Are low-performing schools 'bad' schools?

Are low-performing schools always "bad" schools? And what do you do when a part of the community all but abandons that school?

They're certainly not new questions for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. But they've been renewed this month as the district plots its new student assignment plan -- and parent groups line up to support or oppose it.

On Tuesday, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board meets at Garinger High for a public hearing on the assignment plan unveiled last month. It primarily deals with adjusting boundaries for four new elementary schools opening next fall, and impacts a small percentage of the district's students.

One of the new schools, Oakhurst Elementary, has generated quite a bit of interest from parents. The area is currently districted to Billingsville Elementary, a historically low-performing school when it comes to proficiency levels.

For weeks, parent after parent from the area petitioned the school board to be sent to the new Oakhurst STEM Academy instead of Billingsville. They said that parents there feel like they have to get into a charter school, private school or move away.

This discussion has been going on for years around Billingsville. As recently as 2012, some parents in Commonwealth Morningside were rallying to get families to send their children to Billingsville. This year, you'll recall, the same neighborhood pushed the school board to send them to the new Oakhurst school. The CMS proposal would grant that wish.

But not without Superintendent Heath Morrison making a plea for Billingsville.

"It hurts my heart when I hear conversations around Billingsville," Morrison said at the most recent school board meeting. He said the school has continued to meet or exceed growth standards even though the proficiency level remains low. "I just would ask anybody to rethink what is a school that is not successful."

I talked to Morrison about the issue a few days later. He drew a little chart that he says he shows people who ask about how he views school performance. In effect, the message is this: Is a school that brings students who are well below grade level up to where they should be really worse than a school that takes kids who perform at a high level and keeps them there?

He also said that the numbers at elementary schools like Billingsville, which has about 600 students, could change overnight if upper-income families decide to send their kids there. With an influx of high-scoring students, suddenly Billingsville doesn't look so low-performing.

But how do you convince parents to make that leap? Morrison admitted his chart might not be persuasive. He said CMS should look at putting a new program at schools like Billingsville to make them a more appealing option.

The approach has some precedent of being a success. Shamrock Gardens Elementary near Plaza Midwood, for example, had long been stuck with the stigma of being a "bad school." It ranked near the bottom of the state in the rankings, and No Child Left Behind let parents opt out.

In 2006, CMS put a magnet for gifted kids there, and community members (especially Pamela Grundy) aggressively advocated for the school. Affluent parents started sending their children there, and in a few years, it was off "failing" lists and test scores rose.

Years ago, Billingsville had a popular Montessori program. It was moved in the early 2000s. Board member Ericka Ellis-Stewart asked at the school board meeting if there has been discussion of bringing it back.

Not this year, but it sounds like it might one day be in the cards.

Student assignment, crime and moving vans

A couple of recent academic studies provide intriguing looks at the impact of  "resegregation"  in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools 12 years after the district gave up race-based student assignment.

In a newcomer-rich community like this one, the 2002 demise of court-ordered desegregation and the long legal battle that led up to it may seem like ancient history.  But researchers take the long view,  and both papers used years of individual data for CMS students before and after the switch to a race-neutral system.

For those who missed it,  CMS used school boundaries to achieve racial balance from the 1970s to the 1990s.  At that point,  magnets began to play a growing role in efforts to encourage voluntary desegregation.  Lawsuits by white families seeking to end race-based assignment  led to the end of court-ordered desegregation. The ensuing assignment plans, which combine neighborhood schools and magnets, created a rapid and dramatic increase in mostly-black and mostly-white schools. (Both papers give a more detailed history.)

Image: AtlantaBlackStar.com

"School Segregation,  Educational Attainment and Crime:  Evidence From the End of Busing in Charlotte-Mecklenburg"  draws a striking conclusion:  The strongest,  most lasting impact of sending students to high-poverty,  mostly-minority schools is a rise in crime among minority males who live in poverty.

"The results show clearly that it is the combination of race and income segregation that leads to 

increases in crime.  Minority males have significantly more arrests and days incarcerated when they are assigned to schools with more poor minorities.  However, we find no impact on crime of being assigned to schools with more non-poor minorities or poor non-minorities,"  says the study by Stephen Billings  (UNC Charlotte),  David Deming  (Harvard Graduate School of Education)  and Jonah Rockoff  (Columbia University Graduate School of Business).  It's published in the February issue of The Quarterly Journal of Economics, but the link above takes you to an earlier working paper you can read free.

The report also found negative academic impacts on all groups assigned to such schools,  but found that those disadvantages faded over time.  "Our results suggest that equal or greater resources combined with active policy efforts may be able to reduce the impact of school segregation on academic outcomes, but not for crime,"  the report says. "To the extent that crime is driven by social context and peer interactions,  it will be difficult for schools to address racial and economic inequality through means other than deliberately integrative student assignment policies."

Image: Writeforit.Wordpress.com

"Does School Policy Affect Housing Choices?  Evidence From the End of Desegregation in Charlotte-Mecklenburg"  acknowledges that housing patterns shape the racial composition of schools.  It then examines a follow-up:  Does student assignment also affect housing decisions?

The conclusion:  Yes  --  for a relatively small number of white families.

The study by David Liebowitz  (Harvard University)  and Lindsay Page  (University of Pittsburgh)  found that African American and Hispanic families are more mobile than white ones,  and their moving patterns didn't change significantly when student assignment changed. But they found differences for white families after 2002,  when moving became a practical way to seek a higher-quality neighborhood school,  "even if one criterion was racial homogeneity of the school."

Even during race-based assignment,  whites who moved  "exhibited a strong preference for communities that were less integrated than their starting community."  After 2002,  the researchers found,  "White families were much more likely to select into a Whiter but worse performing zone than their current one.  However,  they were no more likely to select into a Whiter and academically stronger neighborhood than before the new assignment policy."  Despite those trends,  the researchers found that the numbers were too small to affect the district's overall level of segregation.

Please note that I am simplifying two long,  complex papers about touchy subjects.  There's no way to crunch some combined 80 pages of academic analysis into a blog post and catch all the nuances.  I can't find a free version of the second article,  which is published in the American Educational Research Journal, so it may be tough to read the full thing.  Just know that both papers contain a more sophisticated analysis than I can summarize here.

CMS student assignment: There's more!

Plans for school closings and arrests at a public forum have hogged the spotlight, but there's a new step emerging in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board's student assignment review.

After the drama at Tuesday's meeting, the board formally introduced proposed revisions to the policies that guide the assignment lottery (to read them, click here, then click items V a, b and c). The changes incorporate the guiding principles this board passed during the summer and remove confusing historical references that piled up over the years. They also eliminate the lottery for non-magnet schools, which had tapered off to virtually nothing in practice anyway.

"You almost needed a guidebook to get through it," Superintendent Peter Gorman said of the existing policies. "It will be much simplified."

If you're just hearing about this, never fear: You haven't missed a chance to weigh in. The board plans to hold public hearings on the policies at its next two meetings before voting. That means this could be piled on what's bound to be a marathon meeting Nov. 9, when members have vowed to make decisions on the list of closings, consolidations and other proposed school changes for 2011-12.