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September 26, 2005
School Integration
Today's LA Times rightly laments that LA Unified is home to quite a few teachers, supervisors, and program directors who're totally incompetent at teaching math:
For instance, middle school teachers are erroneously taught that fraction division is repeated subtraction. This makes sense only for special examples such as 3/4 divided by 1/4 . In this case, 3/4 may be decreased by 1/4 a total of three times, until nothing is left, and the quotient is indeed 3. Understanding division as repeated subtraction, however, is nonsensical for a problem like 1/4 divided by 2/3 because 2/3 cannot be subtracted from 1/4 even once. No wonder students have trouble with fractions in high school.
District "pacing plans" are another example. These tell teachers the order in which they should teach topics for each math class. Some of the plans hinder rather than promote understanding. One draft plan called for 10th-grade geometry teachers to teach the so-called distance formula before the Pythagorean theorem, but the distance formula needs the Pythagorean theorem for its explanation, and should be taught first.
[...]
Still another problem is the LAUSD's history of selecting poorly written math textbooks. In 2000, the district ignored the textbook recommendations of Caltech, UC and Cal State mathematicians and the legendary teacher Jaime Escalante, portrayed in the movie "Stand and Deliver." The most widely used current algebra I textbook was heavily criticized by a panel of mathematicians appointed by the California Board of Education. To supplement this weak textbook, the district uses expensive computer programs that are not state approved.
This sort of thing rarely goes down at middle class schools as parents catch it, PTA's don't stand for it, and community pressure stops it. So how can we bring upper-income standards to lower-income schools? Easy. Mix them:
Since 2000, school officials [in Raleigh] have used income as a prime factor in assigning students to schools, with the goal of limiting the proportion of low-income students in any school to no more than 40 percent.
[...]
In Wake County, only 40 percent of black students in grades three through eight scored at grade level on state tests a decade ago. Last spring, 80 percent did. Hispanic students have made similar strides. Overall, 91 percent of students in those grades scored at grade level in the spring, up from 79 percent 10 years ago.
This is one of those big, but broadly unpopular policies (too resonant of busing) that'd actually do great things if widely enacted. The politics of it suck, but if we want an even close to fair society that gives those born in the wrong areas the right chances, this is the direction we'll have to go.
September 26, 2005 in Education | Permalink
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Comments
I think this is a fairly good idea. I am not sure it would work as well in all places though.
First off, there is a limit to how long the bus rides should be, large enough geographic areas of concentrated poverty would be a problem.
Second, as the article states, the entire county is a single school district, making it easier to do this. I believe that is a rarity, it certainly isn't the case where I am from.
School quality and economics can indeed be a viscious circle for the poor, as good school districts increase property values and high property values make it easier for a school to be good, keeping these good school out of reach of many.
An interesting question to me though is why parents in poorer districts don't have as much interest in their PTAs as middle class parents, when arguably their kids education is even more important.
I can think of a number of hypothesis, from lack of understanding of political processes, to being to busy, to not being able to evaluate where their kids school is going wrong (or even that it is going wrong.)
Posted by: Dave Justus | Sep 26, 2005 4:06:37 PM
All good points Dave. As for the last, I don't really know. Their may be a feeling of powerlessness, an inability to understand the assignments (and thus a desire to not look/feel stupid in challenging them), and a variety of other factors...
Posted by: Ezra | Sep 26, 2005 4:12:22 PM
The NY Times article, or at least the headline is a little bit breathless.
The Wake County results are good, but have not been reproduced in other settings. Income integration hasn't been as successful in trials in Wisconsin and Ohio.
Also, you really have to start this at a young age. Integrating by income after many years of having the kids in poor schoools fall behind is, well, counterproductive. The good news is, there is more public support for income integration when children are young. It's integration when the kids are in high school, and therefore the low-income (read: minority) students are taking away spots in good colleges or voc-ed classes, that the opposition really grows.
In unrelated news, all three networks are running the Sheehan protest as one of their top three stories. CBS (which I tend to think of as the most conservative of the three networks) has no commentary. MSNBC has someone who is just sort of detailing what's going on. The pictures show a few dirty hippies, but mostly normal folks. No one near Cindy seems to be ranting about anything other than the war. Someone yelled "arrest the torturers" but that's about it. Plus who's against letting torturers run free?
So, rants about the bandana-over-nose-and-mouth crowd from me and Matt aside, it would seem that the anti-war folks have their act together.
Posted by: Nicholas Beaudrot | Sep 26, 2005 4:32:23 PM
It would be far simpler to simply require that the textbooks and teaching standards, library hours and other delights of the middle class schools be mandatory for the poor schools than to try to equalize things by busing kids. In fact, I'll go farther, the standards and books and teachers and advisors and everything else that middle and upper class schools get PLUS a lump sum increment for remedial health and human services as well as educational enrichment. Take all the money wasted on school busing, and all the money wasted as parents fight this, and spend it on actually making the damn schools better instead of making the middle class parents do the work of monitoring and struggling with the schools all over again in a new sset of schools.
aimai
Posted by: aimai | Sep 26, 2005 5:03:07 PM
My general observation on Dave's 4th point is that they are just not smart enough to do so. If parents can't handle 8th grade MA, how can you expect their kids to? The same is said for school in general. If there is constant communication with parents from teachers, it helps. Not just written communitcation as well. But think of time that would take, it tried on a weekly basis. A teacher could have over 100 different students in a given year to teach. Just too much. I'm telling you, we need a 10-1 or lower ratio in poorer districts.
As far as the "busing" idea, I don't know how that would work in MA. Each school system is run by the town. What if the entire town is rather low income? Do you send kids to other towns? And how do you work that out with taxes? Confusing, certainly.
But I can say, if you took some of the kids in Lawrence, MA and sent them to Andover, MA (adjoining towns with hugely different populations) those kids would certainly do better.
Posted by: Adrock | Sep 26, 2005 5:07:36 PM
I agree with aimai. I'd rather see the schools improve. 10 to 1 ratioers! Unite!
Posted by: Adrock | Sep 26, 2005 5:12:22 PM
I actually came out of the Wake County school system. When I have kids, I'd be really happy to have them go to a school like Enloe High School, the ethnically diverse inner-city Raleigh magnet school I attended. Some of the stuff may not be perfectly topical here, as I graduated in '97. But this general approach to education has been alive in Wake County for a while, especially as regards the magnet program.
Basically they set up a school in the middle of the city with lots of AP classes and the best teachers that crappy NC salaries could buy -- I had 3 teachers with PhDs and several more with masters degrees. It attracted the smartest kids from all around the county (that's why they call it a magnet school). I think some of the attraction for the teachers was that they would sometimes get to teach smart motivated kids. The base population was the inner-city kids, mostly black. But the white and Asian software-designing/pharmaceutical-making parents in suburban North Raleigh were fighting to get their kids in there, because they'd be able to take lots of AP classes with the smart from the yuppie suburb of Cary on the South side of town. (Thus there was a geographic justification for all this -- the school was in the middle of the county, which just coincidentally happened to be an urban area! what luck!) These magnet programs happened at the middle-school and elementary-school levels too.
Overall I'm real happy with how things turned out. Socially it was a good experience, because the mix of kids prevents any one tribe from dominating the social environment and oppressing others. I also got into Harvard, which I guess says something about how good the education was.
(sorry if unclarity above, slept 1.5 hr last night)
Posted by: Neil the Ethical Werewolf | Sep 26, 2005 5:38:46 PM
Second, as the article states, the entire county is a single school district, making it easier to do this. I believe that is a rarity, it certainly isn't the case where I am from.
It's pretty common in North Carolina, but keep in mind counties aren't particularly large there. The state has one hundred of them; I was shocked at how much larger the counties were when I moved out to California.
Posted by: Craig | Sep 26, 2005 5:43:48 PM
Bob Somerby of dailyhowler.com had a good article on the Wake County item. He has background in teaching and a disdain for folks making stuff up and confusing folks with b.s.
It turns out that the scores went up all across NC. It certainly begs the question of how much is due to the 'economic integration' achieved through busing.
Posted by: gr | Sep 27, 2005 12:49:44 AM
My kids went to Wiley International Magnet in Raleigh even during the year we lived in Cary (they took the bus there and back). Now that we have moved to Chapel Hill - the best school district in the state - we are longing for Wiley, it was so good.
Posted by: coturnix | Sep 27, 2005 1:33:47 AM
Brad DeLong comments on this article at http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/09/the_la_times_ne.html
He writely points out that division is repeated subtraction.
Posted by: pfc | Sep 27, 2005 9:45:37 AM
Damn, I even previewed the post and mispelled "rightly" and didn't get the link right. I think I need more coffee.
Sorry.
Posted by: pfc | Sep 27, 2005 9:46:33 AM
Here's an even easier way to accomplish the same goal: school choice. Then poor parents wouldn't be at the mercy of a government bureaucrat to decide whether their kids get to go to a rich-kid school.
Posted by: Tim | Sep 27, 2005 10:55:38 AM
I saw in another blog that blacks all over North Carolina have expirienced pretty much the same increase as the students in Raleigh.
This may not be the panacea that it is being sold as.
Still, I do think economically intergrated schools are a good idea when feasible for lots of reasons.
Posted by: Dave Justus | Sep 27, 2005 11:17:32 AM
I believe we're all missing the point here. If we want better students, we have to start with getting THEM to desire to learn. In all my years of schooling and teaching, I have never met an able (by able I just mean not mentally handicapped), pasionate student who did not suceed in his/her learning, regardless of ethnicity or how educated the parents are.
I, myself, had parents with little knowledge of Mathimatics (when my father tried to go back to school I helped him with his math classes, and I was in sixth grade); I desired to learn, and ended up taking every math class offered in my school system - they had to add Calc II so I could have a Math class for my senior year. Point being: desire, not race, family education level, or financial class, is what makes good students. If all parents would get involved with their students at a young age, and stay involved - even after the student has progressed beyong their understanding of the material - then many more students would reach their potential.
Find me a student who cares, I'll find you a student who acheives!
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