Neil Riemann on Wake's "bad arguments" to justify ending the diversity policy

"DIVERSITY GETS AN F"
http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/04/06/1107212/diversity-gets-an-f.html

On a related note, BoE candidate Neil Riemann and nutty professor Jim Martin like to drone on about data and how WCPSS's civil rights response was misleading, but where is their data? Where is this compelling evidence that the so-called "diversity" policy did anything positive for anyone? The citizens of Wake County have demanded this information for years, and have been repeatedly rebuffed with dismissive statements like "we don't need to do a study, we know it works." Well, it didn't work and we have undeniable evidence to prove this illegal, discriminatory and burdensome practice should be filed away in the annals of history as another failed social experiment.

If you want to see what a neighborhood schools would look like go to Brentwood Elementary Engineering Magnet School.  Next year, this school will be taken over by Race to the Top because of its chronic low academic achievement (and other factors).

Let me lay it out:

A percentage of low income students (mainly inter city) are bused out to area such Cary to make schools more diverse. This leaves inter city schools empty.  So they are converted to magnet schools that offer something different than the average public school to entice parents to send their children there.  Traditionally, magnet schools take 50% from the neighborhood and 50% from applicants.  So now everyone is diverse.  But wait, what happens when the magnet school doesn't meet the need of the parents that elected to send their children, or consistently produced low test scores.  No parent in their right mind would elect to send their children to a failing school if there is a closer better option.  Hence, Brentwood, it is comprised of nearing all neighborhood students and its in one of the most impoverished areas of Wake County.  So here is your model of what neighborhood schools would look like.  They are one of the lowest performing schools in the State.  Just go and look at the test score they speak for them self.  And the notion that neighborhood schools would increase low income parent involvement because they are now more accessible it a miss guided assumption.  My wife works at Brentwood and she has to fight tooth and nail to get parents to come in for conferences even when she stays as early as 6:00am and late as 8:00pm to meet her parents needs.

"While the comparison districts achieve better results in certain areas despite the absence of a diversity policy, you can’t use this to demonstrate that the diversity policy has failed," Riemann writes. "It may just show that whatever benefits the diversity policy has provided have, in the last few years and in certain respects, been eclipsed by some combination of things these other districts are doing right combined with things WCPSS is doing wrong."

The diversity policy was sold as a way to help poor students, by sending them out of their neighborhoods to go to school. Thus, the diversity policy was relied on to produce positive results for poor students. Thus, other strategies that other districts were using were not tried in Wake, because we had the diversity policy that we were relying on.

Now, as it turns out, the diversity policy didn't deliver the results as expected and promised. That was one of the harms it did -- make false promises, and divert attention away from the problem. With more attention to the problem of poor achievement by minorities, those other strategies that were working in other districts might have been tried in Wake.

"Another point Riemann touches on is Wake's argument that no local studies show the diversity policy helped the district's poor and minority students academically. He counters that there is no good reason to believe that things will turn out differently in Wake County than in other districts with high-poverty schools."

So, I take it that Riemann can't counter the argument that no local studies showed the diversity policy helped minorities academically. He can only offer a diversion. His response is that high-poverty schools like those that have failed elsewhere won't work in Wake any better. Well, duh, is that supposed to be some brilliant insight? If the plan was to use Detroit as Wake's model for educating poor kids, Riemann would have a point. But all he has is a straw man. A very harmful straw man, considering the fear and confusion he's spreading.

"Certain poor and minority students pay a price in lost time and choice so that those same students and others can attend lower poverty, less racially isolated schools than they otherwise would," Riemann writes. "It is always legitimate to ask whether this is fair. It is hard to find an objectively right answer, but I would weigh most heavily the opinions of the communities most affected."

It's good that Riemann is admitting that busing wastes time, and the opinions of communities most affected should be weighed. One way to weigh the opinions of the communities would be to let families choose whether to send their kids to a well-run school near their home, or send them to another school across town in a less racially isolated neighborhood. Oh wait, that's generally what the BoE is proposing.

"Students who travel farther to their base assignments tend to perform less well because they tend to be poorer, and our poor students—like the poor students in every public school system—tend to perform worse, as a group, than the nonpoor," Riemann writes.

Under Wake's diversity busing system, a suburban school's base assignment nodes are typically either (1) in a contiguous area containing the school, or (2) some distance away in a poor neighborhood. Two trends are evident in the report: At short distances, less than 6 miles, performance varies very little with distance, but when the distance is 6 miles or more, performance suffers as distance increases, for white and black students.

Riemann's contention that students' SES explains the trends that the report attributes to distance doesn't account for the steady decrease after 6 miles -- as distance increases, performance decreases. The kids in this group are from the nodes that are not contiguous with the nodes surrounding the school. Performance varies as distance varies with this group, but there is no indication that SES varies within this group -- their nodes were chosen for busing because they were in poor neighborhoods. If the busing plan chose the length of the bus rides according to the "poorness" of the neighborhood (percentage of F/R lunch?), I hadn't heard of that.

"WCPSS has lost ground in recent years when compared to fairly comparable systems. If the diversity policy did not fail us, other policies necessarily did."

He provides no evidence that the diversity policy did not fail or that another policy is to blame.  Same ol' "We just know it worked" nonsense.

Why is the burden of proof with those in support of dropping the policy which, at best, has had not positive impact?  Its unclear to me why the current BOE majority/administration is trying to show the policy was harmful.  It probably was harmful in many ways but isn't just showing that it wasn't achieving its goals reason enough to end it.  Every policy requires effort and resources to follow, and the diversity policy certainly required resources and sacrifices from many.  The burden should be on those in support of keeping the policy to show it actually met its goals and had a net positive impact on the school system.  We asked for that data for years only to be told, "I just know it’s working."  If you can't show that a program/policy works, you should end it so you can focus on something else that might actually show a measurable improvement.  There's your justification WCPSS.  Tell theses flaming feel good liberals to go away until they have their own data regarding the former diversity policy to talk about.  You know, that data they have never been able to produce.

cuz the voters want it this way, get a clue, busing for diversity has been on the way out for decades in other cities, what happens one place , happens everywhere. its over move on---you guys love that move on stuff right? here is a chance to practice what you preach.

Opinions based on research and facts should have more weight that opinions based on fear and no facts.  But the Teapublicans' war on facts continues as the theater that is the Wake County School Board majority and their supporters.

If some students in high poverty neighborhoods were not bused, they would go to high poverty schools.  High poverty schools have a horrible track record across the country.

These are the "issues" Mr. Riemann understands and others do not.  They want to try the same thing that has failed everywhere else and have blind faith that things will magically turn out differently here.

"Choice" doesn't exist for high poverty neighborhoods in a "keep those kids out of my 'public' school" sysytem.

Charlotte-Meck and Guilford are doing better because they spend more per student, something the current board majority and Wake County commissioners will never allow here.