Poverty, School Achievement & Zoning

There's another "public" meeting to discuss the proposed changes to Student Assignment for MNPS tonight: 6PM at Stratford High School in East Nashville. I'll be at a different education event tonight, one that's focusing on what we do with kids once we get them in classrooms instead of what classrooms they're assigned to.

I'd love to be able to be at the meeting at Stratford, though. It's the perfect symbolic space to have a conversation about how we determine where students go to school. Why? Because it represents a community in which 92.4% of the children go to public school and go to their locally zoned school. In other words, Stratford is a "neighborhood school," just like the new zoning proposal suggests should be the model for schools across the city. But it's also a school with a 58.0% mobility rate and a 68.9% poverty rate. In other words, even though this school is nearby to the families it serves, 575 of the schools' 940 or so students will leave the school before the end of the year. Yikes.

Maybe that's just the norm for Nashville? Unfortunately, no. Hillsboro High School is comparable in size to Stratford. It's a neighborhood zoned school, like Stratford. But that neighborhood is a bit different. Only 35% of Hillsboro's students will change schools this year and only 34.5% of those students live in poverty. 

Those aren't the only differences, although they're pretty big ones. Students at Stratford received Out-of-school Suspensions about 1,200 times last year... only about half that number had OOSs at Hillsboro. Hillsboro offers nineteen different advanced placement courses. Stratford offers five, and only about 6% of their students pass the AP exams they do take.

It's not about zoning. It's not about neighborhood schools. It's about poverty, and the longer we insist that public education "works" so long as it works for children in wealth, the worse that problem becomes. Consider this review, published in the September Phi Delta Kappan, of last summer's OECD summit in Norway:

The reality..  is that socioeconomic status remains the most powerful single influence on students' educational and other life outcomes... Where you are born and grow up matters enormously to what you are able to be and do... UNICEF's Innocenti Research Centre recently released a report with the fascinating title of Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-Being in Rich Countries (www.unicef-irc.org/publications). Using a rich array of data, it compares the situation of children in Canada, the U.S., the United Kingdom, and 18 other European countries on six dimensions, including material well-being, health and safety, education, peer and family relationships, behaviors and risks, and young people's subjective sense of well-being.

No country ranks high on all six dimensions. The Netherlands gets the best overall score. Canada's average ranking across the six areas is 1 2th, while the U.S. and the U.K. are at the bottom. And the kicker is that the report concludes: "Variation in government policy appears to account for most of the variation in child poverty levels between OECD countries. No OECD country devoting 10% or more of GDP to social transfers has a child poverty rate higher than 10%. No country devoting less than 5% of GDP to social transfers has a child poverty rate of less than 15%."

It is, as our Mayor noted so often, all connected. Children spend about two and a half hours a day with their fathers, but about 8 hours a day in school. Our public schools, then, hold enormous promise for addressing the trajectory of children and youth, a promise which should not be overlooked in conversations that focus on the expense of MNPS transportation. Chief Justice Warren said it best:

Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

Children do not choose poverty... their ability to benefit from our public education system should not be dependent on whether they have wealth.  "Neighborhood schools" only work if neighborhoods are equal.

-Catherine McTamaney

Comments

[Tom]

It's why school choice must be part of the solution and discussion. And by choice I don't mean vouchers, but public school choice. Giving families all across the city more options.

You showed the mobility figures for two zone schools- well all four of the choice high schools have mobility rates below 10%. Why? Because students are there because parents chose the school. Moving homes midyear? Doesn't matter- you are enrolled. Neighborhood schools are great, but only when families choose them.

We need a new policy that says once you start a school, you get to stay; it might mean parents provide transportation if they leave the school (or oler kids learn about public transportation, but school enrollment needs to be in the hands of parents, not district bureaucrats or software systems.

And if we find more choice schools causes resegregation, we need to make sure that each zip code gets an equal shot at attending the schools.

Awesome blog, guys!

[Catherine]

There's more to consider regarding the magnet system. Having the system doesn't make it all better... the magnets also tend to be racially segregated, with white families opting for the academic magnets and black families opting for the themed magnets.

Choice only works if it's authentic choice, which right now, Nashville doesn't offer. But I agree that there is potential for great advancement if we take the issue of choice seriously and figure out how to engage the sections of our community that have been disenfranchised from public education.

[Tom]

"the magnets also tend to be racially segregated, with white families opting for the academic magnets and black families opting for the themed magnets."

MLK Academic Magnet is 26% black in a city that is 28% black. Themed magnet Nashville School of the Arts is close to 50-50. So, I think your generalization isn't a fair characterization. These schools have great diversity and are succeeding. Some of the Academic magnets should do a better job of getting more kids in poverty to attend. Perhaps transportaion is an issue- that should be discussed.

But there's much more to choice that magnets. For example, Hillsboro is an open enrollment school and has a lot of diversity. There already is school choice all over- moreso for savvy, ionvolved parents who know the system. We just need to make sure all families know their options; that hasn't been disseminated equitably.

[Catherine]

My characterization was a restatement of the findings presented at the Center for Nashville Studies' Face of Learning event- it's not my own conclusion. You're right that there is more to choice than magnets. Nashville is struggling with how to make choice authentic- it's more than just having information available. It's also a question of access. The Smrekar-Goldring study showed that parents chose the magnet schools for very different reasons. White parents tended to opt for magnets for academic reasons. Black parents tended to opt for magnets for issues of safety and proximity to their homes and work. The existence of a Hume Fogg or an MLK (or even a Hillsboro, which is open enrollment in part because of the IB program there) doesn't make the system work. It means that parents with access have choices. Choice, imho, works best when it's not tied to wealth or access.