Today the US Supreme Court will hear arguments concerning the Seattle Public Schools assignment policies, specifically the “integration tiebreaker” the district suspended in 2001.
In 1999 the district switched to an “Open Choice” plan in which incoming freshman could name their preferred high schools. Not surprisingly, some schools were preferred over others, with Ballard, Nathan Hale, Roosevelt, Garfield and Franklin getting more applicants than they could accommodate. In order to achieve a racial balance that more close matched the city as a whole, the district used race as one of the tiebreakers in assigning students.
Also unsurprising, many of the district’s high schools have become significantly less diverse since the integration tiebreaker was suspended. Franklin has dropped from 21 percent white to only 10 percent, and both Cleveland and Rainier Beach are now over 93 percent non-white.
I know these figures will elicit a big “so what?” from those on the right who consistently argue against any color of affirmative action or diversity policy, but I think it speaks to a much larger issue, an issue that I believe is at the heart of many of the district’s structural problems: the undeniable disparity between the district’s various schools, an inequity that clearly tracks economic, geographic, and yes, racial boundaries.
A handful of Northend schools are oversubscribed, while Southend schools like Cleveland and Rainier Beach suffer steadily declining enrollment. Why? Because these Northend schools are better. Everybody knows it, and even if it isn’t true in all areas, the very perception is more than enough to make it self-fulfilling. These schools attract better teachers, better students, and many of the most active and engaged families. They provide a safer, more stable learning environment, and their students produce significantly higher test scores. Of course the parents filing the lawsuit that challenged the integration tiebreaker were pissed off when their kids didn’t get their top choice. Who wouldn’t be? It just isn’t fair that your kids get a crappier education and fewer opportunities due to luck of the draw let alone the color of their skin.
But none of this would be an issue if all our high schools were equally good. Or at least, good enough. But they’re not. So it is.
When John Stanford was superintendent he made it clear that he was willing to sacrifice integration to some extent, in the interest of promoting neighborhood schools. The trick was to take away from parents the incentive to bus their children cross-town in search of a better education, by bringing some degree of equity to all of the district’s schools. If Rainier Beach for example, was pretty much as good and as safe as any other high school in the district, why on earth would I want to bus my daughter all the way from South Seattle to Ballard?
As it stands, the district now spends millions of dollars a year busing students from one part of the district to another, money that could be invested in the classroom rather than transportation. But we can’t in good conscience move to a neighborhood school model at the elementary, middle or high school level until we guarantee a greater degree of equity between all our schools.
Yes, there are many, many complicated factors that make one school better than another, but some of them are quite tangible, and thus can be tangibly addressed. For example, at some high schools there simply aren’t enough text books to go around, so students share. At other high schools each student has two copies of each textbook, one for school and one for home, so they don’t have to lug them back and forth.
How is this disparity even possible, let alone tolerated?
Coming up, our education funding system’s dirty little secret.
This is a much tougher discussion. MTR and Dave Ross on KIRO pretty much think the same way . . . if kids aren’t there to learn, maybe they shouldn’t be there.
There is an unspoken truth that is becoming more and more evident: to a certain extent, the responsibility to learn lies with the parents and kids as well as the school district.
This is pretty unexpected coming from me; but, it is nevertheless one of the problems facing this District.
Having said that, we do need more parity. I think much more money should follow students with greater needs and they should have smaller class sizes. The District should even provide after school programs. I can only hope that north end school parents would understand the needs of the at-risk children and continue to support their own schools as they have been and not resent the District for sending more money to those schools that need it.
But, a plan must be in place. Achievement must be shown within a time frame. That’s all I would ask. And parents must be required to have children at school on time and ready to learn. The District should have personnel on hand to provide positive intervention in that area as well.
We need the feds to increase funding and get Head Start back on track as well.
I’ll bet the District loses in the Court. We’ll see.
A TV shows I watch without fail is “The Wire” on HBO.
It turns out that The Wire is written and produced by people who actually have experience in policing and reporting in Baltimore, the locale of the stories. The episodes are gritty and have a ring of truth to them.
This year, the story lines deal with an experiment that was actually undertaken there. Middle school kids were identified as “Corner Kids”, the ones who end up involved in crime and drugs; and “Stoop Kids” the ones who obey their parents when told to stay near home and have a chance at success.
The idea is that if the Stoop kids are seperated from the Corner kids in class, their classes work better, allowing them to progress, and the Corner kids can get the benefit of classes where an attempt os made to socialize them before they get shot.
It seems to me that the Seattle assignment plan is a city-wide policy that accomplishes much the same thing.
Goldy,
Has anyone ever quantified this disparity?
Skagit–I would tend to agree that south end schools should receive a greater share of the funding, but it appears politically improssible. North end whites would quake with rage about such a “disparity” in the use of public funds. Why, they would ask, should some black kid in the central district get twice as much funding thrown at his education than a typical white kid in Ballard?
It’s always the same. Those that have the money insist on setting the ground rules, and those ground rules always favor them. Who’da thought?
How do kids get bussed in Seattle? In my old hometown we got subsidized bus passes and took the transit system to get around. Also in my old hometown, the older high schools have been “re-purposed” over the years. One is French Immersion, another is a Police/Military Academy, There is an Arts HS, a Science HS, an extremely high-speed Vo-tech. And in areas of town that are still full of younger families, they have more general HS.
Proud: My staff was told by one of our techie members that the District was going to send more money to the poorer schools that needed and she was upset about it. But, most of the staff did not support her. I think we in ed know that those schools need it. My parents tell me they understand and want to share . . . we’ll see. If Goldy’s any example, I don’t know.
P38: We had magnate schools many years ago and they are no longer around. The only two I can think of are the AAA and The Center School and maybe the program at Ballard and Stanford International. Except for AAA, I don’t know what the economic/ethnic make up of these schools is. I bet Mel Westbrook would know . . . you out there Mel?
As for busing . . . don’t know if we have much busing anymore. Certainly not for the purposes of integrat5ion. I’ve been at a pretty white north end school since I started teaching.
Telling kids at a predominantly minority school that they can be anything they try to be and the kids can easily see that the staff is predominantly white is another sticking point. Perhaps there should be a greater effort to recruit minority teachers for predominantly minority schools.
I wonder what the ratio of minority/majority teachers is?
Also, Mel, if you’re reading . . . do you think schools need to be closed or do you think there are other ways to solve tthe fiscal problems. Wish I’d thought to ask yesterday.
“But none of this would be an issue if all our high schools were equally good. Or at least, good enough. But they’re not. So it is.”
Exactly!
I didn’t go to Seattle Public Schools because my parents did not want to bus me across town. How about making all the schools equal and then requiring people go to their neighborhood school?
The schools argument was just on CSpan — audio only, of course. Don’t know if they’ll rebroadcast.
Skagit… I’m not so sure why you have such a negative impression of me in regards to education. I suppose it’s from my response to the effort to close my daughter’s school. So let me sum up my position on school closures.
While surely there were a handful of poor performing, underenrolled programs in crumbling buildings, the vast majority of those considered for closure were good schools. The district never adequately supported the argument that closing schools would save enough money in proportion to the number of students that would leave the district in response, to make it worth the disruption. In the end, the question should never have been “How much money will we save?” but rather, “How will this improve education in Seattle?”
In Graham Hill’s case we felt they cherry-picked data to justify closure (the WASL scores in math for a single year for students on free and reduced price lunch in our contemporary program,) without giving full consideration to the consequences. The district perceived there was a “problem” at Graham Hill, perhaps believing the revolving door in the principal’s office was the result of a dysfunctional culture, rather than the cause of many of our struggles. Perhaps the district’s ear was poisoned by one of these ex-principals (a principal who had been forced out of three of the schools on the original closure list.) We don’t exactly know why, because nobody at the district has ever been forthright with us about this subject. But the fact remains, we were targeted.
In the end, Graham Hill was saved because we successfully made the argument that due to capacity limitations in the south end, the Montessori program could not be moved within the cluster (there was simply no school with room to take the program intact,) and our students would have been scattered to as many as five different schools, some of the kids actually bused out of the cluster. The public was told there was all this excess capacity in the SE, but the bulk of it is in the AAA, an alternative program that cannot be used for mandatory assignment.
But my overwhelming objection to the school closure process is that the District had been presented a comprehensive plan for improving schools, but chose to impliment just this one part of it, largely for political reasons. Again and again I kept hearing from school board members and district officials that legislators told them they wouldn’t get any more money unless they closed some schools. And quite frankly, I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my daughter’s education just to give Helen Sommers some political cover.
SKAGIT IS ON THE “INTELLIGENT PEOPLE” TEAM – A GROUP OF OUT-OF -TOUCH ELITISTS.
WELL GOLDY, BEING A PARENT AND COMMUNITY ACTIVIST, TOLD YOU “INTELLIGENT” TYPES WHERE TO TAKE YOUR “BIG PICTURES” AND YOUR CHERRY-PICKED CHARTS AND GRAPHS!
NEXT TIME, IF YOU WANT TO BE TRULY RELEVANT, GET YOUR HANDS DIRTY SELLING YOUR PLANS TO PEOPLE ON THE GROUND – THE PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY HAVE TO LIVE WITH YOUR DECISIONS.
It’s a sticky wicket.
First, I support open choice for high school and not just because some high schools are better than others. The high schools are deliberately not “cookie cutter” so that kids will choose a school that suits their interests. (We’re trying to keep as many kids as possible engaged and on the road to graduating. Giving them programs that have relevance to their lives is important. Of course, some of them just go where their friends go.) We can’t have two nationally ranked jazz programs (that probably help some kids get to college) and then say, oh sorry just for kids in that neighborhood.
We currently have about 4 schools using Metro; Hale (which has a later start than other high schools), Center School (because of their location) and Ballard/Franklin are trying a pilot program. I believe the district is leaning towards all high schoolers being on Metro. I support this because it would save some money and it gives the kids experience in using public transit (their Metro pass is good anytime, not just for school). (They had some very funny public testimony at school board meetings held earlier this year on this subject. Some people complained that the kids were going to be exposed to dangerous types on Metro. Other people complained the kids were the dangerous types and would bother other riders. All I know is that millions of kids throughout the world ride public transit to school without a lot of problems either way.)
I think the district has been steadily working towards parity. Cleveland has its academies (but they did start with 4 and are down to 2 so I’m not sure about how it’s working), Sealth is getting an IB program and Rainier Beach may get a 6-12 math/tech academy co-housed with it. I know the district is trying to get more minority teachers but frankly, there aren’t as many out there and trying to get teachers to Seattle with its high housing costs is difficult. (I had heard someone say that if we close schools perhaps some of them could be remodeled into affordable condos for single teachers. Not a bad thought.) But perception is everything when parents talk to each other so it may take awhile for people to have a confidence level with these schools.
I’m not sure about the money. Rainier Beach is a good example because of the issue over textbooks. I had heard that part of the problem was kids not returning textbooks at the end of the year and the district having trouble getting them back. The district and RB can’t keep buying mass quantities of textbooks. (It seems like a solution is to not allow any student back into school until the textbook situation is cleared up.) But the district built what is arguably the best performing arts hall in our district at RB and then didn’t set up a performing arts department. I had heard that many arts groups were eager to help and got brushed off and gave up. It could have been a magnet to make Rainier Beach a better school. You have to wonder at a district that is so short-sighted or whether it was planned that way so they could move another program in. Now of course the Technology Access Foundation wants to co-house a 6-12 academy there. That’s a whole other blog on public/private partnerships but let’s just say that TAF is incredibly tone-deaf on working with the community they say they want to serve.
Skagit lightly touched on what is the third rail in education – parents. You can ask districts, adminstrators and teachers to do a lot but they can’t make up for or take care of things that should be happening at home. Just as it is very difficult to critique others’ parenting, it is very hard for staff to say anything to parents about not keeping up their end. I think there are a lot of factors like single parents, immigrant parents, low-come parents who have a lot to handle. But I think teachers still face kids who don’t come to school prepared, watch too much tv/play too much video stuff and don’t read enough. I’m sure it is very frustrating for teachers but how do you solve it?
Do I think closing schools will help the finances? Yes and no. It is NOT a silver bullet and there aren’t huge cost savings. So why do it? Because (1)it gives the Legislature one less reason to throw in our faces as to why they don’t fully finance education (2)we need to streamline this district to be a lean, mean learning machine – having so many buildings not to capacity makes that harder and (3) to squeeze every drop of money we can back into classrooms and give more resources to more kids. One thing to know about is that there is something in our district called foundation money. I don’t know why it’s called that because it is district money and not any foundation’s. It gives each school a small pot of money to use to help make up for size differences. Now, if you are a small school it really helps but if you are a large school, spreading out those dollars, well, it doesn’t go very far. The district is probably going to do away with it and if they do, all of these small schools’ budgets will be cut way down. It was artifically propping them up and that’s why it didn’t seem so bad to have small, under capacity schools.
I’m tending to think that the Court is skewing right and will reject the arguments of Seattle/Louisville (the other defendant in the case). But Seattle does have, in its favor, the fact that the tiebreaker did affect whites as well as minorities. However, even if the Court does find for Seattle, you can use the tiebreaker but if you change the transportation system it may be largely moot if it is too difficult for kids to get to school. (One interesting side note to this is that any school – like Roosevelt or Franklin – that will have a light rail station near them may still keep some diversity because of kids being able to easily access the school.
I don’t know what “dirty little secret” Goldy plans on revealing, but as far as I’m concenred, the relevent dirty little secret is this: Contrary to widespread belief, Seattle already plows a lot more money per student into the “bad” schools than into the “good” ones. And yes, this disparity persists even after taking PTA contributions into account. For some background, see this Seattle Weekly article.
The article suggests a strategy of attracting “good” families to the public schools, because their children can be educated relatively cheaply, and using the money they bring to subsidize the relatively expensive education of the students from “bad” families. From a purely accounting perspective, this makes sense. But it appears to willfully ignore a fact that the data veritably scream at anyone who will listen: more money isn’t what we need to educate the “bad” students.
If you look at the few innovative efforts that have successfully made “good” students out of kids in “bad” circumstances, they have all centered around transforming the psychology of the environment and expectations within which the kids are educated. (Uniforms, zero tollerance for misbehavior, signed contracts with parents, etc.)
Goldstein: “In Graham Hill’s case we felt they cherry-picked data to justify closure . . .”
You felt. That’s the problem. That’s why I’m asking Mel so many questions. Your feelings don’t solve problems. Again, you totally ignored her comment yesterday that a lot of issues and influences determined the closure list that were not obvious. Mel is reflective of a group of people that took into consideration everything they could.
But, you had to have your way. That kind of thinking is part of what is wrong with the District. I don’t know if Mel thinks Graham Hill should have been or shouldn’t have been on the list. But, you can see from Mel’s responses that Mel is very thoughtful and tries to do what is best for the District. I try to teach my kids to be flexible. Parents need to try to be flexible, too.
Finally, this District does do some really stupid things. I think bloat at the District admin level is way too high. But, this group of interested and intelligent (sorry you don’t like intelligence, Yos) people did their best and they had everyone’s best interests in heart and mind. You will never hear or understand that side as long as you think you know best.
Regarding TAF, I watched the school board meeting and heard some credible people (I say credible because some of the public commentors are not credible!) make the observation that the District purposely under-enrolled Rainier Beach just to make room for TAF. If the District plays politics like that, it is no wonder people are suspicious and starting looking out for themselves.
Thanks for responding, Mel.
One more thing: I reread your analysis of why Graham Hill was taken off the list. I am suspicious. I resent politics being influential in this decision. If this was a political give-in on the board’s part, I will continue to be frustrated with you and others like you. But, if the facts from the point of view of the CAC substantiate a reversal and the continued operation of Graham Hill, I would reconsider and give you your point.
Unfortunately, so much contention has arisen that is self-interested and outside the interests of the District and kids collectively that I do not know what to believe at this point.
Skagit,
The CAC made their recommendations based on the data given to them by the district. The data was often wrong or misleading. Perhaps Mel will be willing to speak to this, but I believe Graham Hill was targeted for intangible reasons as well, the perception that it was a problem school with an unresolvable schism between its two programs… a perception which the overwhelming majority of parents and teachers in both programs vehemently disputed.
But in the end the district reversed the recommendation because there simply wasn’t the excess capacity in the SE that was originally assumed. That is, the district’s assumptions were WRONG.
I wrote extensively on this during the closure process and don’t feel like rehashing it any more. If there was anything unfair about the way Graham Hill got removed from the list it is that we were blessed with parents who were able to both analyze the data, and communicate the analysis effectively. Other schools may have been just as worthy of being saved, but couldn’t make their case because they lacked, say, a forensic accountant and a political blogger. But it was the district who turned this into an adversarial process, and thus I’ll apologize to no one for fighting to save a great school.
Dear Skagit. OF COURSE it was political. It always is. Why do you think John Standford Elementary, et al are in the Northend? Let me put it in a declarative sentence: The District cherry-picked data to justify closing Graham Hill. No other school had this done. MOVE ON.
Once again:
Whites are keeping the blacks down.
Not enough money is being spent on schools.
The feds aren’t giving their fair share.
I’m surprised WalMart or some other “evil” corporation
isn’t getting their share of the blame as well.
Don’t even get me started on SUVs.
I think Jack Burton has inadvertently put his finger on the problem! There are too many Cadillac Escalades in the minority districts and not enough textbooks.
Sorry Tax Mom, I’m a liberal/progressive and like to think I don’t play politics. Obviously, you are quite comfortable with them. I just don’t think much of so-called flaming liberals who suddenly become miserly conservatives when it is their turf being encroached.
Also, I never saw Goldstein do anything but blog on it. Real activism!
Bessell: I like the way you think! Lotta truth in that.
skagit @ 7:
I wonder what the ratio of minority/majority teachers is?
The teacher ratio at any given school can be found on the OSPI web site. Start here:
http://www.seattleschools.org/.....index.dxml
Dig down to a given school and look at the annual report. You will find a trove of quantifiable data.
The only point of data I have to add is my amusement last year on this point with Maple Elementary on Beacon Hill. A predominantly Causcasian (and largely monolingual) faculty was trying to culturally connect with an overwhelmingly Asian and polylingual student body.
I can’t fault the teachers. They tried their best, and I was happy with them. Short of them all taking the time to functionally learn the six or seven languages that are commonly spoken on Beacon Hill, I don’t know what more they could be asked to do.
skagit says:
You felt. That’s the problem.
You may think that Goldy’s point of view is biased (after all he wrote, who could blame you?) I didn’t have any dog in that race and got to review the same documents on school closure from the SPS web site that he did.
It’s too late and I’m too lazy to pull up the preliminary recommendation docs, if they’re still on the website. If you can, check them for yourself.
The bulk of the South Seattle school closings were based on quantifiable failings. This school is empty. This school is underperforming. Keeping this building will cost major quantities of capital. All good reasons a hard-nosed, fiscally-minded manager would want those schools closed. Graham Hill had few or none of these reasons. They fell back on “soft” things like “poor integration between general curriculum and Montessori program”. On the face of things, it didn’t make much sense.
Going to the community meetings at Aki Kurose wasn’t very helpful either. Parents from all the effected schools showed up en masse, often wearing school shirts. (The Graham Hill contingent looked smashing in their blue and white outfits).
The message I got from speaker after speaker was loud and clear. Close schools, sure. Just don’t close mine, because…
If I want to hear people whine, I have two young girls at home. Better still, when they whine, I have recourse.
(btw, don’t mean to pick on you personally skagit. Your messages were just the ones that seemed easiest to address constructively).
This is truly sad. What you are basically saying Goldy, is that you are a racist. I hope after all of your whining about Graham Hill, that Seattle Public Schools wins their case in the SCOTUS and your daughter gets bussed out. It would serve you right to experience the effects of the racism you advocate.
A disparity in the quality of a school is certainly not going to be fixed by modulated racism or income redistribution. If more parents in the districts with poorer schools got off their asses like you did, and fixed up their schools and got involved, then the lesser schools would no longer be lesser schools, and like Graham Hill, they would get the attention they need to be highly regarded schools. It’s not a function of color or economics, it’s a function of the local culture. And yet your position promotes the very racism based on culture that allows a bad culture to exist by apologizing for that bad culture as an unavoidable inequity, be it monetary, geographic, racial, etc.
More racism does not fix racism. More taxes dollars thrown at a school don’t motivate parents or kids. Playing geographical chess with real people doesn’t work either. The only thing that does work is the local realization for individuals to take pride in their community and to strive to make it better. Why don’t you spread that message instead of pandering to some mythical and absolute equality that you know is never going to happen? Because you don’t really care, you’re just a racist hiding behind the moral authority of the right colors.
jsa: Thanks for a reasoned response. I don’t have a dog in this race either. My point has always been that somebody has to make final hard decisions. If you think Graham Hill was – is – worthy of being spared. I’m not going to argue. What I was arguing was the pure politicization of it. Mel made a point about foundation money that may play into this eventually. So I guess it remains to be seen if Graham Hill is actually viable or not.
I viewed this strictly as a financial fix. My response to Goldstein was a reaction to his default to Close schools, sure. Just don’t close mine, because… (your words). For someone like Goldstein who presents himself as a liberal, it didn’t pass the smell test with me.
At some point, we have to let those who are willing to take on the hard work of making those choices make them. That’s all.
Oh, and as for going to the site and sifting through all the trash, that’s what the CAC was supposed to do. I give them credit for doing it. I guess I trusted that they were honorable, honest and constructive. Maybe I was wrong.
One more thing, jsa: I want to see the District solve this problem and move on. It cannot continue to be held hostage to every self-interested party that wants his/her way.
So, it isn’t just Goldstein. It is all the self-interested whiners that are gumming up the works. We have to solve problems here and consensus may not be possible. Several sacred cows are likely to be butchered. I can only hope and trust that it is for the better good.