North Carolina Teabaggers resegregate schools

[jimrtex]

If the schools are not equal opportunity or at least close to it, there is a big problem. The system really isn't about diversity, but equal opportunity. The Tea Party and their supporters can through out all the spin they like, it doesn't change what they're real agenda is.

So you're saying that this school district is operating cruddy schools, and good schools, and so they bus some kids that live near the good school to the cruddy school, and some who live near the good schools to the cruddy school?

[jimrtex]

So you're saying that this school district is operating cruddy schools, and good schools, and so they bus some kids that live near the good school to the cruddy school, and some who live near the good schools to the cruddy school?

That's not what I'm saying at all. The article doesn't mention sub-standard schools, the concern is about clustering low income students together, which can lead to education standards falling. Obviously, there is some risk of this, otherwise there wouldn't be opposition.

Why would educational standards fall?

[jimrtex]

That's not what I'm saying at all. The article doesn't mention sub-standard schools, the concern is about clustering low income students together, which can lead to education standards falling. Obviously, there is some risk of this, otherwise there wouldn't be opposition.

Why would educational standards fall?

Because poor neighborhoods tend to get less educational funding than middle to upper class ones.
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Why would the school district spend less in some of its schools than others?

[jimrtex]

Why would the school district spend less in some of its schools than others?

Educating poor students can be different than education middle or upper class students, which means more funds that the school districts don't want to provide.

But imagine you were one of the enlightened individuals who used to control the school board.  Why wouldn't you appropriate the funding to the schools?

Let's imagine there were two neighborhoods each with 1000 children and a school with capacity of 1000.  Neighborhood A is higher income than Neighborhood B.

Why wouldn't you as an enlightened school board member send $5 million to School A and $6 million to School B?

Instead you are going to spend several $400,000 on busing 500 children from Neighborhood A to School B, and 500 on busing 500 children from Neighborhood B to School A, and $5.3 million to each school.

What makes you think that both schools won't spend equal amounts on each student, if not more on the higher income students?

[jimrtex]

Poor schools frequently get more funding, not less. Title I and all.  If it stays in the same district, that shouldn't matter. Meals are totally federal and not a local concern.

They sometimes get more aid, but not more funding.  When you look at per pupil spending and things like that, that generally takes into consideration all funding including meals and such.

You're still not making any sense.   Imagine you are in charge of a school district and you have $11,000,000 to spend.  You have 2000 students, so average available funds are $5,500 per student.  It so happens you have two school buildings each with a capacity of 1000.  One is situated in a lower income area, the other in a higher income one.

Why wouldn't YOU simply direct more of the funding to the lower income school, perhaps $6,000,000 vs. $5,000,000?

Instead YOU would spend $400,000 on busing 500 students in opposite directions, and reduce spending to $5,300.000 at each school.  What makes you think the lesser spending will be equitably directed to low income students?

[jimrtex]

Because if you have a bunch of low income students clustered together its going to take even more $$ to educate them than whatever difference you would save in the busing.   Unless you gut the funding quite a bit more of the wealthier school (which the tea partiers would never go for) to send to the poorer school, you are still going to have more inequality. 

Can you provide a formula that illustrates the cost of education as a function of the percentage of low-income students in a school, over the range of 0% to 100%.  It doesn't have to be an exact formula, but is rather to be indicative of form of the cost structure.

I have suggested a formula of the form:

    $$(poor) = $X + $Y * poor

Where poor is share of student population that is low income in the range of 0 to 1.

Now say a district provides services to poor and disadvantaged students to six schools, and the poor and disadvantaged make up approx 20% of each school.   That then changes and you have the same six schools, but the poor and disadvantaged mostly concentrated in two schools, with very few poor or disadvantaged students in the other four.   Even though the amount of poor and disadvantaged students overall did not changed much, the services that are needed to provide for them would likely increase because the need and problems escalate when you have the poor and disadvantaged clustered together.

Why does the need escalate?  What sort of problems escalate?

[jimrtex]

There really is no set formula or anything you can estimate to a $$ amount, however it does take more funds to educate someone who is poor than someone is wealthy.  Its even more so when the poor is clustered together than when they are spread out because the simple day to day issues of not having much simply have more impact when its clustered together.

What are these "clustering" issues?

With a small number of low-income students, it would be easy to ignore those who don't show up for class, and it would be easier to transfer funds intended for the low-income students to more expensive programs that benefit high-income students.

[jimrtex]

There really is no set formula or anything you can estimate to a $$ amount, however it does take more funds to educate someone who is poor than someone is wealthy.  Its even more so when the poor is clustered together than when they are spread out because the simple day to day issues of not having much simply have more impact when its clustered together.

What are these "clustering" issues?

With a small number of low-income students, it would be easy to ignore those who don't show up for class, and it would be easier to transfer funds intended for the low-income students to more expensive programs that benefit high-income students.

Quite simply the educational opportunities simply aren't the same for a students in poverty as they are for students who are affluent.  More needs to be done to equalize the opportunities, and this does the exact opposite.

It is not clear what "this" refers to in the preceding paragraph.  Are you saying that if a school has a students of mixed incomes, and takes the extra funding intended for poor students, and shifts it into more expensive programs that tend to benefit high performing students who are disproportionately higher income, or just shifts the money into general overhead, that it will have the opposite effect?

[jimrtex]

But imagine you were one of the enlightened individuals who used to control the school board.  Why wouldn't you appropriate the funding to the schools?

Let's imagine there were two neighborhoods each with 1000 children and a school with capacity of 1000.  Neighborhood A is higher income than Neighborhood B.

Why wouldn't you as an enlightened school board member send $5 million to School A and $6 million to School B?

Instead you are going to spend several $400,000 on busing 500 children from Neighborhood A to School B, and 500 on busing 500 children from Neighborhood B to School A, and $5.3 million to each school.

What makes you think that both schools won't spend equal amounts on each student, if not more on the higher income students?

You are assuming that the process is always fair, school funding can be very political. In addition to that, school boards don't see lower income neighborhood schools as having that much potential. The question is if this school board will actually take steps towards equalizing funding, rather than just allowing the system to turn into a typical rich school/poor school scenario.

I'm assuming that the previous school board perceived themselves as being fair, and that you assumed that they were fair.  If that were true, why wouldn't they spend more where the need was greatest, and not spent it on school buses.

[jimrtex]

Correlation does not equal causation in this case. There is a third omitted variable which likely causes both poor academic performance and poverty. The affluent kids will have the law of diminishing marginal returns kick in at a later point in terms of funding. In this case, it's better to have magnet schools, charter schools be a way for promising poor kids an escape valve.

Wake County does have magnet schools and there are no plans to get rid of them.  I suspect that the schools that the Washington Post was praising were these magnet schools.

[jimrtex]

The this is the decision by the school board whose result will wind up with more segregated schools, and schools with high poverty rates.

Were you familiar with the policy of the Wake County school district under the old board?

It sounds more like a rationalization on your part.   You imagine who the new board is, and what there motivation might be, and thus have to presume that the old policy had a rational basis.

[jimrtex]

The school buses really isn't part of the equation, its a cop out argument by the current board.

What evidence is there that it is a cop out argument by the current board?

[jimrtex]

The this is the decision by the school board whose result will wind up with more segregated schools, and schools with high poverty rates.

Were you familiar with the policy of the Wake County school district under the old board?

It sounds more like a rationalization on your part.   You imagine who the new board is, and what there motivation might be, and thus have to presume that the old policy had a rational basis.

Yes, students were bussed around so you could have a strong diverse set of schools both demographically and socio-economically.   As a result unlike many large metropolitan areas, Wale had very few low performing schools, poor students had a better chance at getting a solid education because they were not stuck in the under performing poor schools.  That is going to change with the new policy.

If you look at the ratings for any school in Wake County, there is a huge difference in performance between white and black and Hispanic students, and low-income and non-low-income students.  The gap is greater than elsewhere in North Carolina.  So if Wake County has few "low performing" schools, it is because you are looking at average performance, and not the performance of individual students.  The mean sea level does not lift all boats.

Here's what appears to have happened.  The do-gooders decided to establish magnet programs to enhance educational opportunities for low-income students, and to voluntarily integrate the schools.  Somewhere along the way, they lost sight of goal and became attached to the process.  For example, one school was demagnetized (sic), not because there was not interest in the program, or the program had proven ineffective, relative to the regular instruction, but because the neighborhood around the school had upgraded.  Since there were enough non-low-income children in the area, they no longer had to be attracted by an enhanced education program.

Wake County is growing rapidly, in some years adding 5,000 students.  When, that happens there will be new subdivisions that don't have schools built, or it may be difficult to establish the proper size of the school.  New subdivisions attract a disproportionate share of young couples of child-bearing age who want bedrooms for their children, and no longer want to rent an apartment based on its proximity to bars and nightclubs.  So initially, the neighborhood will have a disproportionate share of babies, and then elementary students, then high school students, empty nesters, and eventually after 40 or so years, the elderly.

A typical fast growing district will build schools as fast as it can and bus students out of new subdivisions that don't yet have the students for a new school, to a nearby, slightly older subdivision that has a school, but is not yet built out.  Some districts may adopt year round calendars (that increase building capacity by 1/3, or use portable buildings.  Wake County does that, but rather than busing to a nearby school, or using year round calendar in fast growing areas, they use it as basis for income-based transfers.  So there might be a nearby school, and the parent might prefer a year-round calendar, but if there are too many non-low-income students at that school, they may be assigned to a conventional calendar school across town.  Transfers to magnet schools and calendar transfers were denied based on income.

The Office of Planning and Growth (sounds like they had gone to the full immersion program in the DDR) was in charge of student assignments.  They had divided the district into small areas, and assigned and reassigned students.  One effort of the new board was to make student assignments on a 3-year basis, instead of an annual basis.

And some folks who had been in control got in a tizzy.  The teachers union had backed other candidates in the school board election.  The mayor of Raleigh is married to a school board member who was now in the minority, and announced his intent to form a committee of educators and lawyers to consider what action to take.  The former superintendent who resigned after the new school board majority had been elected, backed a candidate for county commissioner, because the commissioners have ultimate control over school funding (he lost in November 2010). 

One tactic of those who have lost control is demonize their opponents, and prey upon their  prejudices.  And that appears to be the case here.  They call the board members "teabaggers" and allege the intent is to resegregate the schools.  Since it is in North Carolina, it plays into the prejudices of folks like you.