An achievement gap separating black from white students has long been documented — a social divide extremely vexing to policy makers and the target of one blast of school reform after another.
But a new report focusing on black males suggests that the picture is even bleaker than generally known.
Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys.
Poverty alone does not seem to explain the differences: poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty, measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches.
The data was distilled from highly respected national math and reading tests, known as the National Assessment for Educational Progress, which are given to students in fourth and eighth grades, most recently in 2009. The report, “A Call for Change,” is to be released Tuesday by the Council of the Great City Schools, an advocacy group for urban public schools.
Although the outlines of the problem and many specifics have been previously reported, the group hopes that including so much of what it calls “jaw-dropping data” in one place will spark a new sense of national urgency.
“What this clearly shows is that black males who are not eligible for free and reduced-price lunch are doing no better than white males who are poor,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the council.
The report shows that black boys on average fall behind from their earliest years. Black mothers have a higher infant mortality rate and black children are twice as likely as whites to live in a home where no parent has a job. In high school, African-American boys drop out at nearly twice the rate of white boys, and their SAT scores are on average 104 points lower. In college, black men represented just 5 percent of students in 2008.
The analysis of results on the national tests found that math scores in 2009 for black boys were not much different than those for black girls in Grades 4 and 8, but black boys lagged behind Hispanics of both sexes, and they fell behind white boys by at least 30 points, a gap sometimes interpreted as three academic grades.
The search for explanations has recently looked at causes besides poverty, and this report may further spur those efforts.
“There’s accumulating evidence that there are racial differences in what kids experience before the first day of kindergarten,” said Ronald Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard. “They have to do with a lot of sociological and historical forces. In order to address those, we have to be able to have conversations that people are unwilling to have.”
Those include “conversations about early childhood parenting practices,” Dr. Ferguson said. “The activities that parents conduct with their 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds. How much we talk to them, the ways we talk to them, the ways we enforce discipline, the ways we encourage them to think and develop a sense of autonomy.”
The report urges convening a White House conference, encouraging Congress to appropriate more money for schools and establishing networks of black mentors.
What it does not discuss are policy responses identified with a robust school reform movement that emphasizes closing failing schools, offering charter schools as alternatives and raising the quality of teachers.
The report did not go down this road because “there’s not a lot of research to indicate that many of those strategies produce better results,” Mr. Casserly said.
Other have a different response. The key to narrowing the achievement gap, said Dr. Ferguson, is “really good teaching.”
One large urban school district that has made progress is Baltimore’s, where the dropout rate for African-American boys declined to 4.9 percent during the last academic year, down from 11.9 percent three years earlier. Graduation rates for black boys were also up: 57 percent in 2009-10, compared with 51 percent three years earlier.
Andres A. Alonso, the chief executive of the Baltimore City Public Schools, said the improvement had little to do with changes at the margins, like lengthening the school day or adding mentors. Rather, Mr. Alonso cited aggressively closing failing schools, knocking on the doors of dropouts’ homes to lure them back and creating real-time alerts — “almost like an electrical charge” — when a student misses several days of school.
“Hispanic kids and African-American kids this year had a lower dropout rate than white kids,” Mr. Alonso said.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools will post boundary plans affecting more than 20 schools this weekend, but crowded Highland Creek and Torrence Creek elementaries won't be among them.
Boundary changes are part of a complex package of school changes proposed for 2011-12, with a school board vote set for Nov. 9. The changes are designed to save money and boost academic achievement.
CMS planners had originally listed five crowded suburban schools that could be relieved by boundary changes. The board voted to take two southern schools off the list and held off action on two northern schools because the board member representing that area was absent.
Mike Raible, the district's head planner, said Tuesday that his staff has decided it's not practical to move kids out of Highland Creek in northeast Charlotte or Torrence Creek in Huntersville next year.
He also said officials no longer plan to send students from the current Waddell High zone to West Mecklenburg High.
A proposal to close Waddell and turn the southwest Charlotte building into a K-8 foreign-language magnet originally called for dividing the high school students among three schools, including West Meck.
Waddell and West Meck have gotten federal School Improvement Grants, based on high poverty and low academic performance. A state official overseeing the grants said CMS could use some of Waddell's grant money to help those students transition to new schools if Waddell closes, but only if those students go to a higher-performing school.
Boundary changes that will be posted at www.cms.k12.nc.us over the weekend include:
Dividing the current Waddell zone among South Mecklenburg and Harding high schools if the board approves closing Waddell.
Moving some of West Meck's zone into a new neighborhood zone for Harding, which is currently a full magnet.
Creating boundaries for new pre-K-8 schools at Ashley Park, Berryhill, Bruns, Byers, Druid Hills, Reid Park, Thomasboro and Westerly Hills elementaries, which are slated to expand if the board votes to close Spaugh, Wilson and J.T. Williams middle schools. Those schools are in west, central and northern Charlotte.
Reassigning some Wilson students to Whitewater Middle and some Spaugh students to Sedgefield and Alexander Graham middle schools.
Creating boundaries for Winding Springs Elementary in northern Charlotte, which is currently a magnet school but is slated to become a neighborhood school.
Reassigning students from the center-city Irwin Avenue Elementary, which is set to close.
Reassigning neighborhood students from northern Charlotte's Lincoln Heights Elementary, which is proposed to become a full magnet school.
Reassigning neighborhood students from Oakhurst Elementary in east Charlotte, which is slated to close.
Taking the Cochrane Middle School zone out of Garinger High, starting with next year's ninth-graders, if Cochrane becomes a combined middle/high school.
Moving some students out of Community House Middle in the southern Ballantyne area.
Parents turned out by the hundreds Tuesday night to fight for Charlotte's Westside schools, saying the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools closing plan threatens the city's most fragile students and neighborhoods.
"They're not targeting the schools that have these giant PTAs. They're targeting our children because we are who we are," said Tasha Houston, parent of a student at J.T. Williams Middle.
Kojo Nantambu, president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was handcuffed and charged with disorderly conduct when he led a chant of "We want more time!" as the public forum ended at 8 p.m.
CMS teacher Hans Plotseneder was then charged with trespassing when he refused CMS police orders to clear the room.
The proposed 2011-12 school shakeup includes the latest step in CMS's quest to improve results in neighborhood schools where most students are Poor, Black and Performing below grade level.
It calls for closing three such middle schools - Wilson, Spaugh and Williams, in west and central Charlotte - that serve about 1,500 students. Eight nearby elementary schools would convert to prekindergarten through eighth grade.
More than 300 people came to the Government Center to challenge the CMS plans, which also include closing University Park and Irwin Avenue elementary schools. Speakers said schools slated to close are mainstays of communities that will see crime and economic instability rise if the buildings stand empty next year.
"We're losing jobs. We're losing our homes. Now we're going to lose our schools?" said Niksa Balbosa. "It's time to stop losing. We need to stand up and fight for what's ours."
CMS is studying changes to about 70 schools in a bid to save money and boost academic achievement. The board expects to vote Nov. 9 on 2011-12 changes that could include closings, mergers and changes in programs and enrollment.
One of the most dramatic changes is the proposed shift from middle schools to pre-K-8 schools in some low-income neighborhoods. Superintendent Peter Gorman and his staff say the new structure will prevent the academic slump many students suffer when they move up to middle schools.
"I know that kids leave Ashley Park on grade level, and by grade seven they're not on grade level," CMS planner Dennis LaCaria told one discussion group. "The data says that."
"Why don't we make all schools K-8?" a woman asked.
"That's probably where we're headed. This is the vanguard," LaCaria said, adding that it's harder to merge large suburban schools.
A Johns Hopkins University study that Gorman gave the school board recently raises doubts about the effectiveness of such conversions, especially when most of the students are impoverished and minorities. That is the case for all the CMS schools involved.
Except for Berryhill Elementary, on Mecklenburg's western border, all of the elementary schools that would add grades 6-8 had poverty levels over 90 percent and pass rates below 60 percent last year and are in the midst of efforts to improve student achievement. Three - Byers, Druid Hill and Reid Park - had pass rates below 50 percent, failed to show adequate progress and are on the state's low-performing list.
The high poverty levels mean the schools get extra federal money, Gorman told parents who questioned the plan at a community meeting earlier in the day. And he noted that the potential savings from closing the three middle schools are roughly equal to salaries for a high-school staff.
Ericka Ellis-Stewart, who has children in CMS magnets, questioned whether it's worth it: "In sacrificing these kids for the money, are we really going to see the gains?"
Middle-school students in the new pre-K-8 schools might have fewer "electives," or optional classes, than students in larger middle schools, officials have said. The latest plan calls for them to ride buses to traditional middle schools to take part in sports and other after-school activities.
Several parents of Williams students said their kids are being penalized for adult failures.
"If the middle-schooler ends up going backwards to elementary, it's like an emotional demotion," said Alison Boulding.
With uniformed officers at every exit, Wake County school board member Debra Goldman held a forum on the divisive issue of student assignment at Cary Town Hall on Tuesday night.
The meeting was orderly and quick, absent the heated emotions that have become staples at recent full board meetings on the topic.
Some attendees thanked Goldman for breaking with the board majority last week and voting to pull the plug on a plan to put a community-based assignment policy into effect by creating a series of school assignment zones. The plan would have dropped socio-economic diversity as a criterion for student assignment.
“I just want to thank you very much for standing up in a very difficult situation and doing what you did,” attendee Mary Ann Meagher said.
Others at the meeting voted for Goldman last election and expressed feeling of betrayal by her recent departure from the board’s majority.
“Your double talk and empty promises serve no one but yourself,” parent Allison Backhouse said. “I think I speak for many when I ask, ‘What’s next?’”
Goldman said she still supports a neighborhood school model for Wake County, but said she changed her mind because too many people were being left out of the decision making process.
Goldman stressed to those in the crowd that whether they agree or disagree with her decisions, she valued their thoughts.
“It’s really important to hear the opinions and get the feedback from as many people as possible,” she said.
A school board in Rhode Island has voted to fire all teachers at a struggling high school, a dramatic and controversial plan aimed at shoring up education in a poverty-ridden school district.
On Tuesday night, the board approved the plan by Frances Gallo, superintendent at Central Falls School District, to discharge 88 teachers at Central Falls High School.
The firings come over the district's concern that teachers refused to spend more time with students to improve test scores.
But a teachers' union spokesman called the firings "drastic."
The spokesman also cited a 21 percent rise in reading scores and a 3 percent hike in math scores in two years.
The terminations will go into effect in the next school year.
Central Falls is one of the lowest-performing schools in Rhode Island.
The Obama administration is proposing a sweeping overhaul of President Bush’s signature education law, No Child Left Behind, and will call for broad changes in how schools are judged to be succeeding or failing, as well as for the elimination of the law’s 2014 deadline for bringing every American child to academic proficiency.
Educators who have been briefed by administration officials said the proposals for changes in the main law governing the federal role in public schools would eliminate or rework many of the provisions that teachers’ unions, associations of principals, school boards and other groups have found most objectionable.
Yet the administration is not planning to abandon the law’s commitments to closing the achievement gap between minority and white students and to encouraging teacher quality.
Significantly, said those who have been briefed, the White House wants to change federal financing formulas so that a portion of the money is awarded based on academic progress, rather than by formulas that apportion money to districts according to their numbers of students, especially poor students. The well-worn formulas for distributing tens of billions of dollars in federal aid have, for decades, been a mainstay of the annual budgeting process in the nation’s 14,000 school districts.
Peter Cunningham, a Department of Education spokesman, acknowledged that the administration was planning to ask Congress for broad changes to the education law, but declined to describe the changes specifically.
He said that although the administration had developed various proposals, it would solicit input from Congressional leaders of both parties in coming weeks to create legislative language that can attract bipartisan support. Some details of the president’s proposals are expected to be made public on Monday, when the president outlines his $3.8 trillion budget for the 2011 fiscal year.
The changes would have to be approved by Congress, which has been at a stalemate for years over how to change the policy.
Currently the education law requires the nation’s 98,000 public schools to make “adequate yearly progress” as measured by student test scores. Schools that miss their targets in reading and math must offer students the opportunity to transfer to other schools and free after-school tutoring. Schools that repeatedly miss targets face harsher sanctions, which can include staff dismissals and closings. All students are required to be proficient by 2014.
Educators have complained loudly in the eight years since the law was signed that it was branding tens of thousands of schools as failing but not forcing them to change.
The secretary of education, Arne Duncan, foreshadowed the elimination of the 2014 deadline in a September speech, referring to it as a “utopian goal,” and administration officials have since made clear that they want the deadline eliminated. In recent meetings with representatives of education groups, Department of Education officials have said they also want to eliminate the school ratings system built on making “adequate yearly progress” on student test scores.
“They were very clear with us that they would change the metric, dropping adequate yearly progress and basing a new system on another picture of performance based on judging schools in a more nuanced way,” said Bruce Hunter, director of public policy for the American Association of School Administrators, who attended one of the meetings.
The current system issues the equivalent of a pass-fail report card for every school each year, an evaluation that administration officials say fails to differentiate among chaotic schools in chronic failure, schools that are helping low-scoring students improve and high-performing suburban schools that nonetheless appear to be neglecting some low-scoring students.
Instead, under the administration’s proposals, a new accountability system would divide schools into more categories, offering recognition to those that are succeeding and providing large new amounts of money to help improve or close failing schools.
A new goal, which would replace the 2014 universal proficiency deadline, would be for all students to leave high school “college or career ready.” Currently more than 40 states are collaborating, in an effort coordinated by the National Governors Association and encouraged by the administration, to write common standards defining what it means to be a graduate from high school ready for college or a career.
The new standards will also define what students need to learn in earlier grades to advance successfully toward high school graduation.
The administration has already made its mark on education through Race to the Top, a federal grant program in which 40 states are competing for $4 billion in education money included in last year’s federal stimulus bill. In his State of the Union address, Mr. Obama hailed the results so far of that competition, which has persuaded states from Rhode Island to California to make changes in their education laws. States that prohibit the use of test scores in teacher evaluations, for example, are not eligible for the funds. The competition has also encouraged states to open the door to more charter schools, which receive public money but are run by independent groups.
Now the administration hopes to apply similar conditions to the distribution of the billions of dollars that the Department of Education hands out to states and districts as part of its annual budget. Skip to next paragraph
“They want to recast the law so that it is as close to Race to the Top as they can get it, making the money conditional on districts’ taking action to improve schools,” said Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, who attended a recent meeting at which administration officials outlined their plans in broad strokes. “Right now most federal money goes out in formulas, so schools know how much they’ll get, and then use it to provide services for poor children. The department thinks that’s become too much of an entitlement. They want to upend that scheme by making states and districts pledge to take actions the administration considers reform, before they get the money.”
One section of the current Bush-era law has required states to certify that all teachers are highly qualified, based on their college coursework and state-issued credentials. In the Race to the Top competition, the administration has required participating states to develop the capability to evaluate teachers based on student test data, at least in part, and on whether teachers are successful in raising student achievement.
Educators who have talked to the administration said the officials appeared to be considering inserting similar provisions into the main education law, by requiring the use of student data in teacher evaluation systems as a condition for receiving federal education money. Mr. Duncan has publicly endorsed such an approach, Mr. Cunningham said.
The education law has been praised for focusing attention on achievement gaps, but it has also generated tremendous opposition, especially from educators, who contend that it sets impossible goals for students and schools and humiliates students and educators when they fall short. The law has, to date, labeled some 30,000 schools as “in need of improvement,” a euphemism for failing, but states and districts have done little to change them.
The last serious attempt to rewrite the law was in 2007. That effort collapsed, partly because teachers’ unions and other educator groups opposed an effort to incorporate merit pay provisions into a rewritten law. Earlier this month, Mr. Duncan and more than a dozen other administration officials took steps toward organizing a new rewrite, meeting with the Democratic chairmen and ranking Republican members of the education committees in both houses of Congress.
Eighty of West Charlotte High's weakest students are being urged this week to move to a little-known alternative school for teens who are too old for their grade.
The school summoned all of them to a meeting Wednesday, but only half were in school that day, said Tahira Stalberte, a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools spokeswoman. Chronic absences are one problem that has thrown these students so far behind, she added.
The students targeted are 16 to 20 years old, with very few high school credits. Most are still classified as freshmen.
Stalberte said Shelton Jefferies, who became West Charlotte's principal this year, and Curtis Carroll, who runs CMS's “achievement zone” for struggling schools, identified the at-risk teens at the start of the year. They reviewed their progress at the end of the first quarter, in late October, and decided which students should move, she said.
“West Charlotte is just not working for them, for whatever reason,” she said.
The students are being urged to move to Bank Street Alternative High School, on the grounds of Marie G. Davis Military Academy south of uptown. The move is optional, but Chief Operating Officer Hugh Hattabaugh said it's being made clear to the students that they have little chance of graduating in their current setting.
Some, he said, are so close to turning 22, when they lose eligibility for public education, that they have virtually no chance to complete high school. Those students are counseled about GED programs, community college and other options, he said.
Bank Street will provide a smaller setting with intense focus on academic basics, Stalberte said.
The school is so little known that Stalbert thought today it was newly created for the West Charlotte students. But Hattabaugh says it was launched on a smaller scale at the start of the school year. Enrollment and staffing fluctuates. CMS recently installed new mobile classrooms that can accommodate the influx from West Charlotte, but the school is open to students from other schools, he said.
Richard McElrath, elected in November to represent the district that includes West Charlotte, said today he learned from reporters about the new school and the West Charlotte students being asked to move. He said he's trying to get more information from CMS officials.
McElrath taught struggling students from low-income families before his retirement. He said he's concerned that pushing the failing students out of West Charlotte could be a way to “make it look like the school is doing a wonderful job.”
West Charlotte, like other “achievement zone” high schools, is under pressure to boost graduation rates and performance on state exams. Faculty bonuses are tied to such improvements.
Hattabaugh said even if the students move to Bank Street, their test scores will count toward West Charlotte's tally. Some have already been counted as failures on the graduation rate, he said, because they've been in high school more than four years.
West Charlotte has long struggled with large numbers of students who arrive with weak skills and have trouble mastering high school academics. This year, when the school took its September enrollment tally, West Charlotte had 828 ninth-graders, 572 10th-graders, 406 11th-graders and 276 seniors.
In 2007, CMS launched Midwood Academy to take rising ninth-graders from the “achievement zone” schools who failed their eighth-grade reading and math exams. Midwood has just over 200 students this year.
Richard McElrath has spent most of his life trying to get minority and low-income kids a better education.
In his 33-year career as a math teacher, he says he clashed with administrators who wanted to tell him how to teach.
When court-ordered desegregation ended in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, McElrath tried legal and political pressure to fight school resegregation. Today, he's less convinced that reassigning students for racial balance matters.
He says he'd still redraw boundaries where high- and low-poverty school attendance zones sit side by side. But the link between poverty and failure won't end, he says, while children return to "neighborhoods where you can't get fresh fruits and vegetables, but you can get fortified wine and beer."
Changing housing patterns is his latest quest, but reform for failing schools remains his primary passion.
McElrath says that requires setting high expectations for poor students and acting forcefully to get the best teachers into those schools. At a debate, he gave Superintendent Peter Gorman a "D," saying his efforts to reassign teachers have been "a shell game" that lures them from one high-poverty school to another.
McElrath wants board members from Districts 2, 3 and 4 to form a coalition to support urban schools, but he says he can work with suburban representatives as well.
McElrath says he doesn't want to replace Gorman, just give him stronger direction. "I could wind up getting frustrated," he says, "but I've had a lot of success over the years pulling people together."
CMS ties: Retired teacher and current substitute. Two children graduated from West Charlotte High. On CMS Parent University advisory committee, served on school construction advisory board.
Political/civic history: Founder of Mixed Income Housing Coalition and People United for Education. Active in NAACP, Black Political Caucus and Million Man Movement. Has run for county commissioner and Charlotte city council.
Career: Retired math teacher.
Education: Master's in education administration, UNC Charlotte; bachelor of science, Winston-Salem State University.
Where he's from: Grew up in Long Island; has spent 44 years in Charlotte. Lives in Garden Park neighborhood.
Endorsements: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Black Political Caucus, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Association of Educators, District 2 county commissioner Vilma Leake.
The Obama administration will spend at least $3.5 billion to push local officials around the country to close failing schools and reopen them with new teachers and principals.
US Education Secretary Arne Duncan hopes to see the 5,000 worst-performing schools, about 1 percent of all U.S. schools, turned around in five years. The administration is beefing up the federal school turnaround program, which was created under the No Child Left Behind law championed by former President George W. Bush.
"As a country, we need to get into the turnaround business," Duncan said in a statement. "Adults need to have the courage to make these tough decisions and do right by our kids."
The president doesn't have the power to close and reopen schools himself. That authority rests with local school districts and states.
But federal officials have an incentive in the turnaround program, which gives money to states for school districts to overhaul the lowest-performing schools. Districts will have to compete for grants.
Applications for the money, made available Thursday to states, should result in a list of about 1,200 schools that states have targeted for turnaround, the Education Department said, adding that the eventual goal is 5,000 schools.
To get the money, a district must do one of four things:
-Fire the principal and at least half the staff and reopen the school with new personnel.
-Turn a school over to a charter school operator or other management organization.
-Close the school and send students to higher-achieving schools in the district.
-Replace only the principal and take other steps to change how the school operates.
A special focus will be on fixing middle schools and high schools, especially "dropout factories" where two in five kids don't make it to graduation.
Duncan, a former Chicago schools chief, has experience with school turnarounds: Chicago targeted several public schools for turnaround while Duncan was still in charge.
The John Locke Foundation rates Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools average on academics, safety and administration, and failing on teacher turnover.
The result: CMS got a D+ on the Raleigh-based group's second annual school-district ratings, which are based on data from the 2007-08 school year. Other districts in the region rated higher, with Lincoln County Schools in the Top 10 with a B.
The report released this week compiles data on topics that parents across the country say are important.
Terry Stoops, the foundation's education policy analyst, said the letter grades give families a convenient way to size up their district, and can help public officials focus on areas that need improvement.
Stoops averaged grades awarded in four categories: Administration, teachers, safety and academics. Within each area, he used data to rank the districts, giving A's to the top 10 percent, B's to the next 20 percent, C's to the middle 40 percent, D's to the next-lowest 20 percent and F's to the lowest 10 percent.
For administration, Stoops used results from the state's Teacher Working Conditions Survey to see how well teachers thought administration communicated with parents and students. He also calculated the percent of "consultants, clerical staff and 'other' professionals" as a percent of the work force to gauge bureaucracy.
Teacher turnover and vacancies were used to measure the stability of teaching, while the school crime and violence report gauged safety.
Academic achievement was measured by state test scores, SAT scores and compliance with the federal No Child Left Behind targets.
CMS got an F in the "teachers" category and C's in the others.
The NC state Supreme Court has refused to hear Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools' appeal of a ruling that said the district owes local charter schools millions of dollars.
Richard Vinroot, attorney for 10 charter schools in and near Mecklenburg County, said he sent CMS a letter Friday saying the debt comes to just over $5.9 million - with a further yet-uncalculated bump in payments for the current school year. Vinroot says the Supreme Court refusal ends a legal battle that has dragged on for 41/2 years.
"For the little charter schools, it's a huge victory and a huge amount of money," he said Monday.
CMS officials said Monday they're aware of the decision and will have their lawyers brief the school board today. Until then, the district declined comment.
Charters are independent public schools licensed by the state, which requires local school districts to pass along a per-student share of local education money. The charters that sued CMS say the district improperly pulled part of its budget out of the calculations before giving charters their share. Since the first ruling against CMS in January 2008, the number of schools suing has grown from four to 10, and the debt has gone from $1.3 million to, in Vinroot's calculation, $5.9 million.
Vinroot says the money is due immediately, with some of it dating back to 2001. The charters have not been awarded interest during the time CMS has appealed, he said.
The NC Supreme Court decision does not affect a separate lawsuit filed by the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law against CMS and other districts this September, seeking local money for construction.
Sources: Whitehouse.gov, CBS News, US Dept of Ed., McClatchy Newspapers, Charlotte Observer, John Locke Foundation, N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law, Zimbio, Google Maps
(President Obama gives remarks at the Department of Education on Race to the Top, a competition to get states to implement school reforms that produce real results. The $4.35 billion fund will reward eligible states for their accomplishments, and create incentives for future improvements.)
A skirmish between powerful teachers’ unions and President Barack Obama over nearly $5 billion in education spending is shaping up as a preview of the battle to come over No Child Left Behind in Congress early next year.
But the tables are turned: now the unions are worried that Obama, a Democratic ally, is going to be just as tough on them as President George W. Bush, a longtime foe.
The dispute adds teachers’ unions to a growing list of key Democratic constituencies that have been frustrated by Obama’s lunges toward the political middle, along with gay-rights activists upset Obama won’t lift the ban on gays in the military, and Latino officials who say Obama is slow-walking immigration reform.
So far, both the unions and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have tried to avoid a full-on collision, and the unions are showing new flexibility in accepting previously unheard-of moves like stricter teacher evaluations.
But they’re also making it clear they'll only go so far with Obama, who was booed at two teachers' union conventions when he was a candidate.
One of the little-noticed aspects of Obama’s presidency is how much his approach to education mirrors Bush’s – heavy on testing and data-collection, with support for charter schools, teacher evaluations and merit pay.
That’s what Obama and Duncan are stressing in upcoming decisions over how to award the nearly $5 billion in “Race to the Top” funds, with final guidelines due in November.
And the reform efforts seen in "Race to the Top" are what some education observers expect Obama to seek in reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind law, which administration officials said will be developed in the coming months.
The unions tried to shoot down some of those concepts in formal responses to the Race to the Top program – but all signs are that Duncan’s Education Department isn’t backing off significantly.
And clearly, the unions expected more from a Democratic president.
Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers, gave the administration an “A for effort,” but has some concerns.
“This administration doesn’t want to be ‘Bush Three,’ but some of the things that are coming out…simply charter schools and measurement… that’s what the previous administrations pushed,” Weingarten said, referring to Bush and his father, the president.
“Data is important and charter schools can be great incubators for instructional practice and labor relations practice, but if it ends up just becoming measurement and some charter schools, that’s not public education,” she said.
Said Dennis Van Roekel, president of the 3.2 million-member National Education Association:
“Obviously we hope that some of the proposed changes will be reflected in the new guidelines. There could be major changes or minor changes, I just don’t know. But I don’t think there will be major changes.”
Announced in July, the nationwide competition offers states a chance to get a windfall of funds if they meet certain eligibility criteria. Among the 19 requirements are developing and implementing common statewide standards and data systems and increasing the availability of charter schools.
Already, cash-strapped states are moving to comply. Eight states, including Illinois, Ohio and Tennessee, have lifted caps on charter schools. California and Wisconsin are moving to lift restrictions linking test scores to teacher evaluation.
Initial guidelines for the money drew about 1,100 responses, with many offering support, yet some of the most heated comments came from teachers’ unions.
In a 26-page letter, the NEA said they found the “top-down approach disturbing” and that the emphasis on data amounted to “ignoring states’ rights to enact their own laws and constitutions.”
“We have been down that road before with the failures of the No Child Left Behind, and we cannot support yet another layer of federal mandates that have little or no research base of success, and that usurp state and local governments’ responsibilities for public education,” the group’s letter said.
While the Education Department in June tore down the red school house with the words No Child Left Behind above the door, and the law will be renamed, some are concerned that the requirements for Race to the Top are a blueprint for reauthorization of NCLB.
In his most recent speech about the No Child law, Duncan praised the effort, saying that it “helped expand the standards and accountability movement.”
“Today, we expect districts, principals and teachers to take responsibility for the academic performance of their schools and districts. We can never let up on holding everyone accountable for student success,” he said.
The education department is holding “stakeholder” meetings to get a lay of the land for NCLB, now referred to as ESEA, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the 1965 law underpinning the legislation. Duncan has said that he understands that some think NCLB is a “toxic brand” and that it emphasized tests too much in measuring student achievement.
But Obama and Duncan aren’t the only Democrats pushing a new way of providing education. Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) – who worked with Bush on NCLB – says he thinks Obama is on the right track with his reform package and fully expects a similar proposal to make up Obama’s push for new education legislation to replace No Child.
Miller battled with unions over teacher pay in the last round and said he will sit down near the end of the year to plan the way forward on NCLB.
“The forces for using good data systems for accountability, and for measurements and better assessments and performance pay that recognizes talents, that’s where we are going,” Miller said. “Unions will argue that they have been there in those areas, but they are now trying to get engaged on those fronts. The historic positions are in many ways are melting away.”
Indeed, much of the political battleground has shifted, since NCLB passed with bipartisan support in 2001 and then the reauthorization died in committee in 2007 due to the combination of a weakened Bush, a powerful union backlash and little congressional will to get something done.
“The characters who are on the battlefield weren’t party to the former discussion. That’s a problem. To me, the main impediment is the loss of Ted Kennedy, which is not to disparage anyone. But he was hugely influential and productive. He was a giant,” said Margaret Spellings, Bush’s education secretary. She recalled how the Massachusetts senator Kennedy helped Bush win over skeptical Democrats, though Kennedy later expressed regrets about a lack of funding for No Child Left Behind.
For Bush, the challenge was convincing Republicans, who once called for abolishing the Education Department, that some federal standards were warranted for local school districts. Now Obama and Duncan must get unions on board.
But it’s a sign of just how much the political climate in the education world has shifted that ideas that Bush once sponsored that seemed almost radical – like testing and data-collection – have become part of the norm.
In that way, the unions have been fighting a rear-guard action – trying to preserve a way of doing things that largely ended with Bush, analysts say. But they are also adjusting. The AFT just awarded grants to schools for new teacher pay and evaluation models, and the NEA has ordered that their locals waive contract language that prevents high quality teachers from staffing high-need schools.
Both the unions and Duncan are pointing to a contract vote in New Haven, Conn., this week where a local teachers union agreed to stricter job evaluations and new rules that lift protections for weaker teachers as an example of the new flexibility on the part of unions.
“What we have now is a Democratic president who is using the words ‘fire teachers’ so the labor movement is starting to say they want to get on the bus and help steer, rather than get run over by it,” said Amy Wilkins of the Education Trust, a non-partisan think tank. “Anybody thinking they are going to fight the last war again is misunderstanding the climate.”
(President Obama gives remarks at the US Department of Education on "Race to the Top", a competition to get states to implement school reforms that produce real results. The $4.35 billion fund will reward eligible states for their accomplishments, and create incentives for future improvements. July 24, 2009.)
Today marks the 10th year since federal judge Robert Potter ruled Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools had to end its desegregation policies, moving the school board to institute a policy that assigns most students to a school near their home.
Some in this community will mark the occasion with celebration: Many parents got what they had publicly clamored for – nearby or neighborhood schools and more stability in school assignments.
But a decade – and four school superintendents – later, that ruling has left Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools with a dire challenge experts had predicted: A high and growing percentage of schools are resegregated. Far too many are high-poverty and low-performing.
It is the same fate that has met every school system across the nation that has dismantled its desegregation policies. A report last year said the trend was so stark that if left unaddressed, the level of resegregation would resemble the segregated schooling of the South in the 1950s.
Many in Charlotte-Mecklenburg pledged not to allow that to happen here. They said they would commit the “substantial” resources experts said would be required to boost performance at schools with high concentrations of poor students who often struggle academically.
But it didn't take long for some to renege on that vow. In the fall of 2002, county commissioners froze the county's school funding level for the next two years. Efforts to fix dilapidated, ill-equipped inner-city schools met a buzz-saw of lobbying for new schools to relieve overcrowding in the suburbs – overcrowding exacerbated by students flocking to home schools after the Potter ruling.
County leaders did provide a challenge grant to boost performance at some of CMS's lowest performing schools, and the school system has now developed an Achievement Zone to identify and give intensive help to struggling schools. Some have shown progress. But the challenges of many of these schools continue to outstrip the commitment.
These problems don't matter to some, as long as their children get to go to a school close to home. But they should. It doesn't just cost a lot more to educate students in high-poverty, high-minority schools. Experts say all students learn better in diverse schools – benefitting from differing ideas and getting more quality time from teachers. Further, students develop tolerance and respect for people unlike them – values badly needed in today's hyper-partisan environment.
In July, the federal government recognized the problems inherent in racial isolation and resegregated schools. The Education Department offered 10 discretionary grants to help school systems train staff and devise student assignment plans to help avoid concentrated poverty and resegregated schools.
But communities like ours must do more. Diversity in our schools is now married to diversity in our neighborhoods. We must advocate for and demand housing policies that can encourage that outcome. We must also advocate for and demand resources to enable poor and other disadvantaged children to come to school ready to learn – whether that means providing tutoring, meals or shelter.
Our continued prosperity depends on every child getting a real chance to succeed in school. It's time to truly commit to giving them that chance.
Ten years ago, a Federal judge struck down race-based assignment in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, a decision that changed schools and communities and poses challenges for the years ahead.
An appeals court eventually overturned the part of U.S. District Judge Robert Potter's ruling that ordered CMS to ignore race, but agreed that it was time to lift three decades of court-ordered desegregation. Leaders moved ahead with a race-neutral plan that linked public schools more closely to their neighborhoods.
In the ensuing decade, suburban schools became more numerous, more crowded and generally remained high-performing. Last year about two-thirds of CMS's white students attended majority-white schools in the suburbs.
Center-city schools, including many magnets, have seen white and middle-class students dwindle. About two-thirds of the black and Hispanic students who make up CMS's majority attended schools where less than 25 percent of students are white.
The merits of those changes still spark fiery debate.
Some of Charlotte's political leaders keep framed copies of the Observer's Sept. 11 front page on their walls.
“I de-fanged the tiger back on Sept 10, 1999,” says school board member Larry Gauvreau, one of the white parents who sued and prevailed.
Others believe that decision launched a decade of neglect for the city's neediest children.
“You know as well as I do we have resegregated the school district,” says County commissioner Vilma Leake, a retired teacher who served on the school board when it fought for race-based assignment.
In November, voters will choose a school board with a lot of new faces. Many say that board's mission must include crafting a clearer vision for deciding where kids go to school.
One of the toughest questions: Should CMS draw boundaries to promote diversity? Or should it strengthen ties between schools and communities, even if that means locking in differences?
“I view the anniversary of Judge Potter's decision with mixed emotions,” says UNC Charlotte history professor David Goldfield. “On the one hand, it would be great to think that we've gotten beyond race, that a black child doesn't need to sit next to a white child to excel. But, on the other hand, realistically, all or mostly black and low-income schools will, inherently, be failing schools.”
Decisions about public schools affect not just families with school-age kids, but everything from property values to business recruitment. For 10 years, leaders have wrangled over a path to lead Charlotte away from the destiny of such cities as Chicago and Atlanta, where large swaths of schools have been abandoned by all but the poor.
Last school year, for the first time, CMS's poverty level topped 50 percent. That tally is expected to rise this year.
Good old days?
Tom Hanchett, a historian for the Levine Museum of the New South, remembers watching Charlotte's 1999 Christmas parade and marveling at the racially mixed marching bands that strode by, a sharp contrast to other Southern cities.
“You go the Christmas parade now,” he says, “and basically a black school marches down the street, a white school marches down the street.”
Hanchett believes that resegregation – not just by race but by income – has weakened commitment to schools across the county: “People feel powerless to fight this pervasive trend that you buy in the neighborhood that's going to have good schools and let the devil take the hindmost.”
But others say people like Hanchett view the past through a rosy lens. They argue that CMS masked problems by shuffling students, and note that academic performance for minority and low-income students districtwide didn't deteriorate when CMS scrapped its race-based plan.
Giving neighborhoods a strong, stable tie to public schools keeps families engaged and lets CMS focus on the real academic needs, they say.
“It is up to the next generation of parents in Charlotte-Mecklenburg to be vigilant and to push to insure neighborhood schools stays a reality and not a footnote in some history book,” County Commissioner Bill James wrote in a recent e-mail extolling the anniversary of Potter's ruling.
Poverty as proxy
Questions of race, family background and educational opportunity continue to permeate CMS's thorniest issues.
Black, Hispanic and low-income students continue to underperform white and middle-class peers on virtually every measure of academic achievement, in CMS and nationwide. Those gaps can be particularly glaring in schools where such students are concentrated. This year 58 of CMS's 176 schools are expected to top 75 percent poverty, up from 35 the previous year.
The surge in high-poverty schools was anticipated. As the end of the court battle loomed, county and CMS officials pledged extra support for those schools. Leake argues that leaders have reneged, cutting back when money got tight and failing to put top-notch teachers and principals into the weakest schools.
Superintendent Peter Gorman has moved principals and offered bonuses to entice good teachers to such schools. But the school board shot down his repeated requests to follow existing policies and transfer teachers against their will.
Gauvreau, who is wrapping up eight years on the school board, says CMS has not done enough to build a race-blind neighborhood school system.
“There's little difference after the court case, except that we now have more buses, not less; more magnet schools, not less; more assignment/facility schemes, not less; … more white flight, not less. I could go on and on,” Gauvreau said in an e-mail Wednesday.
Gauvreau says CMS uses poverty, as measured by eligibility for federal lunch aid, as “a proxy for race.” He sees that as a problem; others see it as a potential solution.
Board member Tom Tate, has called for CMS to draw boundaries to balance poverty levels, similar to what Wake County does.
Wake's system outperforms CMS on many academic measures. But a chorus of suburban Wake critics, frustrated with frequent reassignments, want a system more like Charlotte's.
Goldfield, the UNCC professor, says diversifying schools is “a common-sense intervention,” but not enough to close academic gaps.
“African Americans need to focus more on changing a culture of failure with respect to education,” Goldfield, who is white, wrote in an e-mail.
“In 1900, out of all the different ethnic and racial groups in the NYC public school system, for example, African Americans had the highest attendance rate, higher than Italian and Jewish students, ethnic groups often used as examples of how education can improve one's standing in society. That same love of learning and sense of education as a fundamental value need to be rekindled among African Americans.”
RALEIGH -- Gerald Grant's message to America is clear -- emulate Wake County's school diversity policy or risk turning your back on poor and minority students.
Grant is spreading his provocative message in his new book "Hope and Despair in the American City: Why There Are No Bad Schools in Raleigh." Grant's book tour comes to Raleigh tonight, and he is likely to be faced by supporters and critics of Wake's diversity efforts.
"What Raleigh has done is reinvent the ideal of the common school providing educational opportunities for all children that our Founding Fathers envisioned," said Grant, a professor at Syracuse University, in an interview. "They've reinvented it for the 21st Century."
Critics are dismissive of Grant's contentions, arguing that the claims about Wake's academic success are overstated.
"He's a modern day snake oil salesman who thinks he's found the remedy for all our ills," said Terry Stoops, education policy analyst for the John Locke Foundation, a conservative Raleigh think tank that has questioned Wake's academic gains.
Grant argues that the major reason for the economic success of the Raleigh area has been the creation of a diverse school system from the 1976 merger of the increasingly black Raleigh city schools and the largely white Wake County schools. He said that using magnet schools to lure suburban students to inner-city Raleigh classrooms and balancing the percentages of low-income students at individual schools have helped create a climate where no schools are bad.
"Teachers in Raleigh feel they're going to a good school," Grant said. "They have a chance to win. In many other districts they wake up dreading to going to school."
Grant, whose grandchildren attend schools in Raleigh, also praises Wake for reducing the racial achievement gap. He calls it "one of the most inspiring stories in public education" how Wake got 91 percent of students passing state exams in 2003 after having set a goal in 1998 of reaching 95 percent.
Stoops questions the validity of the results because they've dropped sharply in recent years since the state changed the exams. Wake's passing rate on those exams was 71 percent this past school year.
Grant attributes the drop in scores to factors such as the growing percentage of Latino students, many of whom hadn't learned to read in their native language. He notes how Wake still has a high average SAT score.
Grant contrasts Wake's experiences with those of Syracuse, which he says is suffering in large part from the decision in the 1970s not to merge with the suburban districts or to bus black students there. Pumping more money into "segregated institutions for the poor" isn't the answer, he said, noting how much more money Syracuse spends per student than Wake. Syracuse is spending $17,723 per student, Wake $7,821.
When critics assail his conclusions, Grant argues that they are a vocal minority. He points to how supporters of Wake's diversity policy have continued to be a majority on the school board.
But that majority may be challenged in school board elections this fall. Four of the nine school board seats are on the ballot Oct.6. Groups such as Wake Schools Community Alliance that favor neighborhood schools hope to elect a new board majority.
"This book is yet another example of admiring the appearance of the Wake County school system from afar rather than discussing the detailed reality of it," said Allison Backhouse, a member of the steering committee of Wake Schools Community Alliance.
Grant said it would be a "tragic decision" for Wake to back away from its diversity efforts.
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