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A weekend interview with Richard Kahlenberg of The Century Foundation
To deal with crowding, the Pasco County School Board is redrawing attendance zones for middle and high schools in the eastern part of the county. One of the upshots of the proposed new boundaries is an increase in the amount of low-income students in Dade City schools -- particularly Pasco Middle School, which will near Title I status -- and a corresponding decrease in the socioeconomic diversity of students in the Wesley Chapel schools. We turned to Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan but liberal leaning Century Foundation, who's one of the nation's leading proponents of economic integration, to talk about the implications and possible outcomes. Kahlenberg spoke with reporter Jeff Solochek.
The need of schools to cope with crowding, financial constraints and other factors is real, Kahlenberg acknowledged. But simply rezoning children into more economically segregated schools is not the best solution, he said.
"The research is clear that moves that exacerbate concentrations of poverty are bad for kids," Kahlenberg asserted. Not only that, he continued, "Extra money in high poverty schools does not adequately address the problem."
He pointed to a recent Century Foundation study of Montgomery County, Md., schools called Housing Policy is School Policy for support. That study, which relied upon the school system's blind assignment of low-income students, demonstrated that low-income children attending mixed-income schools outperform their peers in schools with high concentrations of poor kids.
"This study was particularly powerful because the families were randomly assigned to public housing units in very different neighborhoods that then translated into very different students," Kahlenberg said. "There were no issues of self selection."
Meaning the successful students were not just those of highly motivated parents.
Some Pasco officials have contended that the new attendance boundaries will lead to increased parental involvement, as the low-income students will be attending school closer to their homes. Nonsense, Kahlenberg said.
"There's no research to back up that hypothesis," he said. "The key driver of parental involvement is the socioeconomic status of the family. Low-income families for a variety of reasons are much less likely to be involved in the PTA or to volunteer in classrooms. To take one example, middle class parents are four times as likely to be members of the PTA as low-income families."
He cited an example at a Raleigh, N.C., magnet school that sits across the street from a public housing unit that sends children there. "Almost all the volunteers in the school were the middle-class parents who live farther away. It's not so much distance that is driving low levels of participation among low-income parents. It's if you are working two or three jobs, you may not be able to volunteer in the classroom, or your job might not offer you the flexibility to get off in the middle of the day."
Some people will say that low-income kids will feel more comfortable if they are around other low-income kids, he observed. But "mountains of evidence" show that economic segregation is "disastrous" for education.
"Probably the best thing you can do for a low-income student is allow her to attend a middle income school," Kahlenberg said.
School choice often allows that to occur. But in instances where that's not the case, usually because of uneven growth and crowding, school districts might have to make other conscious choices to maintain economic integration, he said. The mix of people in a school does matter, he argued.
"You want to have peers who are academically engaged and expect to go on to college," he said. "You want to have parents who are volunteering in a school, people who know how to hold school officials accountable when things go wrong. And you want to have high quality teachers, and the evidence seems to indicate that high quality teachers flee high poverty schools."
If neighborhoods were integrated on their own, then action wouldn't be needed. "But the reality is because our neighborhoods tend to be economically segregated, a plan which assigns students in a compulsory manner to their local schools will result in highly unequal opportunities."
Trust me, when I say, this action on Pasco County's part is not just. And they have already received their reward. It is not too late now, to turn back from this crime. And if you do, God will bless you. If you don't, you condemn yourselves and all that is within you & yours to his just punishment. May God have mercy on your souls.
"Neighborhood schools" is the politically correct verbiage for "re-segregation" and deliberate abandonment of providing quality education for African American students. Pinellas County adopted this practice in 2007. In 2008, 78 percent African American males DID NOT graduate.
Those of you who don't want readjustments due to overcrowded classrooms need to donate all the money needed to build additions to the schools that are busting at their seams. Then changes won't be necessary.
I have an even better solution. Those of you without Teaching jobs, get together with other Teachers, form your own 'home schools', make sure you know the rules this state imposes on such a venture. Cross all your "T's" and dot all your "I's" and then Teach your neighborhood children. Enlist their parents help for procuring supplies for your mini-schools. This CAN be done. Make sure you keep up to date, with your certification, and there are many helps on the internet and through college coursework to help you in this venture. Your mini-neighborhood schools will be even more valuable than the public schools as a means to educate these poor and under-privileged kids. This is how it was done in the 1800's and early 1900's when minority children weren't allowed to go to schools and integrate public schools. This is the hope that the poor will have going for them in the years ahead, when our economy, public programs and the like will be infiltrated by the chronically evil.
Gabriel, what do you mean WHEN public programscwill be infiltrated by the chronically evil? We've been Education professionals have been dealing with them for the last ten years in Tallahassee and DC. Now we get an anti public education governor and major anti public education advocates on his education transition team in Michelle Rhee, Patricia Levesque, etc. They' herenow and have been for ten years!
How about Michelle Rhee, for starters. The chronically evil will do more than infiltrate. You are right, they've been there for years, but their power & influence will grow stronger. The only thing that keeps them at bay are the 'believers' in their midst. The political strata will turn decidedly to the far-right and you will witness the destruction of the American School System and Apartheid, like you've never seen before. An educational apartheid. The only people there will be people who've also sold their souls to Beelzebub. You can't justify servitude without a systematic restructuring of the government and delineating the "haves" and the "have-nots" to allow this 'crime' to exist. God is watching and you can too, you will know them by their rhetoric, "reform", "New World Order", "privatizing", "accountability", they are the same Pharisees and Saducees of the Bible, they just call themselves by another name, give you a hint: starts with an "R". Bad karma if you chose this group.