Charlotte Observer----
10 years after Potter, Charlotte-Meck. Schools need our help
(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.
Schools ruling led to a decade of change
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.”
Champion of Diverse Wake schools speaks
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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Sources: Charlotte Observer, CMS, Whitehouse.gov, US Dept of Ed., News & Observer, Segregated Schools, Creepygif.com, Youtube, Google Maps
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