Over the last decade, black and Hispanic students here in Wake County have made such dramatic strides in standardized reading and math tests that it has caught the attention of education experts around the country.
The main reason for the students’ dramatic improvement, say officials and parents in the county, which includes Raleigh and its sprawling suburbs, is that the district has made a concerted effort to integrate the schools economically.
Since 2000, school officials have used income as a prime factor in assigning students to schools, with the goal of limiting the proportion of low-income students in any school to no more than 40 percent.
In Wake County, only 40 percent of black students in grades three through eight scored at grade level on state tests a decade ago. Last spring, 80 percent did. Hispanic students have made similar strides. Overall, 91 percent of students in those grades scored at grade level in the spring, up from 79 percent 10 years ago.
Another long article, folks. But, educating America is a very important topic.
Some of the strategies used in Wake County could be replicated across the country, the experts said, but they also cautioned that unusual circumstances have helped make the politically delicate task of economic integration possible here.
The school district is countywide, which makes it far easier to combine students from the city and suburbs. The county has a 30-year history of busing students for racial integration, and many parents and students are accustomed to long bus rides to distant schools. The local economy is robust, and the district is growing rapidly. And corporate leaders and newspaper editorial pages here have firmly supported economic diversity in the schools.
Some experts said the academic results in Wake County were particularly significant because they bolstered research that showed low-income students did best when they attended middle-class schools.
“Low-income students who have an opportunity to go to middle-class schools are surrounded by peers who have bigger dreams and who are more academically engaged,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation who has written about economic integration in schools. “They are surrounded by parents who are more likely to be active in the school. And they are taught by teachers who more likely are highly qualified than the teachers in low-income schools.”
To achieve a balance of low- and middle-income children in every school, the Wake County school district encourages and sometimes requires students to attend schools far from home. Suburban students are drawn to magnet schools in the city. Low-income children from the city are bused to middle-class schools in the suburbs.
Lots more in the article. I think it’s worth reading and reflecting upon.
I totally agree with this… the poor performance of minorities isn’t about a “Bell Curve” or some other nonsense. It’s the crappy schools so many of them are forced to go to.
I can use myself as an example of how race really isn’t the issue.
I went to a crappy under-funded blue collar school and my wife went to a richie rich school in the Bay Area. My school was almost all white but her’s was much more racially integrated. So many of her classmates went to college, graduate school, good jobs, etc. My nearly all white class mates? Mostly dead-end jobs.
It’s all about funding.
Another long article, folks. But, educating America is a very important topic.
Time for a new category?
Categories:
General
Column fodder
(Dvorak.edu) now’s you’se smart
Lost Columns Archive
travel
Research
Recipe Nook
So if you don’t want your kid bussed across town, do you tell them you are poor or rich?
This is such a positive thing! It’s amazing to take such a poor record and turn it around so drastically. Educating youth has to be a priority in any country that wants to provide quality of life to its citizens and (dare I say) compete in the global economy.
While working out the logistics for this scheme probably isn’t a walk in the park, these people prove it can work. I gather people don’t generally bus their kids to school, but with an upside like is shown above, it seems like a no-brainer.
Wouldn’t that require busing some people in the other direction? How are those students doing? Sounds like they have enough extra people to do the jobs the teachers should be doing.
If it’s all about funding, then how can you explain the high test scores in private schools when they recieve less than half of what public school students get in money? Private school teachers make much less than public school teachers($8000 to start). I don’t think it’s money – I think it’s environment(whether a successful one or a Christian one).
This seems to be a good idea. Why? Well, because it’s working. Over time, if this sort of effort and additional methods are used to improve the effectiveness of schools maybe the need for busing would be reduced. In the meantime, one of the lessons that should have learned is that if you don’t let your school systems decline in quality, you won’t have to resort to drastic, costly and unpopular methods to repair the flaws.
If politicians, parents and voters had kept their eye on the ball for the last 25 years and tried to do the right thing, there wouldn’t be as many problems like this to fix in the education system. Instead, wealthier families ran from the problem by forming a ridiculously large number of private schools leaving poor and middle America behind to make their own standards based on a very “low bar” set by too many people who were willing to go with a “however it is now, is good enough” point of view. Responsible people from every racial and economic level need to buck up and start looking out for each other’s interests and not just their own, instead of settling for watered down compromises and deferring problems until they become so large they can’t be ignored. One of these problems being, “how long do you expect to remain as a significant nation on this planet with a thrid rate education system?”.
Maybe what’s happening in this situation isn’t perfect, but at least there’s an effort being made. The questions here should be how do we keep improving and not how can we rationalize undoing these improvements to serve only special intersts.
Take a look at the real history instead of random myths. There were black schools in low income urban areas that did very well educating students. Instead of following these examples, they decided on busing and other fads.
I think some of you are missing the point .
“Low-income students who have an opportunity to go to middle-class schools are surrounded by peers who have bigger dreams and who are more academically engaged,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg.
It isn’t about the school having more money, it’s about exposing students to broader a vision of what the world is and what the world could be.
What’s the point of learning history if you are going to end up working at a checkout counter at Walmart? A bit of math and reading may be useful… but science? statistics? understanding legal contracts? Pfft! Who cares!
But when the kid sitting next to you talks about having visited Gettysburg, civil war movies become a little more interesting and maybe the history does too. When someone else had to go with the grandparents to the !borringgg! opera… “What’s opera?” comes up. When someone talks about their mom being a computer programmer and their dad a researcher in a law office possible realities start filtering in.
Couldn’t you get some of that from TV? TV’s not real. It’s all rich actors pretending things that couldn’t be. But when the kid standing next to you in the lunch line — that’s real… that’s possible.
It is extremely pathetic to me that people are clearly missing the point here. The point is that Wake County Schools are closing the gap between incomes, races, and “sides of the tracks”, by implementing this type of desegragation. Not only are children from the poorer areas being exposed to those with “bigger dreams”, and receiving equal education, but the children who live in “the bigger dream” are exposed to how others live their lives as well. It allows for today’s youth to understand that there is more to the world than their own backyard. The type of school each child is offered is also worth revisiting. Students, who are currently living in the middle class areas, are given more choices as well. Wake County schools offer a plethora of magnet schools that go above and beyond the core academic standards. These options include schools for the gifted and talented, arts and technology, etc. These schools are located in the city, which further supports the desegregation of the schools. Children from the suburbs are enticed to go to school based on the educational opportunity. The children who live in that area can go there, or bus out to a suburban “middle class” school. It is a profound idea. This type of situation allows children of all backgrounds to enter the world with more understanding, forethought, and compassion than most adults can hope to acquire this late in life. Good job Wake County schools…lead the way in helping this country move passed all white male success and power and into representing and supporting the entire population through thoughts not money.
Has anyone checked to see how the more economically advantaged students did on their tests scores? Has anyone checked to verify that the tests weren’t changed to justify another social engineering program?
If a parent works and raises themselves up, where is the justice in forcing their children to attend classes with students that do not do as well. If neither set of students suffer from the exchange, that would be one thing. But assaulting the children of the middle class, for those society considers not as well off is not constitutional. I seeks to bring about an equal outcome without the parents freedom to choose.
If they want to continue such a programs, and if they aren’t playing favorites with their friends and business acquaintances, then allow parents to choose where their children go to school.
Another good test of how important this program is, would be make sure that each board member’s child and those of their extended family has to attend a public school of at least minimum average distance as those that are forced into bussing. It’s not constitutional, but if it’s really such a good idea they won’t mind, and they should not be allowed to home school their children or send them to a private school. Then if the board member’s child gets drug addicted and their child’s behavior becomes more confrontational they can chalk up their children to the betterment of society.
At least they will know their children’s children will not consitute more than 40% of the student population of the schools in the area, like that will really happen!
Even if tests are skewed, so long as they are administered equally across the state, the measurement is valid. North Carolina has its share of poor of all racial backgrounds and faces a 21st century challenge to move away from a tobacco economy to technology in some areas. They have made ambitious strides with Research parks, college like schools for exceptional students, and unbiased countywide programs for gifted in upscale regions like Chapel Hill, Greensboro and suburbs of Charlotte.
This program focuses on another segment and encompasses all disadvantaged children. They need to be applauded for a creative solution that succeeds. While Affirmative Action has its share of critics, who see it as reverse discrimination and ineffective, this program has neither attribute. Like “Headstart” and “Magnet” schools, this works. However, costs may strain its practicality with $4 a gallon gas and heating oil that is through the roof this winter.
Earth calling NYT… this report is being widely and credibly discredited on blogs. The fact is that African-American students’ test scores STATEWIDE have risen the same amount in N.C., and simultaneous test -score gains among all demographics are raising the likelihood that the tests have gotten a lot easier.
The NYT is going to have to skin back this story pretty soon, with the outcry about its bogus reporting getting louder.
Of course I wish it were true. But a word to the savvy: All “it’s a miracle!” education stories are GUARANTEED bogus. “It’s a miracle!” invariably means “It’s a scam”, “it’s hype,” “it’s a lying soruce” and/or “it’s a duped reporter.”
BTW, someone above claimed that private schools’ test socres are higher than public. NOT TRUE. Private schools don’t generally give the same tests and won’t allow their results to be made public on the tests they do give. They just TELL you their scores would be better .
As someone who has written, worked and campaigned for many progressive causes, it is perhaps ironic that the first words that come to mind when discussing the Wake County (NC) school assignment system are those of former Alabama Governor George Wallace. He used to talk in the late 1960s and early 1970s about “pointy-headed p-seudo in-tellect-uals who can’t park their bicycles straight,” who imposed “forced busin’ ” on communities to achieve artificial racial balance. I ridiculed him and his position as racist. But after a recent move to Wake County, I am perturbed by the county school system’s penchant to reassign and bus kids across the county to achieve economic, intellectual, racial and ethnic balance. If my family stays in the apartment we are renting in Apex through next school year — a distinctly unlikely possibility now — my eight-year-old son will be bused 15 miles to a new school next year. His current school is six miles away, which struck us as far enough, considering that there are closer elementary schools near our home.
We moved here from Takoma Park, MD, just over the DC border, where my son’s neighborhood school was within walking distance of our house. Combining the kids he and we knew from school and soccer, with the kids and parents we knew in the neighborhood, in the PTA, in scouts, and at church produced a strong sense of community — a community that was economically, racially, ethnically and intellectually diverse. If “it takes a village to raise a child” — and my experience is that kids are nurtured and strengthened if a multitude of parents know them and other parents — Wake County’s busing and reassignment system certainly distracts from building a strong sense of community.
Maybe the “experts” view this system as the most successful school system in the country, but as a new resident and parent of a student in the system, I’m inclined to see social engineering that undermines community and neighborhood identity to boost test scores at the expense of kids’ neighborhood support systems. George Wallace might rightly call me one of those hypocritical liberals who changes his tune when his own child is bused across town. But so be it. We’ll probably look to settle in nearby Orange or Durham Counties, not Wake.
OK, I realize this is a RANT, and perhaps an unfair one. I might be convinced that I’m wrong.
http://jimbuie.blogs.com/journal/2005/12/forced_busin_in.html