On the heels of hearing William Sanders present the SAS EVAAS report, Wake County commissioners may next hear from Richard Kahlenberg.
As noted in a recent article by Thomas Goldsmith, Commissioner Stan Norwalk successfully got a motion approved last week to explore bringing Kahlenberg in to make a presentation. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, has been a strong supporter of Wake's diversity policy.
After last fall's school board election, Kahlenberg made a pitch for a controlled-choice diversity model in lieu of going to neighborhood schools.
Under Norwalk's motion, Kahlenberg would be paid with private monies and would speak to the board of commissioners and the school board, too, if that body wished.
Commissioner Paul Coble opposed the motion as designed only to counteract Sanders' presentation, which indicated that lower levels of black and Hispanic middle-school students took Algebra I than white middle-schoolers.
Tony Gurley, chairman of the board of commissioners, has used the SAS report to bolster claims that diversity efforts have failed to help low-income and minority students.
Comments
New book
Tue, 01/26/2010 - 08:22 — SDR256Maybe Dr. Kahlenberg will update his presentation with the material from his new book? The diversity busing song and dance was from papers he wrote in the 1970s. Its my understanding that his newest book explains how diversity busing does not work. THAT would be interesting. But I agree with Mudge - he should present for free. I doubt that we had to pay the SAS experts to present.
Kahlenberg's
Tue, 01/26/2010 - 07:03 — DrActualFactualKahlenberg's ideas/experiments as implemented by the previous BOE have resulted in high numbers of students being frequently reassigned to populate new schools. At the last BOE meeting a woman encouraged the BOE to vote for choice and end MYR as her oldest child had attended 7 different schools....7 out of 12 years, and her younger sibling was on the 4th or 5th school. This lady and her neighbors have had no stability under Wake's current assignment model (Kahlenberg's work). I'm quite certain Kahlenberg would agree that 7 out of 12 years at different schools is unacceptable. His model is based on a very small school system (6,000 students?) to fund that on a scale for 140,000 students would probably not work--especially in the current climate where the board has been willing to rather force you into MYR and spend NO more on programs. We are in a budget position to have to CUT money which seems to contradict an expansion of magnet programs to 150+ schools.
I think his ideas would
Mon, 01/25/2010 - 15:34 — RevHiDI think his ideas would present a win-win for Wake County. Parents would have priority to attend their neighborhood school, but also expanded choice to move to other schools. Every school has a focus, and the district evaluates what programs are popular and expands them, so choice can be honored most of the time. We can accomplish those benefits AND also avoid the historic extra expense and low success rate of overwhelmingly high poverty base schools. Not only that, we'd have tools to better manage population shifts and growth. It merits a serious look.
>>Every school has a focus,
Mon, 01/25/2010 - 16:40 — JSBinNC>>Every school has a focus, and the district evaluates what programs are popular and expands them, so choice can be honored most of the time.
THIS IS THE KEY. Every school would have to offer "something" extra - language or arts or science - something - and this all costs $$.
Choice comes with a cost - one way or another... :)
I think that Mr. Kahlenberg
Mon, 01/25/2010 - 16:37 — jenmanI think that Mr. Kahlenberg should send his ideas to the BOE or sign up to speak for 3 minutes like the rest of us have to do. I definitely don't think he has any place presenting a student assignment model to the County Commissioners.
So...
Mon, 01/25/2010 - 22:35 — supportwcpssI assume you did not approve of SAS presenting their results to the CCs either?
I think that the CCs having
Tue, 01/26/2010 - 11:59 — jenmanI think that the CCs having SAS present was just a political move, so I don't think it was necessary. However, the big difference here is that Sanders was actually presenting something that is going on in the system. (Personally, I'm glad that there was another venue for that info to get out in the open.) Kahlenberg has nothing substantial to offer to the CCs. This is just another way for Norwalk to pout.
collosal waste of time
Mon, 01/25/2010 - 23:43 — loriacThe SAS presentation was based on student data and the actual performance of our students. What REAL DATA could Mr. Kahlenberg have that could possibly interest the county commissioners. Those private monies should be used to buy more copy paper for our teachers.
So...
Tue, 01/26/2010 - 00:02 — Bob_SconceSo, my problem is that you have to look at Kahlenberg's information with a critical eye. You actually have to read the studies he cites, look at their data and see if you buy their analysis. Unfortunately, neither Stan Norwalk nor any of the county commissioners (or, most politicians in the US for that matter) are equipped to do that. As a result, they give so-called "experts" far more credence than they deserve.
The statistics behind the social sciences are easy to game -- in this day of computers, it's far too easy to keep running regressions with different assumptions until you happen across one that seems meaningful.
Well...
Tue, 01/26/2010 - 00:16 — supportwcpssI don't see why you can't say the same thing about SAS'.
Well..
Tue, 01/26/2010 - 07:11 — Bob_SconceKahlenburg has a dog in the fight and SAS doesn't. If anything, SAS is led by a supporter of the school district's past policies.
EVAAS is a consistent,
Mon, 01/25/2010 - 23:11 — CaryCurmudgeonEVAAS is a consistent, data-drive method of tracking student achievement.
Mr. Kahlenberg, on the other hand, seems to want to use WCPSS as his test lab. Less than a year ago he was here telling WCPSS that they should be doing MORE forced busing, not less. Now he has some different snake oil to sell.
My point was that this should not be on WCPSS's dime.
They want to have him come down here, fine. But WCPSS didn't pay for the SAS presentation and they shouldn't pay for Kahlenberg either.
Umm...
Tue, 01/26/2010 - 00:15 — supportwcpssI believe private monies as stated in the blog posting means...um...private monies.
Yep. Why don't you kick in
Tue, 01/26/2010 - 08:32 — CaryCurmudgeonYep. Why don't you kick in and put your money where your mouth is for a change, instead of just shooting your mouth off.
Umm...
Tue, 01/26/2010 - 17:26 — supportwcpssEasy there Joe. I never said either way whether I supported this item. I simply referenced the private monies since you implied it could be public money.
And not that it's any of your business, but I contribute plenty both in time and money. I just choose to give it to schools directly instead of political entities such as your organization.
His ideas are very similar
Mon, 01/25/2010 - 16:18 — Tony_LucasHis ideas are very similar to the ones from my mom's platform when she ran in October. Personally, I support the idea of controlled choice but some on this blog called it the status quo with a twist of lemon, I think I have the wording right. Controlled choice would have helped us to maintain a diversity policy while also allowing parents and students more choice and improving the schools.
What I don't like about the
Mon, 01/25/2010 - 16:34 — jenmanWhat I don't like about the controlled choice model is that acceptance is still based on SES. We have such low standards and offerings in our base schools that we cannot continue to discriminate when it comes to magnet acceptances.
The idea that was mentioned
Tue, 01/26/2010 - 00:51 — Tony_LucasThe idea that was mentioned during the campaign was to have schools "compete" for students and if a certain school was not being chosen as much as the others, then it would be evaluated to see how to attract more people to apply to it. So in the end, all of our schools would have high standards. The reason for basing seats on SES is so that we do not have high poverty schools, where the school lacks adequate resources. It kind of goes back to an economics saying "Don't put all of your eggs in one basket." Diversity does lead to higher returns.
"Diversity does lead to
Tue, 01/26/2010 - 09:37 — woodstock"Diversity does lead to higher returns."
Where is the evidence of this? At Enloe, a very resource-rich school that loves to tout its diversity, the graduation rate for ED students is 38%.
I thought we already
Tue, 01/26/2010 - 10:12 — user12345I thought we already discussed that the ED kids at Enloe were discriminated by their neighborhood schools and prevented from taking the prerequisites (e.g. Algebra) needed to take the courses are Enloe ... ED problems in being able to take advantage of Enloe's offerings are not diversity related but discrimination / disparity related at their neighborhood ES and MS.
Also, remember that ES do best in places like Green Hope where they are bussed in and a minority and do worse in schools where they are a majority.
Actually, ED kids overall do
Tue, 01/26/2010 - 12:03 — jenmanActually, ED kids overall do best in schools under 10% F&R, then over 60%, then 50-59, then it goes back and forth with the rest of the categories.
Uh...
Tue, 01/26/2010 - 10:51 — Bob_Sconce(1) Enloe has a lot of non-math advanced courses. Sure, not being in 8th grade Algebra means that you're not really going to take advanced math classes in high school. But, the last I checked, there was no 8th grade advanced social studies or science, for example.
(2) As to Green Hope, it's unclear how many of the ED students there are bussed in.
But in his controlled choice
Mon, 01/25/2010 - 18:59 — RevHiDBut in his controlled choice model, every school is like a magnet. And some of the programs are not that expensive. They'd be a lot cheaper than pouring money into high poverty schools!
But, on whole, ED students
Tue, 01/26/2010 - 09:39 — woodstockBut, on whole, ED students fair worse at magnet schools than they do non-magents. So, how is is the issue of underperforming low-income students addressed in your scenario.
I agree. If choice comes
Mon, 01/25/2010 - 16:38 — JSBinNCI agree. If choice comes after the overhaul and update of base school offerings - then it becomes something to think about.
Controlled choice with no changes to the base school academics or selection process for the "choice" schools (translate magnet) - is EXACTLY what we have today.
I hope Mr. Kahlenberg is
Mon, 01/25/2010 - 13:22 — CaryCurmudgeonI hope Mr. Kahlenberg is waiving his normal speaker's fee, or that private funding has been arranged. WCPSS certainly does not need to be spending their money on this guy just to hear the same, tired story. Maybe he can throw in a piece about how his own children go to schools which are not diverse.
Perhaps Clyde Smith will
Mon, 01/25/2010 - 12:36 — DrActualFactualPerhaps Clyde Smith will pick up Kahlenberg from RDU and deliverance him to the meeting, oh I mean deliver, my bad. Why he'd want to come back down to the hell hole he helped create is beyond me. I guess he's missing his Tuesday's with Stan.
Strange...
Mon, 01/25/2010 - 11:05 — Bob_SconceWasn't it Stan Norwalk who talked last year about how the commissioners shouldn't be intervening in internal school district matters?