[This is the text of a comment I gave (editing on the fly) at the community comment period of tonight’s school board meeting.]
I’m here with a couple of thoughts about the proposals to redraw elementary boundaries and possibly pair some schools toward the goal of reducing socioeconomic disparities between school populations.
As you all know, I was on the school board two years ago when the board decided to redistrict the high schools and junior highs in the name of that same goal. I found it a very difficult issue with good arguments on both sides. I ended up voting against the plan because I thought the potential benefits—and there were some—were outweighed by the costs, and especially because I didn’t think the plan had the support of the families it was most intended to benefit. (See this post.)
When it comes to the elementary proposals you’re now considering, I think those issues are also difficult and again there are arguments to consider on both sides. And I don’t know what the right answer is. But I do know this: It would be very difficult to square the board’s decision on high school boundaries with a decision not to pursue balance at the elementary level.
At the elementary school level, the FRL (free-and-reduced-lunch rate) disparities between schools are much greater than they were at the high school level—ranging from a projected 2% at one school to a projected 75% at other schools. The empirical research on academic benefits is also stronger at the elementary school level, because the empirical studies that support it are mostly on elementary kids, and because at the elementary level there’s less tracking that can end up creating classroom-by-classroom disparities even within the same building. Finally, at least as to some of the pairings being suggested, there are actually cost savings instead of higher expenditures. We were told that the balancing plan at the secondary level would cost a quarter of a million dollars a year; at the elementary level it can actually save money every year.
You can defend a policy of trying to balance FRL rates. I think you can also defend a choice not to pursue that kind of balancing. But it’s very hard to defend doing it at the high school level, where the arguments are weaker, but not doing it at the elementary school level—where the disparities are much larger, the empirical evidence is stronger, and it can actually save money instead of costing money.
We had a school board vacancy election in 2016 that turned almost entirely on whether the board should pursue FRL balancing at the secondary level. The district—and especially the east side of Iowa City—voted for the candidate who wanted to balance FRL rates at the secondary level. In other words, many voters supported FRL balance when it meant moving kids from low-income families out of their secondary schools. Now those same neighborhoods have to decide whether to support FRL balance when it means bringing kids from low-income families into their elementary schools, which will otherwise have some of the lowest FRL rates in the district. So people are naturally watching and wondering: Is this really about pursuing the principle of socioeconomic balance, or is this just about sending these poor, disproportionately black kids elsewhere? Is that the principle driving this?
What you decide on the issue of elementary boundaries is going to answer that question for a lot of people, including kids who receive free-and-reduced-price lunch and their families.
Showing posts with label equity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label equity. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
Monday, July 24, 2017
School board agenda for July 25
Some of the items on this week’s school board agenda:
We’ll discuss and possibly approve the district’s legislative priorities for the next legislative session. Proposal here.
We’ll hear a report about the district’s efforts to teach students about safe and responsible use of social media. Information here.
We’ll hear a report about reading assessment results. The district has been implementing a weighted resource allocation model to shift resources (including classroom teachers) toward schools with larger numbers of students from low-income households, students receiving special education services, and students who are English-language learners. This report will focus in particular on reading assessment results at those schools. Information here.
We’ll hear a report about school climate disparities when it comes to student gender identity and sexual orientation. Information here.
We’ll hear a transportation update, including an update on activities buses at the secondary level and a comparison of busing costs in the 2015-16, 2016-17, and 2017-18 school years. Information here.
We’ll hear an update on the progress at Hoover East and on its use by Longfellow students this coming year (while Longfellow is being renovated). Information here.
All that and more! The full agenda is here. Feel free to chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.
UPDATE: The administration came to us at the July 25 meeting asking to hire a contractor to create more rooms out of common space at Penn Elementary to make up for the loss of temporaries (which were relocated elsewhere). We were told that this change would permanently raise Penn’s capacity rating of the building to 683. This was the only option we were presented. It represented a change to the building’s capacity rating under the Facilities Master Plan that would have a lasting effect on how many students the district will expect that building to hold, and it came to us in the form of a consent calendar item just four weeks before school was to start.
Earlier this year, the administration had already revised the Penn building capacity up from 587 to 633, based not an any additional space but just on a reassessment of the building. But the building is still using the same cafeteria it was using when the building capacity was 387. Eight classrooms (200 seats) have been added since, and this project would have added 50 more. I don’t have confidence that that building can comfortably hold 683 students, even with more classrooms added. Moreover, I don’t believe the board should approve a permanent change to a building’s capacity under the Facilities Master Plan without receiving any input from the families at the affected school. I felt that the proposal at the very least should have been brought to the board much sooner, so the affected families could have a chance to comment on it.
I fully understand that the elementary schools in the North Corridor need more capacity—one of the reasons I’m against the bond is because it limits the district’s ability to respond to the expected growth in that area. But new capacity shouldn’t be achieved simply by carving more classrooms out of a building that is already too large for its common spaces. I saw the project as creating a long-term problem to address a short-term problem, so I voted against the contract proposal. The proposal failed by a vote of 3-3.
Three weeks later, the administration brought back the same contract proposal. I moved to adopt the proposal on the condition that the district would not change Penn’s listed capacity number without further board approval. The motion passed 5-1.
We’ll discuss and possibly approve the district’s legislative priorities for the next legislative session. Proposal here.
We’ll hear a report about the district’s efforts to teach students about safe and responsible use of social media. Information here.
We’ll hear a report about reading assessment results. The district has been implementing a weighted resource allocation model to shift resources (including classroom teachers) toward schools with larger numbers of students from low-income households, students receiving special education services, and students who are English-language learners. This report will focus in particular on reading assessment results at those schools. Information here.
We’ll hear a report about school climate disparities when it comes to student gender identity and sexual orientation. Information here.
We’ll hear a transportation update, including an update on activities buses at the secondary level and a comparison of busing costs in the 2015-16, 2016-17, and 2017-18 school years. Information here.
We’ll hear an update on the progress at Hoover East and on its use by Longfellow students this coming year (while Longfellow is being renovated). Information here.
All that and more! The full agenda is here. Feel free to chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.
UPDATE: The administration came to us at the July 25 meeting asking to hire a contractor to create more rooms out of common space at Penn Elementary to make up for the loss of temporaries (which were relocated elsewhere). We were told that this change would permanently raise Penn’s capacity rating of the building to 683. This was the only option we were presented. It represented a change to the building’s capacity rating under the Facilities Master Plan that would have a lasting effect on how many students the district will expect that building to hold, and it came to us in the form of a consent calendar item just four weeks before school was to start.
Earlier this year, the administration had already revised the Penn building capacity up from 587 to 633, based not an any additional space but just on a reassessment of the building. But the building is still using the same cafeteria it was using when the building capacity was 387. Eight classrooms (200 seats) have been added since, and this project would have added 50 more. I don’t have confidence that that building can comfortably hold 683 students, even with more classrooms added. Moreover, I don’t believe the board should approve a permanent change to a building’s capacity under the Facilities Master Plan without receiving any input from the families at the affected school. I felt that the proposal at the very least should have been brought to the board much sooner, so the affected families could have a chance to comment on it.
I fully understand that the elementary schools in the North Corridor need more capacity—one of the reasons I’m against the bond is because it limits the district’s ability to respond to the expected growth in that area. But new capacity shouldn’t be achieved simply by carving more classrooms out of a building that is already too large for its common spaces. I saw the project as creating a long-term problem to address a short-term problem, so I voted against the contract proposal. The proposal failed by a vote of 3-3.
Three weeks later, the administration brought back the same contract proposal. I moved to adopt the proposal on the condition that the district would not change Penn’s listed capacity number without further board approval. The motion passed 5-1.
Saturday, June 24, 2017
School board agenda for June 27
Some of the items on the board’s agenda this week:
We’ll discuss issues raised by the petition to put the demolition of Hoover Elementary onto the school board election ballot. (See this post.)
We’ll hear a report about the district’s community education program.
We’ll hear recommendations from the task force to develop a plan to support families affected by immigration enforcement.
We’ll hear on update on voluntary transfers. (Previous posts on voluntary transfers are here.)
We’ll hear an update on the district’s Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Plan. (Info here.)
We’ll hear an update on the renovation of the Shimek playground. (Info here.) Our work session on this topic last month was inconclusive, but there was majority support for looking for ways to make the new playground as accessible and inclusive as possible. (See minutes here.)
All that and more! The full agenda is here. Please chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.
We’ll discuss issues raised by the petition to put the demolition of Hoover Elementary onto the school board election ballot. (See this post.)
We’ll hear a report about the district’s community education program.
We’ll hear recommendations from the task force to develop a plan to support families affected by immigration enforcement.
We’ll hear on update on voluntary transfers. (Previous posts on voluntary transfers are here.)
We’ll hear an update on the district’s Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Plan. (Info here.)
We’ll hear an update on the renovation of the Shimek playground. (Info here.) Our work session on this topic last month was inconclusive, but there was majority support for looking for ways to make the new playground as accessible and inclusive as possible. (See minutes here.)
All that and more! The full agenda is here. Please chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.
Sunday, January 8, 2017
Follow-up: Voluntary transfers
At our last board meeting, I moved to prohibit next year’s ninth-graders from transferring into Liberty High from outside Liberty’s attendance area, and the motion passed. Here are my reasons for the motion:
First, ninth-grade transfers will worsen the projected overcrowding at Liberty. When Liberty opens, it will have a capacity of 1000 seats, and our enrollment projections show that, even without any voluntary transfers, its enrollment will be over 1000 as of 2019-20:
By contrast, Liberty in its first two years (2017-18 and 2018-19) is likely to be underfilled, because students from the classes of 2018 and 2019 are allowed to finish up at West High if they choose to.
As a result, I was not against allowing juniors and seniors to transfer into Liberty next year, since they will help fill the building in its initial years and will be gone before the building becomes overcrowded. But I had concerns about allowing freshmen and sophomores to transfer in next year, because they will still be there when the enrollment exceeds the building’s capacity. By the time next year’s freshmen graduate, Liberty is projected to be already 12% over capacity (while we anticipate plenty of space available at West High). Any transfers we allow will simply make that number worse.
Second, the board needs to consider this issue in light of its decision assign the Kirkwood area to the Liberty High zone. The board chose to require students in the Kirkwood area, which has a relatively high proportion of students from low-income households, to attend Liberty, in order to promote socioeconomic balance among the secondary schools. I voted against that decision, because I was concerned that Kirkwood-area students would be made worse off by having to attend schools that are farther away and more difficult to get to and from. But now that they’re assigned to Liberty, the least we can do is not overcrowd the building.
Moreover, there is a fairness issue. Many Kirkwood-area students are effectively required to attend Liberty whether they want to or not. Freshman and sophomores are ineligible to transfer out of Liberty in 2017-18, and even if transfers were available, students must provide their own transportation, which lower-income families are less likely to have the means to do. Again, the board majority justified the Kirkwood decision on the grounds that it would promote socioeconomic balance and reduce overcrowding. So how could the board then allow better-off families—those with the means to provide their own transportation—to transfer into Liberty, even when it would undermine socioeconomic balance and worsen overcrowding? If we’re willing to say “no” to low-income families, we need to be willing to say “no” to better-off families too.
At the meeting, I could not get a clear sense of how the administration planned to handle transfer requests into Liberty, so I moved to close Liberty High to transfers from ninth graders (except for those who meet hardship criteria) next year. The motion passed, 4-3. (Board members Hemingway, Roesler, Roetlin, and I voted yes; Directors DeLoach, Kirschling, and Lynch voted no.)
Liberty is slated to receive a 500-seat addition as of 2022-23 (a year after next year’s freshmen will graduate). As we get closer to that date, become more certain of the funding for the addition, and have a better sense of how much growth to expect in the Liberty zone, it will make sense for the board to revisit the transfer issue.
Previous posts here.
First, ninth-grade transfers will worsen the projected overcrowding at Liberty. When Liberty opens, it will have a capacity of 1000 seats, and our enrollment projections show that, even without any voluntary transfers, its enrollment will be over 1000 as of 2019-20:
By contrast, Liberty in its first two years (2017-18 and 2018-19) is likely to be underfilled, because students from the classes of 2018 and 2019 are allowed to finish up at West High if they choose to.
As a result, I was not against allowing juniors and seniors to transfer into Liberty next year, since they will help fill the building in its initial years and will be gone before the building becomes overcrowded. But I had concerns about allowing freshmen and sophomores to transfer in next year, because they will still be there when the enrollment exceeds the building’s capacity. By the time next year’s freshmen graduate, Liberty is projected to be already 12% over capacity (while we anticipate plenty of space available at West High). Any transfers we allow will simply make that number worse.
Second, the board needs to consider this issue in light of its decision assign the Kirkwood area to the Liberty High zone. The board chose to require students in the Kirkwood area, which has a relatively high proportion of students from low-income households, to attend Liberty, in order to promote socioeconomic balance among the secondary schools. I voted against that decision, because I was concerned that Kirkwood-area students would be made worse off by having to attend schools that are farther away and more difficult to get to and from. But now that they’re assigned to Liberty, the least we can do is not overcrowd the building.
Moreover, there is a fairness issue. Many Kirkwood-area students are effectively required to attend Liberty whether they want to or not. Freshman and sophomores are ineligible to transfer out of Liberty in 2017-18, and even if transfers were available, students must provide their own transportation, which lower-income families are less likely to have the means to do. Again, the board majority justified the Kirkwood decision on the grounds that it would promote socioeconomic balance and reduce overcrowding. So how could the board then allow better-off families—those with the means to provide their own transportation—to transfer into Liberty, even when it would undermine socioeconomic balance and worsen overcrowding? If we’re willing to say “no” to low-income families, we need to be willing to say “no” to better-off families too.
At the meeting, I could not get a clear sense of how the administration planned to handle transfer requests into Liberty, so I moved to close Liberty High to transfers from ninth graders (except for those who meet hardship criteria) next year. The motion passed, 4-3. (Board members Hemingway, Roesler, Roetlin, and I voted yes; Directors DeLoach, Kirschling, and Lynch voted no.)
Liberty is slated to receive a 500-seat addition as of 2022-23 (a year after next year’s freshmen will graduate). As we get closer to that date, become more certain of the funding for the addition, and have a better sense of how much growth to expect in the Liberty zone, it will make sense for the board to revisit the transfer issue.
Previous posts here.
Follow-up: Changes to the science curriculum
At a board meeting last month (the one I missed due to illness), the board approved an administrative proposal to change the junior high and high school science curriculum. One aspect of the proposal was a change to the current practice of allowing students to accelerate by skipping the ninth-grade Foundations of Science class and taking Biology instead. By accelerating in that way, those students are then able to take more advanced science classes before they graduate. Under the new proposal, students would be able to accelerate only by doubling up on science classes in either eighth or ninth grade. Moreover, eighth-graders would be allowed to accelerate only if they scored in the 95th percentile in science on the Iowa Assessments as seventh-graders and were enrolled in the more advanced junior high math course.
Others have written more extensively about the drawbacks of this new approach (links below). I agree with the one dissenting board member, Lori Roetlin, that the administration should go back to the drawing board and develop a proposal that would not make acceleration so problematic. In particular, I have the following concerns (all of which have been raised by others as well):
Others have expanded on this list of concerns. Here is a list of posts on the topic (please chime in with a comment if I’ve missed any):
ICCSD Science Program Proposal, Revisited
Curriculum Review and the School Board
New science curriculum deserves more attention
ICCSD Science Program Proposal
Community Comment 11/8
Proposed changes to the science curriculum
More Questions Than Answers
Science Curriculum Review Report
Others have written more extensively about the drawbacks of this new approach (links below). I agree with the one dissenting board member, Lori Roetlin, that the administration should go back to the drawing board and develop a proposal that would not make acceleration so problematic. In particular, I have the following concerns (all of which have been raised by others as well):
- The new requirement, by incentivizing students to double up on science courses, will inevitably hurt enrollment in other elective courses. It will likely decrease participation in music and art courses. Many disciplines, given free rein, might choose to expand their share of the students’ school day, but the board needs to take all disciplines into account when setting curricular requirements.
- The 95th-percentile cutoff for allowing students to accelerate in eighth grade appears to be entirely arbitrary—designed to fill a set number of seats, rather than to match students with the best course. As Karen W. writes, “The Iowa Assessments are not placement exams and the administration has provided no evidence that this particular cut score would predict success in the new [Earth and Space Science] course or that students with lower scores would not be successful.”
More broadly, I’d like to see the board discuss the way the district uses Iowa Assessment scores to limit enrollment in advanced courses. What are the costs and benefits of that system as opposed to one in which students (with the advice of parents and counselors) could self-enroll in advanced course by choice?
- The 95th percentile cutoff appears likely to have the effect of minimizing the number of minority students enrolled in the accelerated science track (see commentary here and here).
- I’m not convinced that the new approach is the only workable way to comply with the state science standards. Karen W. makes a good case for the idea the material that would be covered in the 7th-8th-9th-grade sequence could be covered in 7th and 8th grade in an accelerated course, without doubling up. Apparently alternative approaches are being taken elsewhere (see the comments here).
Others have expanded on this list of concerns. Here is a list of posts on the topic (please chime in with a comment if I’ve missed any):
ICCSD Science Program Proposal, Revisited
Curriculum Review and the School Board
New science curriculum deserves more attention
ICCSD Science Program Proposal
Community Comment 11/8
Proposed changes to the science curriculum
More Questions Than Answers
Science Curriculum Review Report
Thursday, December 29, 2016
Follow-up: Police in school
A few weeks back, at a meeting I had to miss because of illness, the school board discussed the district’s relationship with the local police department.
The police department had been running a program in which it sent a representative into elementary schools to eat lunch with the kids. The program’s stated goal was to “maintain a positive, visible presence in the community, establish and maintain relationships in the community and hopefully open up broader communications channels.” The district tried to formalize some aspects of that program through a written agreement with the police department, and the department took offense at the district’s proposal that the “outreach assistant” not wear a uniform. The police department then decided to suspend the program and to stop any “self-initiated” visits to the schools until it received an explicit invitation to continue from the school board. At the November 22 work session, the board agreed to invite the police department to continue its outreach program and to resume “business as usual” with self-initiated visits.
I can understand the appeal of enabling kids to have positive interactions with police, whom some kids might otherwise view fearfully or in a negative light. And I know, like, and respect Henri Harper, the outreach assistant under the program. But I do have concerns about the larger issue; anything the district does on this issue will set a precedent that will apply not just to Henri Harper and not even just to police departments.
First, it was not clear what police self-initiated “business as usual” in the schools entails. The board asked for a follow-up report summarizing the police department’s activities in the schools, but I would have wanted to know what “business as usual” meant before formally inviting its return. As to “self-initiated” police visits to the schools, I wrote about several concerns here.
Second, although the department has said that the outreach assistant is “not a sworn officer and does not have any enforcement capabilities,” it’s not clear exactly what that means. I assume he cannot arrest people? But what happens if a kid mentions, for example, that one of his parents was smoking a joint? I have to think that the outreach assistant has the power to notify his department of criminal activity, and, if necessary, to testify in court. The outreach assistant works for the police department, not for the school system; the school system would have no control over how the outreach assistant handles a situation like that one. I’d prefer to have that kind of decision made by school officials.
Third, there are many organizations that might be happy to send representatives into our schools to counsel and build relationships with students. The Chamber of Commerce? The American Civil Liberties Union? The U.S. Army? Planned Parenthood? Many of them could make persuasive arguments about why students would benefit from knowing more about their organizations and what they do. The district needs to have a consistent approach to handling such requests. At the very least it makes sense for the district to want to vet such interactions and reach agreements about the content. But at some point I wonder how much it should be the district’s job to provide audiences for the outreach efforts of outside organizations, no matter how worthy the cause.
Most of the schools in the police outreach program have a high proportion of black and African-American students, and the elephant in the room that went undiscussed at the board meeting is the troubled relationship between law enforcement and racial minorities in America. The police department is a law enforcement agency. It is the entry point to our very imperfect criminal justice system. That system currently incarcerates and disenfranchises black Americans at an unbelievably high rate. On the one hand, proponents of the outreach program may hope that it will help improve the way the justice system interacts with minorities. But, especially for minority parents, the question of what children should be taught to think about the police (and about the larger criminal justice system) is a very complicated one that does not have an objectively correct answer. Just consider some of these examples of “the Talk”—the advice that many black parents feel they have to give to their kids about interactions with the police.
I don’t know the “right” way to approach that topic, and I don’t particularly trust the school district to know either, especially if its only approach is to provide the perspective of a representative of the police department. (Again, no offense intended to the current outreach officer here; but we don’t know who the next representative, and the next one, and the next one will be.) For that reason, at the very least it would make sense to limit participation in the program to kids whose parents explicitly opt them into it.
Readers: What role do you think the district should take in teaching kids about race and our criminal justice system?
The police department had been running a program in which it sent a representative into elementary schools to eat lunch with the kids. The program’s stated goal was to “maintain a positive, visible presence in the community, establish and maintain relationships in the community and hopefully open up broader communications channels.” The district tried to formalize some aspects of that program through a written agreement with the police department, and the department took offense at the district’s proposal that the “outreach assistant” not wear a uniform. The police department then decided to suspend the program and to stop any “self-initiated” visits to the schools until it received an explicit invitation to continue from the school board. At the November 22 work session, the board agreed to invite the police department to continue its outreach program and to resume “business as usual” with self-initiated visits.
I can understand the appeal of enabling kids to have positive interactions with police, whom some kids might otherwise view fearfully or in a negative light. And I know, like, and respect Henri Harper, the outreach assistant under the program. But I do have concerns about the larger issue; anything the district does on this issue will set a precedent that will apply not just to Henri Harper and not even just to police departments.
First, it was not clear what police self-initiated “business as usual” in the schools entails. The board asked for a follow-up report summarizing the police department’s activities in the schools, but I would have wanted to know what “business as usual” meant before formally inviting its return. As to “self-initiated” police visits to the schools, I wrote about several concerns here.
Second, although the department has said that the outreach assistant is “not a sworn officer and does not have any enforcement capabilities,” it’s not clear exactly what that means. I assume he cannot arrest people? But what happens if a kid mentions, for example, that one of his parents was smoking a joint? I have to think that the outreach assistant has the power to notify his department of criminal activity, and, if necessary, to testify in court. The outreach assistant works for the police department, not for the school system; the school system would have no control over how the outreach assistant handles a situation like that one. I’d prefer to have that kind of decision made by school officials.
Third, there are many organizations that might be happy to send representatives into our schools to counsel and build relationships with students. The Chamber of Commerce? The American Civil Liberties Union? The U.S. Army? Planned Parenthood? Many of them could make persuasive arguments about why students would benefit from knowing more about their organizations and what they do. The district needs to have a consistent approach to handling such requests. At the very least it makes sense for the district to want to vet such interactions and reach agreements about the content. But at some point I wonder how much it should be the district’s job to provide audiences for the outreach efforts of outside organizations, no matter how worthy the cause.
Most of the schools in the police outreach program have a high proportion of black and African-American students, and the elephant in the room that went undiscussed at the board meeting is the troubled relationship between law enforcement and racial minorities in America. The police department is a law enforcement agency. It is the entry point to our very imperfect criminal justice system. That system currently incarcerates and disenfranchises black Americans at an unbelievably high rate. On the one hand, proponents of the outreach program may hope that it will help improve the way the justice system interacts with minorities. But, especially for minority parents, the question of what children should be taught to think about the police (and about the larger criminal justice system) is a very complicated one that does not have an objectively correct answer. Just consider some of these examples of “the Talk”—the advice that many black parents feel they have to give to their kids about interactions with the police.
I don’t know the “right” way to approach that topic, and I don’t particularly trust the school district to know either, especially if its only approach is to provide the perspective of a representative of the police department. (Again, no offense intended to the current outreach officer here; but we don’t know who the next representative, and the next one, and the next one will be.) For that reason, at the very least it would make sense to limit participation in the program to kids whose parents explicitly opt them into it.
Readers: What role do you think the district should take in teaching kids about race and our criminal justice system?
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
School board agenda for December 13
Sorry, I was knocked out for a few weeks by a seasonal illness and have been unable to keep up the usual posting here. I’m still catching up on the lost time, but I do hope to be able to post more as we head into the holidays.
A quick summary of some of the items on the agenda for this week:
We’ll continue the discussion of the district’s anti-bullying and anti-discrimination policies.
We’ll continue (and probably conclude) the discussion of how the district should handle voluntary transfer requests at the secondary level as we open a new high school and implement new boundaries. Previous posts here.
We’ll hear an update from the committee studying transportation barriers to attendance and participation in extracurricular activities at the secondary level.
We’ll review the newly updated enrollment projections.
At our work session after the meeting, we’ll discuss the issue of the district’s use of seclusion enclosures. (Previous post here.) We’ll continue our discussion of possible revisions to the district’s facilities master plan as we move toward developing a bond proposal to fund the remaining projects in the plan. We will also discuss the feedback we received through the ThoughtExchange platform.
All that and more! The full agendas are here and here; please chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.
A quick summary of some of the items on the agenda for this week:
We’ll continue the discussion of the district’s anti-bullying and anti-discrimination policies.
We’ll continue (and probably conclude) the discussion of how the district should handle voluntary transfer requests at the secondary level as we open a new high school and implement new boundaries. Previous posts here.
We’ll hear an update from the committee studying transportation barriers to attendance and participation in extracurricular activities at the secondary level.
We’ll review the newly updated enrollment projections.
At our work session after the meeting, we’ll discuss the issue of the district’s use of seclusion enclosures. (Previous post here.) We’ll continue our discussion of possible revisions to the district’s facilities master plan as we move toward developing a bond proposal to fund the remaining projects in the plan. We will also discuss the feedback we received through the ThoughtExchange platform.
All that and more! The full agendas are here and here; please chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.
Saturday, December 10, 2016
A class size math problem
In my last post, I discussed how smaller elementary schools tend to generate more outlier class sizes. Before I explore possible ways to mitigate that problem, here are a couple of hypothetical questions that help illustrate the issue:
1. Suppose you have a school that has fourteen rooms available as general education classrooms. What would be ideal total enrollment at that school? What would the individual class sizes be?
2. Suppose you have a school that has ten rooms available for general education classrooms. What would be ideal total enrollment at that school? What would the individual class sizes be?
I chose fourteen classrooms and ten classrooms because those numbers work especially well for class size. In a fourteen-room school, you can have two classrooms for each grade level from K through 6. In a ten-room school, you can have two classrooms in each grade from K through 2 (where we usually try to have smaller class sizes), and then one classroom in each grade from 3-6 (where we usually tolerate larger class sizes).
The only constraint: You have to assume there will be an equal number of students at each grade level. So if there are 30 total sixth graders, there are also 30 total kindergartners, though you’re free to split some grade levels into multiple classrooms while not splitting others. (The reason for this constraint is that there is no good way to draw attendance zones that would result in consistently different enrollment totals in the lower grades than in the higher grades.)
Assume that the school is not a high-need school that would qualify for lower-than-average class sizes under the district’s weighted resource allocation model. So the district’s goal would be to keep the class sizes below 26 in grades K-2 and below 30 in grades 3-6. You can exceed those caps if you think that’s the best solution. But you should recognize that anything falling significantly below those goals will put your school below the district averages and make it harder to allocate teachers to high-need schools.
What are the best answers?
Follow-up here.
1. Suppose you have a school that has fourteen rooms available as general education classrooms. What would be ideal total enrollment at that school? What would the individual class sizes be?
2. Suppose you have a school that has ten rooms available for general education classrooms. What would be ideal total enrollment at that school? What would the individual class sizes be?
I chose fourteen classrooms and ten classrooms because those numbers work especially well for class size. In a fourteen-room school, you can have two classrooms for each grade level from K through 6. In a ten-room school, you can have two classrooms in each grade from K through 2 (where we usually try to have smaller class sizes), and then one classroom in each grade from 3-6 (where we usually tolerate larger class sizes).
The only constraint: You have to assume there will be an equal number of students at each grade level. So if there are 30 total sixth graders, there are also 30 total kindergartners, though you’re free to split some grade levels into multiple classrooms while not splitting others. (The reason for this constraint is that there is no good way to draw attendance zones that would result in consistently different enrollment totals in the lower grades than in the higher grades.)
Assume that the school is not a high-need school that would qualify for lower-than-average class sizes under the district’s weighted resource allocation model. So the district’s goal would be to keep the class sizes below 26 in grades K-2 and below 30 in grades 3-6. You can exceed those caps if you think that’s the best solution. But you should recognize that anything falling significantly below those goals will put your school below the district averages and make it harder to allocate teachers to high-need schools.
What are the best answers?
Follow-up here.
Small schools and class size
As will come as news to no one, I put a high priority on keeping our existing schools open; among other things, I think it’s a key ingredient in maintaining community support for district initiatives and it plays an important role in maintaining livable, family-friendly neighborhoods in the central core of Iowa City. But I don’t deny that there are costs involved in keeping our smaller schools open, and I think it’s important to think about what those costs are and whether there are ways to mitigate them.
In this post, I want to consider the effect of small schools on class size. When the district sets class size goals, it can give the impression that class sizes can be fine-tuned. For example, the most recent draft of those goals suggests that most elementary schools should have class sizes of no more than 26 from kindergarten through second grade, and no more than 30 in grades three through six. (The class size goals are lower than that in schools with higher levels of academic need, but most schools will not fall into that category.)
But conforming to those goals is easier said than done, especially in our smaller schools. A school with an enrollment of 240 is likely to have about 34 kids per grade. What do you do with that number? A 34-kid kindergarten classroom is much larger than ideal, so the district would almost certainly choose to break it into two 17-kid classes—a lot nicer, but way below what we could afford to staff district-wide. What if 40 sixth-graders show up? Again, 20 is a wonderful class size, but it’s way below the district median for sixth-graders.
In other words, smaller schools tend to produce more outlier class sizes, forcing the district to choose between class sizes that are significantly above the goals or significantly below them. This effect lessens somewhat as you get into enrollments of over three hundred. A 300-kid school will tend to produce class sizes in the twenties, which is at least better than having to choose between 17 or 34. But it would still be subject to year-to-year fluctuations that could generate uncomfortable choices, and class sizes in the low twenties are still below the district median.
By contrast, large schools give the district enough flexibility that they seldom result in outlier class sizes. In a 600-kid school (assuming the kids are spread out evenly over the seven grades), you can have class sizes of about 21 in the lower grades and 29 in the higher grades. Even if a bigger-than-usual group shows up in one grade, it gets spread out over three or four classrooms, so it’s not liable to generate class sizes as high as 34. As a result, the large school may be less likely to get an additional teacher than the small school with the 34-kid cohort.
In particular, smaller schools pose a challenge for the district’s weighted resource allocation model—that is, the effort to allocate smaller class sizes to school with higher academic need. To create smaller class sizes in high-need schools, we need to tolerate larger class sizes in the remaining schools. If that effect is spread out over many schools, the effect on any one school will be smaller and thus the model will be more politically sustainable. But it’s not so easy for smaller schools to take a “fair share” of that effect—again, because the choice will often be between a class size that greatly exceeds the goals and one that is much smaller than average. If the smaller schools get lower-than-average class sizes, even when they are not high-need schools, the burden of the resource reallocation will fall disproportionately on larger schools. If the smaller schools are expected to tolerate class sizes far above the goals, the burden will fall disproportionately on them. Either way, it becomes harder to sustain the reallocation effort.
Again, I’m certainly not trying to make the case for closing smaller schools. But if we’re going to resist the ongoing pressure to consider closing some of them (and not just Hoover), it makes sense to do some problem-solving around the issue of outlier class sizes. I’ll explore some possibilities in an upcoming post.
In this post, I want to consider the effect of small schools on class size. When the district sets class size goals, it can give the impression that class sizes can be fine-tuned. For example, the most recent draft of those goals suggests that most elementary schools should have class sizes of no more than 26 from kindergarten through second grade, and no more than 30 in grades three through six. (The class size goals are lower than that in schools with higher levels of academic need, but most schools will not fall into that category.)
But conforming to those goals is easier said than done, especially in our smaller schools. A school with an enrollment of 240 is likely to have about 34 kids per grade. What do you do with that number? A 34-kid kindergarten classroom is much larger than ideal, so the district would almost certainly choose to break it into two 17-kid classes—a lot nicer, but way below what we could afford to staff district-wide. What if 40 sixth-graders show up? Again, 20 is a wonderful class size, but it’s way below the district median for sixth-graders.
In other words, smaller schools tend to produce more outlier class sizes, forcing the district to choose between class sizes that are significantly above the goals or significantly below them. This effect lessens somewhat as you get into enrollments of over three hundred. A 300-kid school will tend to produce class sizes in the twenties, which is at least better than having to choose between 17 or 34. But it would still be subject to year-to-year fluctuations that could generate uncomfortable choices, and class sizes in the low twenties are still below the district median.
By contrast, large schools give the district enough flexibility that they seldom result in outlier class sizes. In a 600-kid school (assuming the kids are spread out evenly over the seven grades), you can have class sizes of about 21 in the lower grades and 29 in the higher grades. Even if a bigger-than-usual group shows up in one grade, it gets spread out over three or four classrooms, so it’s not liable to generate class sizes as high as 34. As a result, the large school may be less likely to get an additional teacher than the small school with the 34-kid cohort.
In particular, smaller schools pose a challenge for the district’s weighted resource allocation model—that is, the effort to allocate smaller class sizes to school with higher academic need. To create smaller class sizes in high-need schools, we need to tolerate larger class sizes in the remaining schools. If that effect is spread out over many schools, the effect on any one school will be smaller and thus the model will be more politically sustainable. But it’s not so easy for smaller schools to take a “fair share” of that effect—again, because the choice will often be between a class size that greatly exceeds the goals and one that is much smaller than average. If the smaller schools get lower-than-average class sizes, even when they are not high-need schools, the burden of the resource reallocation will fall disproportionately on larger schools. If the smaller schools are expected to tolerate class sizes far above the goals, the burden will fall disproportionately on them. Either way, it becomes harder to sustain the reallocation effort.
Again, I’m certainly not trying to make the case for closing smaller schools. But if we’re going to resist the ongoing pressure to consider closing some of them (and not just Hoover), it makes sense to do some problem-solving around the issue of outlier class sizes. I’ll explore some possibilities in an upcoming post.
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
U.S. Office of Civil Rights to make site visit to ICCSD
This past Friday (October 28), the superintendent notified the board that the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education will be making a site visit to our district this coming Spring. Here’s the superintendent’s email:
A bit more background: The concerns that the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) identified in 2013 involved the disparate treatment of African-American children in special education placement decisions. An OCR press release summarized the concerns:
In 2009 the US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights pulled some historical District data to review. In 2013 the OCR contacted the District to discuss their analysis of the data. As a result of that conversation, in the fall of 2013 the District signed a Settlement Agreement to address concerns that arose during the data review. Over the past three years the District has been working with OCR to complete fourteen program improvement items outlined in the agreement. The OCR has been able to verify completion of six of these items based on District document submissions. As a normal part of the agreement process, the OCR will be visiting the District this spring to validate completion of the other items. As more details are confirmed I will continue to keep you up to speed on the process.As of now, this is all I know about the site visit. I’ll post more information as it becomes available.
A bit more background: The concerns that the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) identified in 2013 involved the disparate treatment of African-American children in special education placement decisions. An OCR press release summarized the concerns:
OCR reviewed the files of all students who were initially evaluated for special education. OCR identified several African American students, particularly very young elementary students, who were identified as eligible for special education due to behavior issues and were placed in special education for a large percentage of the school day, and noted that some white students of similar ages identified as eligible for special education for behavior were placed in special education for a smaller percentage of the school day. OCR also identified several students who were found eligible for special education even though the presence of one or more potential exclusionary factors was noted in the file. Further, OCR found several students identified as eligible for special education despite scores that did not appear to be significantly discrepant from their peers.In the settlement that our district reached with the OCR in 2013, the district agreed to take specific remedial measures designed to ensure that the district does not treat African-American children differently from other children in special education placement. You can read the Settlement Agreement here; the OCR press release about the settlement agreement is here.
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
What’s curriculum got to do with it?
As I’ve been listening to people’s reactions to the proficiency gaps we’re seeing in our students’ standardized test score data (including from commenters here and here), I’ve been struck by how seldom people seem to raise the role of curricular choices. I’ve seen comments debating the effect of pursuing socioeconomic balance, and comments about the need for more diverse or culturally sensitive staff—both of which are certainly topics worth discussing. And I’ve seen more general comments about the district’s competence and about accountability—which are certainly relevant concepts too, though they need some definition. But isn’t curriculum kind of an elephant in the room when it comes to proficiency data?
My sense is that many people think of the topic of curriculum as a specialized area in which they are inclined to defer to experts (which is to say, to the professional educators that our district hires to make those decisions). It’s hard to argue with that at some level, but it also seems to me that the board can’t entirely relieve itself of the responsibility to be involved in the issue. Curriculum decisions do come before the board for approval, for example. And even if the board were inclined to defer to administrative judgments on those approvals, everyone agrees that the board is responsible for “holding the administration accountable” for the district’s outcomes. How could we do that if we defer completely to their judgments about what the best choices are?
To put it more specifically: Is it possible that the curricular approaches we have taken unnecessarily advantage the kids who have lots of academic support and help at home, at the expense of kids who have less? I say “unnecessarily” because some effect like that is probably unavoidable, no matter what curriculum we adopt. But it doesn’t seem outlandish to think that some curricula might generate more disparities than others.
For example, when I see how much our schools’ curricula rely on homework, even in the elementary years, and how often my own kids seemed to struggle with it to the point where they asked for parental help, I have to wonder how much harder it must be for kids with fewer resources at home—that is, for example, kids whose parents, on average, can’t help them as much with the math assignments, or just don’t have as much time to read to them, etc. If we are, in effect, outsourcing a portion of our instruction to parents, or relying too heavily on the assumption that kids will get certain experiences at home, aren’t we practically asking for proficiency gaps? I don’t mean to say that homework is the cause of the problem; I just mean to give an example of how curricular choices could conceivably play a role.
I don’t know what the curricular options out there are, though, and I don’t pretend to have any special expertise in evaluating them. But at some point, if we are continually unhappy about the gaps we’re seeing in our students’ proficiency data, how should the board go about assuring itself that our curricular choices are not playing a role in the problem? What is the board’s responsibility on that issue, and how should it exercise it?
My sense is that many people think of the topic of curriculum as a specialized area in which they are inclined to defer to experts (which is to say, to the professional educators that our district hires to make those decisions). It’s hard to argue with that at some level, but it also seems to me that the board can’t entirely relieve itself of the responsibility to be involved in the issue. Curriculum decisions do come before the board for approval, for example. And even if the board were inclined to defer to administrative judgments on those approvals, everyone agrees that the board is responsible for “holding the administration accountable” for the district’s outcomes. How could we do that if we defer completely to their judgments about what the best choices are?
To put it more specifically: Is it possible that the curricular approaches we have taken unnecessarily advantage the kids who have lots of academic support and help at home, at the expense of kids who have less? I say “unnecessarily” because some effect like that is probably unavoidable, no matter what curriculum we adopt. But it doesn’t seem outlandish to think that some curricula might generate more disparities than others.
For example, when I see how much our schools’ curricula rely on homework, even in the elementary years, and how often my own kids seemed to struggle with it to the point where they asked for parental help, I have to wonder how much harder it must be for kids with fewer resources at home—that is, for example, kids whose parents, on average, can’t help them as much with the math assignments, or just don’t have as much time to read to them, etc. If we are, in effect, outsourcing a portion of our instruction to parents, or relying too heavily on the assumption that kids will get certain experiences at home, aren’t we practically asking for proficiency gaps? I don’t mean to say that homework is the cause of the problem; I just mean to give an example of how curricular choices could conceivably play a role.
I don’t know what the curricular options out there are, though, and I don’t pretend to have any special expertise in evaluating them. But at some point, if we are continually unhappy about the gaps we’re seeing in our students’ proficiency data, how should the board go about assuring itself that our curricular choices are not playing a role in the problem? What is the board’s responsibility on that issue, and how should it exercise it?
Sunday, October 30, 2016
A few quick thoughts on stationing police officers and drug dogs in schools
I was recently asked about why our district does not have police officers regularly stationed in our secondary schools and why we don’t use drug dogs in those schools to detect and deter drug possession. The topic of “community liaisons”—which I think referred to police liaisons in the schools—was on the agenda for our work session on Tuesday, though the board meeting ran so late we had to postpone the work session.
At the moment there is no concrete proposal in front of us, so I can just talk generally about my predispositions on the issue. In general, I prefer a system where police come to a school when they are called, rather than one in which police have an ongoing presence in the schools. Part of my concern is because of nationwide trends toward treating school disciplinary matters as law enforcement matters. (See, for example, this article.) I’d prefer to have a school official, rather than a law enforcement officer, making the initial determination about whether to treat an issue as a law enforcement matter. As for the counseling role school resource officers could play, I’d prefer to see it played by school counselors who are under the authority of the school system rather than an outside entity.
I would also be concerned about having drug-sniffing dogs patrolling the schools. If they are used at all, I would want to limit their use to situations where there is a reasonable suspicion about a particular person, rather than subject everyone to that kind of examination, for the same reasons that I wouldn’t want to have police dogs routinely inspecting people walking around downtown, just at random and without any particularized suspicion. I’d be concerned about what that teaches kids about civil liberties and privacy. There are also concerns about the reliability of drug dogs’ responses.
The issue of school resource officers came up a few years ago, and the board voted down a proposal to pursue a grant that would have partially funded a school resource officer program. You can read about that issue here. I wasn’t on the board at the time, but I wrote about it here.
At the moment there is no concrete proposal in front of us, so I can just talk generally about my predispositions on the issue. In general, I prefer a system where police come to a school when they are called, rather than one in which police have an ongoing presence in the schools. Part of my concern is because of nationwide trends toward treating school disciplinary matters as law enforcement matters. (See, for example, this article.) I’d prefer to have a school official, rather than a law enforcement officer, making the initial determination about whether to treat an issue as a law enforcement matter. As for the counseling role school resource officers could play, I’d prefer to see it played by school counselors who are under the authority of the school system rather than an outside entity.
I would also be concerned about having drug-sniffing dogs patrolling the schools. If they are used at all, I would want to limit their use to situations where there is a reasonable suspicion about a particular person, rather than subject everyone to that kind of examination, for the same reasons that I wouldn’t want to have police dogs routinely inspecting people walking around downtown, just at random and without any particularized suspicion. I’d be concerned about what that teaches kids about civil liberties and privacy. There are also concerns about the reliability of drug dogs’ responses.
The issue of school resource officers came up a few years ago, and the board voted down a proposal to pursue a grant that would have partially funded a school resource officer program. You can read about that issue here. I wasn’t on the board at the time, but I wrote about it here.
Saturday, October 29, 2016
Data analysis is hard
As I said in the previous post, I find the student standardized test score data valuable mostly for what it shows us about the significant gaps between subgroups of students. What I find less informative, though, are year-to-year comparisons and comparisons between our students and students elsewhere. It is too easy to impose preconceived conclusions on those comparisons, when there may be other plausible hypotheses that are also consistent with the data.
For example, at our meeting last week, the board were presented with bar graphs showing that our students’ scores compare favorably to those of students nationwide. Then we saw more bar graphs showing that our students compared favorably to statewide students on a measure of annual score growth.
There is always an air of self-congratulation to that kind of discussion. When our students compare favorably with others, that means our district is doing a good job, right? But actually, that isn’t what it means. Even if our students compare favorably with students elsewhere, it doesn’t follow that our district’s policies and practices are the reason why. We live in a university town where a lot of people are highly educated; that alone could potentially explain why our students sometimes score better than the average student. For all we know, they would get even higher scores if our district made different educational choices; our district might actually be holding the students back! The data neither prove nor disprove that hypothesis.
Moreover, the data also show that our students suffer by comparison to students elsewhere in many ways. For example, the Iowa Assessments data show that on all three tested subjects (reading, math, and science), at every grade level tested (third through eleventh), the percentage of our students who are non-proficient is higher than it is for students statewide (with the one exception of eleventh-grade science). Those differences appear to be largely a function of the scores of our subgroups of students on free and reduced-price lunch, black and African-American students, students receiving special ed services, and students who are English-language learners. Here’s an example of the comparisons (no helpful bar graphs on this data set!):
And our students are often doing even worse, relative to statewide, than they did last year. Here’s what that cohort’s chart looked like last year:
If we let the district take credit for every student success story, we also have to blame it for every unsatisfactory result.
But in fact, the data does not dictate either conclusion, because it is very difficult to evaluate all the potential causal factors that affect our student test scores. There are sophisticated statistical methods, like multivariate regression analysis, that could at least try to do so, but they have their own limitations. In any event, I’m fairly sure that our district is not even attempting such sophisticated analyses on its test score data. It’s probably much closer to the truth to say that our district, when given a new set of test score data, has a tendency to simply eyeball the changes from the previous year and then make assumptions (not dictated by the data) about what those data tell us about the effects of the district’s practices.
For example, this year we’re instituting a weighted resource allocation model, shifting resources toward schools that have more kids in the subgroups that are showing proficiency gaps. Next year, we’ll look at how the proficiency scores have changed. If the gaps are at all smaller, it will be tempting to attribute the improvement to the weighted resource model. But the data would be consistent with other plausible explanations as well, since we can’t possibly hold all other variables constant like in a laboratory experiment. At the same time that we’re shifting resources, we might also be changing disciplinary practices, and trying to diversify the teaching staff, and providing bias training, etc. (And of course we’re usually measuring different actual kids from one year to the next.) If the gaps subsequently improve, it’s even possible that the weighted resource model actually made them worse, but that the other variables more than offset that effect.
If we shift resources and then the test scores go up, we’ll want to assume a causal link. But if we shift resources and the scores go down, we won’t assume that the shift caused the decrease—and if anything, people might even say, “See, the scores went down, so we need to shift resources even more.” My point is just that our explanations often come from sources other than the data itself, since the data is consistent with multiple hypotheses. I don’t think that’s crazy; I think it makes sense to bring experience, judgment, and even instincts to bear in interpreting any data. But it can certainly lead people into temptation, as it becomes fairly easy to use data to justify preconceived conclusions.
In any event, if someone tells you that our district is doing great because the kids outperform their counterparts elsewhere, remember that what you’re hearing is probably closer to sales than to science.
For example, at our meeting last week, the board were presented with bar graphs showing that our students’ scores compare favorably to those of students nationwide. Then we saw more bar graphs showing that our students compared favorably to statewide students on a measure of annual score growth.
There is always an air of self-congratulation to that kind of discussion. When our students compare favorably with others, that means our district is doing a good job, right? But actually, that isn’t what it means. Even if our students compare favorably with students elsewhere, it doesn’t follow that our district’s policies and practices are the reason why. We live in a university town where a lot of people are highly educated; that alone could potentially explain why our students sometimes score better than the average student. For all we know, they would get even higher scores if our district made different educational choices; our district might actually be holding the students back! The data neither prove nor disprove that hypothesis.
Moreover, the data also show that our students suffer by comparison to students elsewhere in many ways. For example, the Iowa Assessments data show that on all three tested subjects (reading, math, and science), at every grade level tested (third through eleventh), the percentage of our students who are non-proficient is higher than it is for students statewide (with the one exception of eleventh-grade science). Those differences appear to be largely a function of the scores of our subgroups of students on free and reduced-price lunch, black and African-American students, students receiving special ed services, and students who are English-language learners. Here’s an example of the comparisons (no helpful bar graphs on this data set!):
And our students are often doing even worse, relative to statewide, than they did last year. Here’s what that cohort’s chart looked like last year:
If we let the district take credit for every student success story, we also have to blame it for every unsatisfactory result.
But in fact, the data does not dictate either conclusion, because it is very difficult to evaluate all the potential causal factors that affect our student test scores. There are sophisticated statistical methods, like multivariate regression analysis, that could at least try to do so, but they have their own limitations. In any event, I’m fairly sure that our district is not even attempting such sophisticated analyses on its test score data. It’s probably much closer to the truth to say that our district, when given a new set of test score data, has a tendency to simply eyeball the changes from the previous year and then make assumptions (not dictated by the data) about what those data tell us about the effects of the district’s practices.
For example, this year we’re instituting a weighted resource allocation model, shifting resources toward schools that have more kids in the subgroups that are showing proficiency gaps. Next year, we’ll look at how the proficiency scores have changed. If the gaps are at all smaller, it will be tempting to attribute the improvement to the weighted resource model. But the data would be consistent with other plausible explanations as well, since we can’t possibly hold all other variables constant like in a laboratory experiment. At the same time that we’re shifting resources, we might also be changing disciplinary practices, and trying to diversify the teaching staff, and providing bias training, etc. (And of course we’re usually measuring different actual kids from one year to the next.) If the gaps subsequently improve, it’s even possible that the weighted resource model actually made them worse, but that the other variables more than offset that effect.
If we shift resources and then the test scores go up, we’ll want to assume a causal link. But if we shift resources and the scores go down, we won’t assume that the shift caused the decrease—and if anything, people might even say, “See, the scores went down, so we need to shift resources even more.” My point is just that our explanations often come from sources other than the data itself, since the data is consistent with multiple hypotheses. I don’t think that’s crazy; I think it makes sense to bring experience, judgment, and even instincts to bear in interpreting any data. But it can certainly lead people into temptation, as it becomes fairly easy to use data to justify preconceived conclusions.
In any event, if someone tells you that our district is doing great because the kids outperform their counterparts elsewhere, remember that what you’re hearing is probably closer to sales than to science.
How should we address the proficiency gaps?
I finally have a weekend with some time to blog, and I have some lingering thoughts about some of the issues that the board discussed at this past Tuesday’s board meeting, so I’ll see if I can get a few posts up over the next day or two.
We received several reports about student standardized test scores. These are presented as reports on “student achievement,” but I’m not crazy about that term, since I don’t think standardized tests come anywhere near measuring all the things that go into any meaningful definition of educational achievement. In general, I think school systems are not very careful in the way they talk about data, and I want to at least try to be careful.
I don’t mean to say that the data is not meaningful, though; in fact, I think it is in some ways very meaningful. For me, the most immediately informative aspect of the reports is the glaring gaps between different sub-groups of students. Even though I think standardized tests are an extremely reductive and imperfect measure of the kind of development we want school to cultivate in our kids, the gaps between groups are plainly a sign that something is very wrong. Here is an example:
I selected that chart pretty much at random; many of the charts—for math, reading, and science, for elementary, middle, and high school—show similar gaps. The racial gaps are particularly striking and do not appear to be understandable solely by reference to a correlation between race and poverty. The proficiency rates for black students are almost always lower than those for students receiving free and reduced-price lunch (FRL), the district’s proxy for low-income status, even though of course many black students are not from low-income households and many white students are. So the data are valuable because they remind us of the ongoing and persistent existence of those gaps and tell us some things about just how those gaps vary among different sub-groups.
One big limitation of the data, though, is that they don’t tell us the causes of the gaps, and there are surely multiple causes. It’s easy to generate plausible hypotheses: that poverty affects child development in multiple ways; that the burdens of poverty are not distributed equally among racial groups; that many subtle and un-subtle forms of racism and prejudice affect the experience of minority children in multiple ways; that the tests themselves have racial, cultural, and class biases; and more. But the data don’t help us (much) in generating the hypotheses, and they don’t help us rule any out, and they don’t shed (much) light on how to apportion causality among them or how those causes may interact.
In that list of hypotheses, we have to include the fact that our district itself falls some unknown distance short of the ideal. People are fallible and imperfect. Do our staff members, even with the best of intentions, sometimes treat black children (or poor children, or English-language learners, etc.) differently than white children (or non-poor children, or native speakers, etc.)? Almost certainly they do. Even if you concede that there is some limit on how much district policies and practices alone can reduce those proficiency gaps, have our board members and administrators made all the right decisions to maximize the district’s potential influence in reducing those gaps? I have to assume the answer is no, quite possibly not even by a long shot.
Another limitation of the data is that they don’t tell us (much) about how to fix the problem. If the only gaps were in fifth-grade reading, then at least we’d know what to focus on; but the gaps are persistent across grades and subjects. For ideas, the district often looks to some mixture of social science research, which has many limitations of its own, and our own (imperfect) instincts about what might help.
There is also the problem that some ways of increasing test scores are less educationally sound than others. I don’t want to become one of those districts that cuts all music, art, recess, etc., for poor and minority students in the single-minded pursuit of higher reading and math scores.
Efforts toward reducing the proficiency gaps all require a kind of faith. I don’t mean the religious kind. I just mean that we all know that the problem won’t be solved overnight, and that change takes time. So when we launch into an initiative—for example, funneling more resources toward schools with higher-need students, or doing professional development on implicit bias, or trying to hire more teachers of color—it’s hard to know whether it’s working, and the data don’t tell us (since changes from year to year could be due to any number of causes).
I don’t want to let my skepticism function as an excuse not to try, but part of me definitely wonders: Are our efforts to address the proficiency gaps really going to accomplish anything, or are they all just an elaborate display? Positive changes do take time, but that doesn’t mean we can assume that they’re happening.
The board has two ways to exert influence on how the district functions. One is to set goals, rely on the administration to pursue them, and use ongoing oversight of the administration’s efforts to steer the district in the desired direction. The other is to legislate specific means of pursuing the goals. Given that they are unpaid volunteers, board members inevitably have to rely largely on the former strategy, but our district’s boards have done some of both: directing the administration to pursue the specific goal of addressing the proficiency gaps, but also mandating some specific means (as the current board is doing, for example, with the weighted resource allocation model).
I’d like to see the district make a systematic effort to seek out the parents of kids in the affected subgroups and ask them what they think their kids need from the school system that they’re not getting. I have less faith in the ability of some other group (for example, our relatively non-diverse board) to substitute its judgment for that of the affected families, though that’s unavoidable to at least some degree. I’d also like to see the district’s curriculum review process formally incorporate an equity analysis step, to ensure that the district considers whether some curricular choices might be better than others at serving our non-proficient students. But again, neither one of those suggestions is a silver bullet, and I can’t be sure either would have the desired effect.
Readers, what are your ideas about what the board, as a board, should be doing to address the proficiency gaps?
We received several reports about student standardized test scores. These are presented as reports on “student achievement,” but I’m not crazy about that term, since I don’t think standardized tests come anywhere near measuring all the things that go into any meaningful definition of educational achievement. In general, I think school systems are not very careful in the way they talk about data, and I want to at least try to be careful.
I don’t mean to say that the data is not meaningful, though; in fact, I think it is in some ways very meaningful. For me, the most immediately informative aspect of the reports is the glaring gaps between different sub-groups of students. Even though I think standardized tests are an extremely reductive and imperfect measure of the kind of development we want school to cultivate in our kids, the gaps between groups are plainly a sign that something is very wrong. Here is an example:
I selected that chart pretty much at random; many of the charts—for math, reading, and science, for elementary, middle, and high school—show similar gaps. The racial gaps are particularly striking and do not appear to be understandable solely by reference to a correlation between race and poverty. The proficiency rates for black students are almost always lower than those for students receiving free and reduced-price lunch (FRL), the district’s proxy for low-income status, even though of course many black students are not from low-income households and many white students are. So the data are valuable because they remind us of the ongoing and persistent existence of those gaps and tell us some things about just how those gaps vary among different sub-groups.
One big limitation of the data, though, is that they don’t tell us the causes of the gaps, and there are surely multiple causes. It’s easy to generate plausible hypotheses: that poverty affects child development in multiple ways; that the burdens of poverty are not distributed equally among racial groups; that many subtle and un-subtle forms of racism and prejudice affect the experience of minority children in multiple ways; that the tests themselves have racial, cultural, and class biases; and more. But the data don’t help us (much) in generating the hypotheses, and they don’t help us rule any out, and they don’t shed (much) light on how to apportion causality among them or how those causes may interact.
In that list of hypotheses, we have to include the fact that our district itself falls some unknown distance short of the ideal. People are fallible and imperfect. Do our staff members, even with the best of intentions, sometimes treat black children (or poor children, or English-language learners, etc.) differently than white children (or non-poor children, or native speakers, etc.)? Almost certainly they do. Even if you concede that there is some limit on how much district policies and practices alone can reduce those proficiency gaps, have our board members and administrators made all the right decisions to maximize the district’s potential influence in reducing those gaps? I have to assume the answer is no, quite possibly not even by a long shot.
Another limitation of the data is that they don’t tell us (much) about how to fix the problem. If the only gaps were in fifth-grade reading, then at least we’d know what to focus on; but the gaps are persistent across grades and subjects. For ideas, the district often looks to some mixture of social science research, which has many limitations of its own, and our own (imperfect) instincts about what might help.
There is also the problem that some ways of increasing test scores are less educationally sound than others. I don’t want to become one of those districts that cuts all music, art, recess, etc., for poor and minority students in the single-minded pursuit of higher reading and math scores.
Efforts toward reducing the proficiency gaps all require a kind of faith. I don’t mean the religious kind. I just mean that we all know that the problem won’t be solved overnight, and that change takes time. So when we launch into an initiative—for example, funneling more resources toward schools with higher-need students, or doing professional development on implicit bias, or trying to hire more teachers of color—it’s hard to know whether it’s working, and the data don’t tell us (since changes from year to year could be due to any number of causes).
I don’t want to let my skepticism function as an excuse not to try, but part of me definitely wonders: Are our efforts to address the proficiency gaps really going to accomplish anything, or are they all just an elaborate display? Positive changes do take time, but that doesn’t mean we can assume that they’re happening.
The board has two ways to exert influence on how the district functions. One is to set goals, rely on the administration to pursue them, and use ongoing oversight of the administration’s efforts to steer the district in the desired direction. The other is to legislate specific means of pursuing the goals. Given that they are unpaid volunteers, board members inevitably have to rely largely on the former strategy, but our district’s boards have done some of both: directing the administration to pursue the specific goal of addressing the proficiency gaps, but also mandating some specific means (as the current board is doing, for example, with the weighted resource allocation model).
I’d like to see the district make a systematic effort to seek out the parents of kids in the affected subgroups and ask them what they think their kids need from the school system that they’re not getting. I have less faith in the ability of some other group (for example, our relatively non-diverse board) to substitute its judgment for that of the affected families, though that’s unavoidable to at least some degree. I’d also like to see the district’s curriculum review process formally incorporate an equity analysis step, to ensure that the district considers whether some curricular choices might be better than others at serving our non-proficient students. But again, neither one of those suggestions is a silver bullet, and I can’t be sure either would have the desired effect.
Readers, what are your ideas about what the board, as a board, should be doing to address the proficiency gaps?
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
School board agenda for October 25
Some of the items on this week’s agenda:
We’ll discuss the proposed contract extension and pay raise for the superintendent. The superintendent’s current contract runs out at the end of June 2018. This proposal would extend that contract through June of 2019, and would provide sizable raises to the superintendent both this year and next year. Details here.
We’ll hear a report on several topics under the heading of “teaching and learning.” (See the attachments here.) Several of these reports deal with our students’ scores on the Iowa Assessments. Lots of data here, including data on the proficiency rates of the groups that are the particular focus of the district’s strategic plan: students receiving free and reduced-price lunch, students receiving special education services, and students who are English language learners. I’m still making my way through all the information.
We’ll also hear a report on the district’s science curriculum review. Details here. One issue that has generated some comment: Our current practice is to allow some high school freshmen to opt out of the introductory high school science course (Foundations of Science) and to take Biology instead. The science proposal would end that practice and require all ninth graders to take Foundations of Science (though they may be able to double up on science courses and simultaneously take Biology). Karen W. at the Education in Iowa blog critiques the proposal here.
We’ll also hear an update on special education.
At our work session, we’ll continue the process of thinking about how we’ll approach the September 2017 bond proposal and the long-term facilities master plan.
All that and more! The full agendas are here and here. Feel free to chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.
We’ll discuss the proposed contract extension and pay raise for the superintendent. The superintendent’s current contract runs out at the end of June 2018. This proposal would extend that contract through June of 2019, and would provide sizable raises to the superintendent both this year and next year. Details here.
We’ll hear a report on several topics under the heading of “teaching and learning.” (See the attachments here.) Several of these reports deal with our students’ scores on the Iowa Assessments. Lots of data here, including data on the proficiency rates of the groups that are the particular focus of the district’s strategic plan: students receiving free and reduced-price lunch, students receiving special education services, and students who are English language learners. I’m still making my way through all the information.
We’ll also hear a report on the district’s science curriculum review. Details here. One issue that has generated some comment: Our current practice is to allow some high school freshmen to opt out of the introductory high school science course (Foundations of Science) and to take Biology instead. The science proposal would end that practice and require all ninth graders to take Foundations of Science (though they may be able to double up on science courses and simultaneously take Biology). Karen W. at the Education in Iowa blog critiques the proposal here.
We’ll also hear an update on special education.
At our work session, we’ll continue the process of thinking about how we’ll approach the September 2017 bond proposal and the long-term facilities master plan.
All that and more! The full agendas are here and here. Feel free to chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
Board chooses inequitable voluntary transfer plan that will create overcrowding
Two weeks ago, the school board majority voted to take two high-poverty areas and assign them to more distant secondary schools for the sake of achieving socioeconomic balance. Last night, that same majority supported liberally giving school choice throughout the district to families who have the means to provide their own transportation, regardless of its effect on socioeconomic balance.
The board also consciously chose to allow voluntary transfers into secondary schools even when the district knows that those transfers will worsen overcrowding in those buildings.
The plan that the board supported last night is outlined in this administrative proposal. The plan allows secondary-school transfers as long as they won’t push the receiving school’s enrollment over 95% of its future capacity, regardless of whether they overcrowd the building in the here and now. It allows transfers only if they don’t make enrollment at the departed-from school drop below a certain percentage of its capacity. Freshmen and sophomores will ordinarily not be allowed to transfer out of Liberty High in its opening year.
The plan would give the administration the discretion to permit exceptions to those rules on a case-by-case basis to students who could demonstrate that the boundary changes create a “hardship” for them. The board decided not (at least at this time) to adopt any criteria for what would count as such a hardship. (The longstanding policy of allowing health, safety, and security hardship transfers will continue.) Hardship transfers will not come with a bus, though, so they’ll do little good for anyone whose hardship is the transportation barriers created by the new boundaries.
In my view, setting the limit based on future capacity, rather than present capacity, makes no sense. For example, we have every reason to think that Liberty High’s enrollment will be well over its capacity by 2019-20. (This chart shows overcrowding just by projecting forward the number of students currently in the younger grades, and it does not account for likely growth in the North Corridor.) So if we allow freshmen and sophomores to transfer in to Liberty in 2017, we know that those students will put the building even further over capacity in 2019. But under the administrative plan, those transfers will be allowed, on the grounds that Liberty will someday have more seats—that is, in 2022, long after those particular students have graduated.
Similarly, the plan treats City High’s capacity as higher than it will actually be until it gets its addition five years from now. After months of trading arguments about how the boundary plan will affect overcrowding, the board seems to have decided that overcrowding isn’t so bad after all—at least when it accommodates families with means.
The plan makes a hash of the board’s rationale for its secondary boundary decision. The district will have succeeded in effectively taking school choice away from families who don’t have the means to get their kids to and from their preferred school, while providing it to everyone else. If you’re a well-off Manville or Shimek family who wants to transfer out of City and into Liberty—making the socioeconomic disparity between the schools worse—we’re fine with that. If you’re a well-off Wickham family who wants to transfer out of West into Liberty—making the socioeconomic disparity worse—we’re fine with that. But if you’re poor and have no choice but to rely on the school bus, you have to go to the more distant school, regardless of your judgment about what’s best for your child. And, by the way, if that school is Liberty, we hope you enjoy the overcrowding!
It’s harder and harder to see the board’s decisions as being driven by concern for kids from low-income families. I don’t know how we can look any Kirkwood or Alexander parent in the eye after these choices.
The board also consciously chose to allow voluntary transfers into secondary schools even when the district knows that those transfers will worsen overcrowding in those buildings.
The plan that the board supported last night is outlined in this administrative proposal. The plan allows secondary-school transfers as long as they won’t push the receiving school’s enrollment over 95% of its future capacity, regardless of whether they overcrowd the building in the here and now. It allows transfers only if they don’t make enrollment at the departed-from school drop below a certain percentage of its capacity. Freshmen and sophomores will ordinarily not be allowed to transfer out of Liberty High in its opening year.
The plan would give the administration the discretion to permit exceptions to those rules on a case-by-case basis to students who could demonstrate that the boundary changes create a “hardship” for them. The board decided not (at least at this time) to adopt any criteria for what would count as such a hardship. (The longstanding policy of allowing health, safety, and security hardship transfers will continue.) Hardship transfers will not come with a bus, though, so they’ll do little good for anyone whose hardship is the transportation barriers created by the new boundaries.
In my view, setting the limit based on future capacity, rather than present capacity, makes no sense. For example, we have every reason to think that Liberty High’s enrollment will be well over its capacity by 2019-20. (This chart shows overcrowding just by projecting forward the number of students currently in the younger grades, and it does not account for likely growth in the North Corridor.) So if we allow freshmen and sophomores to transfer in to Liberty in 2017, we know that those students will put the building even further over capacity in 2019. But under the administrative plan, those transfers will be allowed, on the grounds that Liberty will someday have more seats—that is, in 2022, long after those particular students have graduated.
Similarly, the plan treats City High’s capacity as higher than it will actually be until it gets its addition five years from now. After months of trading arguments about how the boundary plan will affect overcrowding, the board seems to have decided that overcrowding isn’t so bad after all—at least when it accommodates families with means.
The plan makes a hash of the board’s rationale for its secondary boundary decision. The district will have succeeded in effectively taking school choice away from families who don’t have the means to get their kids to and from their preferred school, while providing it to everyone else. If you’re a well-off Manville or Shimek family who wants to transfer out of City and into Liberty—making the socioeconomic disparity between the schools worse—we’re fine with that. If you’re a well-off Wickham family who wants to transfer out of West into Liberty—making the socioeconomic disparity worse—we’re fine with that. But if you’re poor and have no choice but to rely on the school bus, you have to go to the more distant school, regardless of your judgment about what’s best for your child. And, by the way, if that school is Liberty, we hope you enjoy the overcrowding!
It’s harder and harder to see the board’s decisions as being driven by concern for kids from low-income families. I don’t know how we can look any Kirkwood or Alexander parent in the eye after these choices.
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
Board reinstates secondary boundary plan
As expected, the board voted tonight to reinstate the previous board’s secondary feeder plan, which would send Kirkwood-area students to Liberty High and Alexander-area students to West High. At the junior high level, Kirkwood will be assigned to North Central but students will be allowed to choose Northwest instead; Alexander will be assigned to Northwest but will be allowed to choose South East instead, though they will not receive a bus to South East. Board members LaTasha DeLoach, Brian Kirschling, Chris Lynch, and Paul Roesler voted for that plan; board members Phil Hemingway, Lori Roetlin, and I voted against it. My reasons for voting against it are stated more fully here, here, here, and here. Here are my comments on this issue at the meeting tonight:
Well, I think we all know how these votes are going to go, more or less. We had an election this summer in which this issue played a big role, and I’m happy to let the democratic process take its course and decide this issue. And we need decide it now and move forward.
That doesn’t mean I have to agree with it, though. Once upon a time I was elected too, and when I ran I said: “We should pay special attention to the needs of disadvantaged students and their families. In my view, those families are the best judges of what those needs are. We should seek out their advice and bring it to bear on district policy.”
I don’t think we’ve done that on this issue, and I don’t have any confidence that the kids in the Kirkwood and Alexander areas will be better off as a result of the board’s decisions tonight. I also think the board has its head in the sand about the capacity problems at Liberty that this decision will cause. It’s only a matter of time before someone suggests we move Van Allen back to West High because Liberty doesn’t have enough space—which would entail even more busing costs at the expense of class size.
I’m not a person who thinks there are no benefits from creating socioeconomically diverse environments in our schools when we can do that without creating hardships for families that are struggling economically. The strongest evidence for those benefits is at the elementary level, but I don’t doubt there are benefits to some degree at the secondary level as well.
But to me it’s a bad sign when many—not all, but many—of the people arguing that we need to diversify our high schools—including some of the people sitting up here—happen to live in elementary attendance areas that are very white, largely well off, with very low-free-and-reduced-price lunch (FRL) rates, but don’t seem to think we need to do anything at all about that, even though we have much, much larger socioeconomic disparities between our elementary schools than we do between our high schools. Many of those people didn’t object at all—or even expressed support—this past May when this board adopted elementary attendance areas that made those disparities even bigger.
There are things that we can do to create more socioeconomic balance in our elementary schools—things that wouldn’t even require more busing, which wouldn’t create the kind of burdens that these secondary boundaries will create, and which would probably even save the district money over time and help prevent outlier class sizes. For example, the paired schools concept, which could help lower the FRL concentrations we now have at schools like Twain and Mann by pairing them with lower-FRL schools. There are also boundary alterations we could make to even out FRLs without much disruption—for example, keeping the Breckenridge trailer court at Lemme, where they’ve gone for years, instead of redistricting them to Hoover East, and then moving the part of Lemme that’s east of Scott Boulevard to new Hoover instead.
Many of these relatively straightforward opportunities for elementary balance are on the east side of Iowa City, which, in the election, most strongly supported the candidate who argued for socioeconomic balance at the secondary level.
If the board goes ahead with a plan to bus kids from low-income families around to create balance at the secondary level, but shows no interest or urgency about the less burdensome, less costly ways of generating some balance at the elementary level, where it probably matters more, people will have every reason to think that this vote isn’t about diversity or equity, it’s about “Send those kids someplace else. Someplace other than the school where my kids go.”
And if we say, “those elementary changes are too controversial to talk about right before a bond vote, we should wait until a better time,” when we didn’t say that about busing Alexander and Kirkwood, that should bother us. Let’s put those topics on our agenda now.
Well, I think we all know how these votes are going to go, more or less. We had an election this summer in which this issue played a big role, and I’m happy to let the democratic process take its course and decide this issue. And we need decide it now and move forward.
That doesn’t mean I have to agree with it, though. Once upon a time I was elected too, and when I ran I said: “We should pay special attention to the needs of disadvantaged students and their families. In my view, those families are the best judges of what those needs are. We should seek out their advice and bring it to bear on district policy.”
I don’t think we’ve done that on this issue, and I don’t have any confidence that the kids in the Kirkwood and Alexander areas will be better off as a result of the board’s decisions tonight. I also think the board has its head in the sand about the capacity problems at Liberty that this decision will cause. It’s only a matter of time before someone suggests we move Van Allen back to West High because Liberty doesn’t have enough space—which would entail even more busing costs at the expense of class size.
I’m not a person who thinks there are no benefits from creating socioeconomically diverse environments in our schools when we can do that without creating hardships for families that are struggling economically. The strongest evidence for those benefits is at the elementary level, but I don’t doubt there are benefits to some degree at the secondary level as well.
But to me it’s a bad sign when many—not all, but many—of the people arguing that we need to diversify our high schools—including some of the people sitting up here—happen to live in elementary attendance areas that are very white, largely well off, with very low-free-and-reduced-price lunch (FRL) rates, but don’t seem to think we need to do anything at all about that, even though we have much, much larger socioeconomic disparities between our elementary schools than we do between our high schools. Many of those people didn’t object at all—or even expressed support—this past May when this board adopted elementary attendance areas that made those disparities even bigger.
There are things that we can do to create more socioeconomic balance in our elementary schools—things that wouldn’t even require more busing, which wouldn’t create the kind of burdens that these secondary boundaries will create, and which would probably even save the district money over time and help prevent outlier class sizes. For example, the paired schools concept, which could help lower the FRL concentrations we now have at schools like Twain and Mann by pairing them with lower-FRL schools. There are also boundary alterations we could make to even out FRLs without much disruption—for example, keeping the Breckenridge trailer court at Lemme, where they’ve gone for years, instead of redistricting them to Hoover East, and then moving the part of Lemme that’s east of Scott Boulevard to new Hoover instead.
Many of these relatively straightforward opportunities for elementary balance are on the east side of Iowa City, which, in the election, most strongly supported the candidate who argued for socioeconomic balance at the secondary level.
If the board goes ahead with a plan to bus kids from low-income families around to create balance at the secondary level, but shows no interest or urgency about the less burdensome, less costly ways of generating some balance at the elementary level, where it probably matters more, people will have every reason to think that this vote isn’t about diversity or equity, it’s about “Send those kids someplace else. Someplace other than the school where my kids go.”
And if we say, “those elementary changes are too controversial to talk about right before a bond vote, we should wait until a better time,” when we didn’t say that about busing Alexander and Kirkwood, that should bother us. Let’s put those topics on our agenda now.
Monday, September 12, 2016
School board agenda for Tuesday, September 13
Some of the items on this week’s board agenda:
1. The board will discuss (and probably resolve) the issue of secondary boundaries, which has been pending since the process was interrupted by the resignation of board member Tom Yates in May. I’m guessing that there will now be a majority for reinstating the previous board’s secondary boundary plan that would send Kirkwood-area students to Liberty and Alexander-area students to Northwest Junior High and West High. (I don’t support that plan, for reasons I wrote about here, here, here, and here.)
2. We’ll consider two busing appeals from parents who argue that their kids should receive a bus to West High because they live just beyond the three-mile mark.
3. We’ll hear an update on the district’s response to the State Department of Education’s audit of our special education practices. Info here.
4. At the work session after the meeting, we’ll discuss our request to our demographer to get updated enrollment projections. Info here.
5. We’ll discuss a proposed process to get community input on possible changes to the district’s facilities master plan. Editorial comment: I have a lot of doubts about the ability of our ThoughtExchange platform to provide a representative sample of community sentiment, and I wish it did not advertise itself in that way. (See this post.) But what I’m most interested in is hearing all the arguments and counterarguments on any proposed changes, and ThoughtExchange is one way of gathering those, as are emails, community comment at board meetings, etc.
6. We’ll discuss our voluntary transfer process and whether we should change it or make any exceptions to it as we transition to new boundaries and the opening of a new high school. Long, boring post on this topic here.
7. We’ll review a proposed timeline for preparing for a bond proposal to appear on the September 2017 school board election ballot, to fund projects in the district’s facilities master plan.
8. We’ll discuss the district’s weighted resource allocation model, under which schools that have higher rates of free-and-reduced-price lunch (FRL) (which is the district’s proxy for low-income status) receive additional resources. The district has already begun phasing in this model—by, for example, trying to tilt teacher allocation toward high-FRL elementary schools. I asked for some further discussion of just how this model would function at the secondary school level.
9. We’ll get a quarterly report on the board’s strategic goal to “annually improve the educational experiences for all children through culturally inclusive and responsive school environments and classroom instruction, as measured by various student assessments including the Biennial Youth Survey, with a focus on equitable outcomes for students in protected classes.”
All that and more. The full agendas are here and here; chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.
1. The board will discuss (and probably resolve) the issue of secondary boundaries, which has been pending since the process was interrupted by the resignation of board member Tom Yates in May. I’m guessing that there will now be a majority for reinstating the previous board’s secondary boundary plan that would send Kirkwood-area students to Liberty and Alexander-area students to Northwest Junior High and West High. (I don’t support that plan, for reasons I wrote about here, here, here, and here.)
2. We’ll consider two busing appeals from parents who argue that their kids should receive a bus to West High because they live just beyond the three-mile mark.
3. We’ll hear an update on the district’s response to the State Department of Education’s audit of our special education practices. Info here.
4. At the work session after the meeting, we’ll discuss our request to our demographer to get updated enrollment projections. Info here.
5. We’ll discuss a proposed process to get community input on possible changes to the district’s facilities master plan. Editorial comment: I have a lot of doubts about the ability of our ThoughtExchange platform to provide a representative sample of community sentiment, and I wish it did not advertise itself in that way. (See this post.) But what I’m most interested in is hearing all the arguments and counterarguments on any proposed changes, and ThoughtExchange is one way of gathering those, as are emails, community comment at board meetings, etc.
6. We’ll discuss our voluntary transfer process and whether we should change it or make any exceptions to it as we transition to new boundaries and the opening of a new high school. Long, boring post on this topic here.
7. We’ll review a proposed timeline for preparing for a bond proposal to appear on the September 2017 school board election ballot, to fund projects in the district’s facilities master plan.
8. We’ll discuss the district’s weighted resource allocation model, under which schools that have higher rates of free-and-reduced-price lunch (FRL) (which is the district’s proxy for low-income status) receive additional resources. The district has already begun phasing in this model—by, for example, trying to tilt teacher allocation toward high-FRL elementary schools. I asked for some further discussion of just how this model would function at the secondary school level.
9. We’ll get a quarterly report on the board’s strategic goal to “annually improve the educational experiences for all children through culturally inclusive and responsive school environments and classroom instruction, as measured by various student assessments including the Biennial Youth Survey, with a focus on equitable outcomes for students in protected classes.”
All that and more. The full agendas are here and here; chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.
Voluntary transfers and transition rules
UPDATE 9/18/16The board made some headway discussing this issue at last week’s work session. Follow-up discussion here.
One of the topics the board will be discussing in this week’s work session is the district’s voluntary transfer process. Earlier this year, I proposed that the board consider making some changes and clarifications to that process as we transition to new boundaries and to the opening of Liberty High. This post is to update and summarize that proposal and ask readers for input. (Warning: prepare for a long post.)
One of the topics the board will be discussing in this week’s work session is the district’s voluntary transfer process. Earlier this year, I proposed that the board consider making some changes and clarifications to that process as we transition to new boundaries and to the opening of Liberty High. This post is to update and summarize that proposal and ask readers for input. (Warning: prepare for a long post.)
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
A response to Chris Lynch’s guest opinion
My fellow board member Chris Lynch has a guest opinion in today’s Press-Citizen on the subject of secondary boundaries. As anyone who reads this blog knows, this is a topic that the board is divided on. Disagreement among the board members can be a healthy thing, especially if it means that people get to hear both arguments and counterarguments on important issues. In that spirit, here’s my take on the arguments Director Lynch raises in his article.
I think it’s perfectly reasonable to want socioeconomic balance at the secondary schools. Unfortunately, though, that balance cannot be achieved—at least not through traditional attendance zones—without busing hundreds of kids from low-income families every year to more distant schools. I remain unconvinced that those kids will be made better off through that kind of plan, and I do not see the likely socioeconomic differences at the high schools as being large enough to justify burdening those kids in that way.
Related posts here, here, and here.
- The first thing I noticed about the article is that it says nothing about the primary objection raised to Director Lynch’s proposal: the busing of kids from two of our most high-poverty neighborhoods, Kirkwood and Alexander, to more distant schools for the sake of pursuing greater socioeconomic parity at the high schools. The article does not even try to persuade the reader that the plan’s benefits outweigh its burdens for Kirkwood and Alexander families. I take the article to be implying that whatever burdens those families have to bear are justified by the other benefits of the proposal, but I would have liked to hear the main counterargument to the proposal more explicitly addressed.
- Much of the article is arguing with a straw man: Director Lynch compares his favored proposal with a plan that would assign both Kirkwood and Alexander to West High. But in fact, neither side of this debate wants to leave both Kirkwood and Alexander assigned to West. The real alternative proposal is to assign Kirkwood to West and all or most of Alexander to City High. As a result, many of Director Lynch’s arguments falter. For example, he argues that his proposal—to remove Kirkwood from West—will keep West from becoming overcrowded, but the alternative proposal—removing Alexander from West—will also keep it from becoming overcrowded. Basically, West with Alexander looks a lot like West with Kirkwood, so it’s hard to distinguish the two proposals based on their effect on West.
- Director Lynch’s main argument is that his proposal is the only way to prevent “programming inequity” at the high schools. I’m not surprised at this focus. Despite all the talk about the need for diversity, much of this debate has been driven by a desire for uniformity in course offerings at the three high schools—which explains why the focus on “balance” has been exclusively at the secondary level, even though the socioeconomic disparities at the elementary level are far larger. (Many of the people arguing against having fifteen- or twenty-point FRL (rate of free- and reduced-price lunch) differences at the high schools were supportive of the board’s adoption of elementary boundaries that had FRL differences of over seventy percentage points.)
What are the programming differences that will result if we keep Kirkwood and Alexander at their nearest high schools? Director Lynch does not say. He says only that “Liberty will not have programming equity with City/West due to low/lower student enrollment.” But it has always been the plan for Liberty to start with lower enrollment, because its initial capacity will be lower. (It will be a 1000-seat school until 2022.) The district’s curricular goal for Liberty is to have at least 200 kids per class, with the understanding that juniors and seniors will not be required to attend in its initial year. On the high end, it would be unwise to have more than about 250 kids per class, since that would push the building over capacity as soon as there are four full classes there. Based on what we know about how many students are in the pipeline, keeping Kirkwood at West is the plan that puts Liberty at between 200 and 250 students per class in its initial years—thus meeting its curricular goals while avoiding overcrowding.
Director Lynch’s proposal, on the other hand, would result in enrollment at Liberty being significantly over capacity by 2019 (the first year it will have four full classes), even without considering likely population growth in the North Corridor. And the overcrowding would get much worse before Liberty gets its addition (scheduled for 2022).
- Director Lynch asserts that unless his proposal is adopted, “The barriers to learning will be 2-4 times higher at City/West than Liberty.” I had to stop and read that sentence multiple times, since at first I had no idea what it meant. I’m assuming that the article is equating the rate of free- and reduced-price lunch or English language instruction with a school having “higher barriers to learning.” This strikes me as an odd way to talk about the presence of poor kids or second-language English speakers in our schools. It is also inherently alarmist language; “4 times higher” may mean that one high school would have 8% of its kids in English-language instruction while another high school would have 2%—but it sounds scarier to say that “barriers to learning will be four times higher” at the former.
Certainly some kids do face greater barriers, but the article avoids any discussion of how those kids will be better off if they are bused to different schools. That would require a discussion of whether the likely FRL rate at any school is high enough to raise educational red flags, and whether the benefit of moving kids to a different, more distant school will outweigh the burdens. The article doesn’t attempt to make those arguments.
- Director Lynch suggests that only under his proposal can a bond be passed that will fund the remaining projects in the district’s facilities plan. It’s true that no one is under any obligation to vote for a bond, and some people may choose to express their unhappiness with the board’s policies by voting “no” on any bond. But this kind of argument is circular: everyone likes to think that their plan is the one the community likes best. Director Lynch says that the community and the board “collectively spent thousands of hours” developing his proposal, but in fact there was a great deal of opposition to busing-for-balance at the district’s listening posts. What’s especially noticeable about the argument on bond passage, though, is the absence of any acknowledgement that Kirkwood and Alexander residents will also play a role in whether a bond passes. In the discussion of bond passage, those voters don’t seem to exist.
- Director Lynch argues that “anything that looks like segregation” has “no place in the Iowa City Community School District.” There is no doubt that the housing patterns that make it harder to diversify some of our schools are the result of a history of discrimination. Whether our high schools need to have nearly equal socioeconomic profiles to avoid “looking like segregation,” however, is another question, especially if that goal requires treating low-income families worse than other families, by putting greater burdens on them and by being more willing to disregard their input. How best to improve the lives of kids from low-income families is a hard question that can’t be reduced to simply equalizing numbers—as Director Lynch has essentially acknowledged by supporting elementary boundaries that have enormous disparities in socioeconomic and racial diversity and that look much more like segregation than anything proposed at the high school level.
I think it’s perfectly reasonable to want socioeconomic balance at the secondary schools. Unfortunately, though, that balance cannot be achieved—at least not through traditional attendance zones—without busing hundreds of kids from low-income families every year to more distant schools. I remain unconvinced that those kids will be made better off through that kind of plan, and I do not see the likely socioeconomic differences at the high schools as being large enough to justify burdening those kids in that way.
Related posts here, here, and here.
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