Irwin mom: This isn't good enough

A parent voicing concern about test scores isn't unusual,  but Colette Forrest's email grabbed my attention.

Forrest

She was writing about Irwin Academic Center,  a magnet for gifted students and other children whose parents want them to learn from techniques developed for the most talented kids.  The school  (formerly at Villa Heights)  routinely tops most Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools on test scores and is generally viewed as a haven of high achievement for students of all races.  Just before Forrest emailed school board members and other elected officials,  Irwin received a national magnet school award.

But Forrest was up in arms about a state report card showing that 67.5 percent of Irwin's black students and 54.5 percent of its Hispanic students had passed both reading and math exams last year,  compared with more than 95 percent of white students.

"That is not acceptable!"  Forrest wrote.  She said she had raised the issue at a PTA meeting,  volunteering to reach out to minority parents whose children are struggling and suggesting that the school recruit mentors from groups that have a record of helping such students.

Forrest said her own 6-year-old son is testing well above grade level.  But she can't accept failure for his classmates:  "I will do whatever I can for ALL the kids at Irwin, because it is NOT just about my African-American son, but ALL children MUST succeed and yes, especially his fellow African-American peers."

When I started covering education more than a decade ago, I was taken aback by what seemed to be a double standard:  Scores that would barely rate as adequate for schools with mostly white and affluent students were celebrated for high poverty schools populated mostly by black and Hispanic ones.  Now,  for better or worse,  I've internalized the reality that pervades public education across the country:  Those gaps are so huge and so pervasive that it's hard not to celebrate even modest progress toward closing them.  Superintendent Heath Morrison's staff recently rolled out goals for his five-year strategic plan.  One is to get black students' pass rate on reading and math exams to within 22.5 percentage points of white students' rate by 2018.  Last year that gap was 45.1 points.

By that standard,  Irwin is a resounding success.  Black students there are almost five times as likely to pass reading and math tests as black students across North Carolina.  The black-white gap at Irwin is around 30 percentage points,  but that's partly because white students did so well.  Morrison hopes to get the districtwide gap down to that level in a couple of years.

Some people will tell you that certain types of kids from certain types of families just can't or won't excel. 

Forrest isn't buying that.  She says she's the child of unmarried teen parents,  both of whom died before they turned 20.  The grandmother who raised her hadn't finished middle school,  Forrest says,  but stressed the value of education.  Forrest became her family's first college graduate.

"At 40 I had my first and only child,"  she writes,  "and now my son and I know we are poised to excel because we know our strength and it is our job to strengthen others."

Here's what strikes me:  She didn't write to public officials to say,  "You're failing my child; what are you going to do about it?"

She said,  "We're failing our children.  What can we do about it?"

Imagine what might happen if more people asked that question.

Fair share from CMS?

Mecklenburg County Commissioner Matthew Ridenhour last week asked Superintendent Heath Morrison for a breakdown of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools spending by voting district. Such a breakdown,  he said,  might help address concerns that lead some people to talk about splitting the countywide district into smaller ones.

Ridenhour

Ridenhour, a Republican elected last year,  is jumping into a longstanding debate over the fairness of how and where CMS spends its money.  The gist:  Schools in low-income neighborhoods get extra money to help overcome student disadvantages.  They tend to have higher per-pupil spending than suburban schools,  partly because of that extra aid and partly because suburban schools are generally larger,  spreading basic operating costs among more kids.  But residents of more affluent zones tend to pay more in property taxes,  leading to rumblings about unfairness.

Morrison,  who started the CMS job in July,  said he'll try to answer Ridenhour's question.  I'll be curious to see what he comes up with.

His predecessor,  Peter Gorman,  calculated per-pupil spending at each school as part of a CMS equity report.  The county has used those numbers to create a per-pupil average for each district.

But Morrison's crew didn't do an equity report and hasn't released updated per-pupil spending numbers.

Dunlap

And as County Commissioner George Dunlap,  a Democrat and former school board member,  noted,  school locations don't correspond to services that residents of a voting district receive.  Many students live in one district and attend school in another,  especially if they're in magnet or alternative schools.

"This is one community,"  Dunlap said.  "I don't think we ought to be trying to split it up by district."

One of the drawbacks of covering education for more than a decade is that some of the back-and-forth starts to feel like watching an old married couple argue.  County Commissioner Bill James, an accountant and a Republican, has been arguing for years that CMS gets too much money and doesn't provide enough results.  This time around,  he didn't seem to find the energy for critiquing the numbers.

James

"I just don't really feel that educational achievement is getting better,"  James said after watching a presentation on CMS academic gains.  "Maybe it's a lack of PR on the part of CMS."

"Feelings are not facts,"  responded Dunlap.  "Just because you feel a certain way doesn't make it true."

Dunlap urged his colleagues to look at the data and see how much progress CMS has made toward narrowing the performance gaps between black, Hispanic and white students and between poor and middle-class students.

At the risk of being a party-pooper  --  and the even bigger risk of getting in the middle of a political spitting match  --  I'd note that those numbers aren't as meaningful as they look.  That's because the CMS charts compare results from 2008,  when students took state exams only once,  with those from 2012,  when students who failed the first time retook the test.  The state launched that requirement in 2009,  and the result was an immediate jump in pass rates.  Groups that had more students falling just below the grade-level cutoff  (such as black, Hispanic and low-income students)  saw big gains,  while the change was smaller for groups where most students passed on the first try  (white, Asian and middle-class students).

At the time, Gorman blasted the retesting as artificial inflation of results.  For the first couple of years he offered comparisons of pass rates before and after the retest bump.

That's probably not practical now.  But if CMS wants to make a fair comparison,  all it has to do is use 2009,  rather than 2008,  as the baseline.  If the gaps have still narrowed,  it says something about student achievement,  not just changing rules.