fair that she has to go to the low-test score, chaotic, rat-filled jr high with a 30% suspension rate?  Or do you think she should be allowed to attend the shiny new, safe, high test-score jr high just across town?  What do you think is fair in this situation?

The "race neutral" discriminatory policy is the one that assigns her to the subpar school based on her zipcode, which corresponds to race.

http://www.civilrights.org/education/education-reform/disparate-impact.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/[/quote]
First, we should discard all your extra facts about schools being "rat-filled" or "shiny new."  No one is defending a system that funds school facilities in wealthy areas over those in poor areas.  Wherever that's happening, we can agree it's wrong.

So let's focus on the other part of your comparison: School A, a "low-test score, chaotic school with 30% suspension rate" versus School B, a "safe, high test-score" school.  We can agree most parents would want their children to attend School B's "safe, high test-score school," but how can we make that happen?  It's an especially hard problem because it's [i]the students themselves[/i] that are causing School A to be a low-test score, chaotic school with a 30% suspension rate.  If we simply make all the students swap buildings, School B will suddenly become the one that's a low-test score, chaotic school with a 30% suspension rate.  What you're really asking is how a poor parent of a bright African-American daughter can get her away from other "H/PBH" students.  That's a blunt way of putting it, but it's true.

So let's consider a few options.  Pretend our school district costs $500m per year just to keep the doors open and hire enough teachers.  In some years when the school district gets extra money, we can spend an extra $50m or so on effort to improve the quality of life for all students.  When we get that money, how should we spend it?

1. The "pure neighborhood" approach.  Every child attends the school where she lives.  All schools get equal funding, but schools in H/PBH neighborhoods will likely be low-performing H/PBH schools because of the students that attend them.  If you want to attend a better-performing school, move to a different neighborhood.  IMHO, that's a pretty unsatisfying answer because it offers bright & motivated children in H/PBH neighborhoods few options if their parents cannot afford to move.  But overall, if the school district is low on funding and doesn't have that extra $50m to spend, this might be the only option.

2. The "max diversity" approach.  All schools are getting equal funding, but schools in H/PBH neighborhoods are still H/PBH and low-performing, and we don't like that disparity.  So let's spend our school district's extra money to shuffle the H/PBH students around to all the schools equally.  That way, all schools and all students suffer an equal burden and we can say each school is equally integrated.  And if our school district is 70% H/PBH, that means every individual school will be 70% H/PBH, which means they're all pretty much low-test score, chaotic schools with a 30% suspension rate now.

3. The "extra funding" approach.  This is like the "pure neighborhood" approach, because we do not spend money on shuffling students.  But all schools do [i]not[/i] get equal funding.  Every school gets a base level of funding to keep the lights on, but all our extra money goes for extra teachers and programs at the H/PBH schools, in an effort to lift their performance and options.  One complication is that in a city with 70% H/PBH students, that extra funding gets spread out among a bunch of H/PBH students, so any change is slow.

4. The "lucky few" approach.  This starts with the "pure neighborhood" approach, because we do not spend money on shuffling students.  But we spend our school district's extra money to identify bright & motivated children in the H/PBH schools, and we give them an opportunity to leave their H/PBH neighborhood schools and instead attend better-performing schools.  This essentially means we're spending our money to test children and group them according to their abilities.  We anticipate that grouping together the the bright & motivated students from H/PBH neighborhoods will allow them to escape their old "low-test score, chaotic schools with a 30% suspension rate," and will instead let them form high test-score, safe schools.  This creates some tension because the school district is picking "winners and losers" when it decides who will get to escape the H/PBH schools.

So which option(s) make the most sense?  I know this is highly simplified, and there are countless subtle variations or combinations we could create, but these are the basic choices I see.  Remember you only have limited funds each year to devote to any of these plans, and most will take many years to show results.  None are perfect.  All will create frustration.  Also, the approach that might make sense in one city might be a disaster in another city with different population demographics, so it's not one-size-fits-all.

I don't know what the right answer is either.  I think the "max diversity" approach provides the easiest path to quick results, because within a couple years a school district can brag about its improved school diversity numbers.  But I don't think it provides much of a path to performance improvement for students, unless you believe that the mere fact of more diversity will make students and schools perform better.  I think the "lucky few" approach might offer the best long-term results, but it's politically hard to swallow.

What do you think?[/quote]

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