So this is an e-mail I sent to all of the board members right before the decision to close Sunny Hollow, Pilgram and Sandburg.  The concern was that the district was dividing the district based on race and social-economic status and may cause flight on the east side of the district.  After that I will post the response from the board at the time.  Then I'll follow up with another post on what it actually is now after the October 2009 data has been released:

E-mail to school board - December 30th, 2008

Has anyone run the numbers of students of disability and minority who will be attending the new neighborhood schools?  I'm just curious because the numbers to me seem to put the new Robbinsdale Middle School and Robbinsdale Cooper High School not into balance at all.

Hopefully these numbers are not new to you but since I never sat down and did the math until now they are to me.  These results of the new schools are downright scary.  The problem with providing straight percentage numbers like Wold did is that one can do anything they want with percentages to make them appear and fit whatever cause they are trying to get.

Now we get to tricky math.  Using the past performance numbers from the 2008 state testing we look to see how the students will fair in their new schools.  Now I accept that students will move and using last year numbers without knowing the exact breakdown is unfair but does give us a starting point for the discussion - we see that students bound for the top set of schools on average passed the reading/math exams at about a 62% rate and students in the bottom half passed the exams at a 76% rate.  Now, historically we have seen that students of special education and minority are less likely to pass the exams then other students so this split may very well go up.  Time will only tell.

So I guess all I'm saying is that I hope someone sat down and did this math.  Now I'm sure this will all fall into the vast void of rhetoric and pissed off e-mails and all of this typing was for waste.  But if it did not hopefully you found some of this information helpful because our next step is not to find transition plans but rather to deal with the old problem that will soon become the new big problem - closing the achievement gap for minority students.

Reply from board:

Looked at this closely. I would love to talk with you about it in the next few weeks. One point, the demographics you look at are more balanced in 7 of the 8 elementary schools than they were this year. That said, you are absolutely right that the achievement gap is a top priority. How about we a take a week or two to recover and then talk, call me or e-mail me, perhaps we can get a cup of coffee or talk on the phone. Thanks!!!!

Today

Any now today.  So the demographics based on numbers put us at a 65% to 44% split over the next 5 years of incoming students to RMS and PMS.

So if we break those numbers down today based on the numbers presented by the district in October of 2009 we see that the numbers have split even more.

Forest, Lakeview, Meadow Lake and Northport are 65.9% minority students vs Neill, Noble, SEE and Zachary come in at 41.0%.  If you throw RSI students into the mix as they will be attending PMS that drives the number down to 36.5%.  We have a 30% gap between middle schools over the next 5 years!

So what does this mean?  Does it mean all schools on the east side are doomed for failure?  No!  We have some great schools on both side of the tracks.  Unfortunately for the district minority, special ed and free and reduced lunch students have performed worse than caucasian students.  This puts schools at risk of AYP/Title One issues.  Ultimately, in my mind it means that we cannot and should not treat Zachary the same as Northport.  We may need different programs/ideas for one set of schools compared to another.

So what are my thoughts on solving this, the achievement gap be it social-economic or anything else.  These are in no particular order just things we should do:

1. Peer review.  Non-tenure teachers are encouraged to do it.  We should encourage it with all teachers.  There is absolutely no encouragement right now.  Seeing others is a great way to learn new ideas, validate ideas you have are working, etc.

2. Academy classes.  We need to ensure its going to be used in the classroom.  We cannot "require" teachers to take tests or anything but report back on what they learned and how they can improve their classroom with it.

3. QComp - need to get it done.  There are ton of really nice benefits in there from a learning perspective and it gives teachers incentives.  All around good.

4. Tie bonuses for superintendent and principals to AYP results.  Yep, they get bonuses now and teachers don't.  So if you are going to give them bonuses let's hold them accountable.

5. Simplify the discipline process for teachers.  This is a union controlled issue that they need to realize isn't good for them right now.  If there is a perception that it takes 5+ years to get rid of a bad teacher than that is a public concerns issue.

6. Uniforms in K-5.  You heard it - we should implement a mandatory uniform policy across all elementary schools.  Start there and you will see issues decrease as they get older and move to secondary schools.

7. RSI - open it up to everyone.  We have buildings laying around and a waiting list a mile long.  As long as we have more than 20 people on the waiting list we should create a class for it.  It is a successful programs because it fosters parent involvement.  My stipulation for opening it up like that.  All families have to give a certain number of community services hours back to the school.  (This one might be legally difficult but I'm sure we can find a way to make it work.)  Same deal as before, you don't get to join the program unless you can prove you are good enough.  Might even draw some people to the district increasing our numbers.

8. Community involvement.  We need to come up with programs that get parents in the seats, out in the community, with their school.  I don't know what it is off the top of my head but I think everyone gets the idea.

Well, those are it.  Lots of ideas - sure there are some lemons in there but we cannot identify them if we don't start the conversation.

DJ

If Spec. Ed. as I would define it is this high, a parent should do everything possible to get out.  But I suspect that Spec. Ed. simply includes poverty, race, and language factors, whether students need additional help or not.  This in fact supports my theory that Spec. Ed. costs are significantly understated.

Agreed.  I have to believe the information that was presented back in the day with the wold recommendation were the most liberal of definitions of special education.

DJ

 If you want to see "flight" just mess up the west side schools in a misguided attempt to make things fair. You are never going to close the achievement gap without holding the under achieving students and their parents responsible.  All this double talk does is excuse bad, and self destructive, behavior on the part of a large group of kids in our school district who just happen to have more pigment in their skins. The ones who are bad students by in large choose to be bad students, and their parents go along, and our schools enable, and everyone shakes their heads and says how terrible our society is because we've failed. No we haven't failed them, they've failed themselves, and until we understand that, or more importantly they understand that, they are going to continue to fail. I'm very happy that my youngest kid is in 9th grade and it appears that Armstrong will be remain a good school at least until he graduates.  I pity the kids who are just entering, I'd tell their parents to move to Medina or Rockford, because 281 is a lost cause.

Not sure where I said we should "mess" with the west side to make it more fair?  I've said it all along - the #1 issue is what solution do we have to dealing with students of mobility.  We cannot stop people from moving but getting up and moving day-after-day doesn't lead to a good education.  The argument has nothing necessarily to do with "pigment in their skins" but rather lower economic factors on one side of schools leads to a greater chance of mobility.  Mobility = bad scores.  I'm willing for forgo our craziness about class sizes if that means we can find better solutions.

DJ