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Would you please provide a link to the study?

I suspect that this study was done looking at schools which are integrated naturally due to geographic factors or traditional school boundry factors and comparing them with inner-city schools.

I don't think there is a person on the planet that would think that poorer children would not be more likely to do better if they found themselves in the former. I doubt if this UNC study adresses at all how students would do after being bused long distance to schools arbitrarily grafted together of different parts by would-be Dr. Grierensteins and Dr. Kearnsensteins.

We know that even though you get the students physically in the same building there is still segregation by advanced placement classes etc. You can't undo learning and resource disparities between people, caused by various depradations and disadvantages, just by putting them physically in the same building etc.

What also this seems to be suggesting is a new 21st Century mandate-an obligation beyond taxation and volunteerism that people allow their children to be utilized by the system involuntarily as a remedy for the economic ills of society.

As has been shown over and over again, forcing students to attend a certain school against their will is not possible in a free society. People will move or abandon a system that mandates their children be turned into a commodity to be used by the government to correct society's ills. You will truly foster a caste system and explosive growth of private schools as has happened in High Point.

Whatever the method, it cannot involve forced busing.

Oh, forgot. Thanks for posting on this, Allen.

Allen,
If poorer kids do better sitting next to middle class kid then why do you think poor kids at Andrews and Dudley Graduate at a higher percentage than at Grimsley?

At our local school one teacher told me that they had several kids in the seventh grade who could read at third grade level only. Who is suffering in this situation? I think the answer is everyone. But my main message is that the poorer kids are suffering because they do not get a good elementary education. Its too late after that. At least in our current system.

Allen,

Richard Kalenberg, a member of the Century Foundation, who is an education advocate often quoted by our local school administrators, says that you have to begin as early as preschool. Here is a quote. High school is too late. By that time, most of these at-risk kids are already lost. That is why some of these schools are "drop-out factories". If you want to give these kids a chance, you must start to bus them in preschool or early elementary school, and will it be acceptable to parents of any race to put their five or six- year old on a bus for a 10 mile bus ride?

"In today�s society, preschool prepares children to succeed academically and increase their chances of leading productive lives because developmental skills build upon each other. The longer children progress in school without learning basic skills, the wider the achievement gap grows, and the less likely they will be to catch up with their peers."

Kahlenberg suggests Universal Preschool as a solution. So, why not use our resources to start teaching the basics early to children to give them a better chance?

And, if you are still stuck on busing high school kids to achieve racial balance, let's start with the most integrated school in the district..Dudley at 99.9% black. If we bus 1/4 of the Dudley students to Northwest and 1/4 to Northern with equal amounts of white middle-class students coming to Dudley, we'll put a real dent in the problem.

Wouldnt that make somebody who lives in the NW area property value fall?

We all have to make the sacrifice though dont we?

Assuming that physically putting struggling kids into a classroom with more successful students worked I can understand the need to move innercity kids to a more affluent school. Would the parents go for that? Who knows. Maybe they would if they were convinced that it was better for their kids.

But that is where the experiment should end. There is no need to move the affluent kids to the failing school. The study says that if most of the kids are struggling "few students advance quickly enough". That is where the community resists this type of remedy.

If GCS could find a way to bus only the low achievers that were willing to be bused, and only do this at the elementary school level they could probably get community support. Unfortunately, GCS has a track record of trying to equally mix all schools to the point that all of them suffer.

Stop the Swap,

How many parents are you going to find that are willing to put their 6-year old on a bus to ride 10 miles to go to a school in a strange place, where they may not have any of their friends? It's hard enough for high school kids, much less 6-year olds. I don't think that there would be enough of those parents to make such a program anywhere near feasible. A better answer is to start concentrating on quality in schools. Really, it is the only answer.

I'll agree. This is hard. But the numbers are disconcerting. If the study is right, Windy, what you're suggesting about simply making every school better without considering the socioeconomic mix is hard and maybe impossible. If the study's conclusions are correct.

I agree that it would be hard to find the parents that would voluntarily bus their own kids but if they are really concerned AND if GCS can convince them of this latest revelation, they will. We all know that if they don't do it voluntarily, GCS will just draw new lines and force them to do it. Remember, GCS has decided that they know what is best for our poorest kids and don't care what the parents think. They are just smarter than the rest of us.

I would LOVE to see GCS fix all the schools and let all kids attend school where they live but Grier doesn't have a clue how to pull this off.

Who does? What would you suggest?

I certainly can understand why high concentrations of poor kids might not be the best learning environment. I also understand that these kids may do better in more socio-economically balanced schools.

However, busing advocates don't want to address the flip side to this question. What happens to the middle-class kids? Does their education suffer when their teachers have to spend all their time on the remedial students who have been brought to their classrooms? Of course it does!

It's a tricky situation and I'm not sure I have the answer. However, I do know that sacrificing one group of students to help another group of students - which is all busing really is - isn't the answer. Asking a parent to sacrifice his or her child's well-being for the benefit of society is simply asking too much.

Allen, What do you suggest? DO we swap 1/2 of the student population of Oak Ridge Elementary with the same number from Wiley?

No. I see very little community will to do that. Given the Supreme Court's disposition, our best bet may be magnets and locating new schools as centrally as possible to naturally draw on diverse neighborhood populations.
With suburban sprawl, that's a lot harder now.

I would hope that if I were making a quarter million dollars annualy I would have the answers or at least an alternative to busing kids.

Spending years padding a resume without putting any proven educational policies in place eventually comes to light.

That's a copout. If you were in charge, what would you do?

Here's the study:

http://soe.unc.edu/fac_research/research/spotlight/kainz_kirsten.php

I would suggest hiring experts to travel to Guilford County with advice; experts that have used proven methods to fix schools in their areas without busing. Somebody, somewhere has successfully taught poor kids while keeping them in their own community. I would look for somebody that had experience fixing the scores of kids, not the scores of schools. Big difference. And then, once I found the person that could help, I would hire them and send Grier packing, BS resume in hand!

Now, do you want me to help you do your job too?

You already do, and I appreciate it.

I can't believe you tricked me into coming up with a 5-minute solution (better than Grier's attempts) and then you disengaged like always and didn't respond to it. I feel like Charlie Brown and you are Lucy...again!

Here is my proposal. Based on the model of District Garth Heberts "choice plan". Set up "choice zones" in the poor areas of our county. The children in these areas can have the choice to either go to their neighborhood schools or go to a school like Northwest. If you think about it Magnets only go one way. There is no way for anyone to be able to get into the Northern or Northwests or Southeasts of this world. It would be better if this started off at the elementary level because thats where it could really make a difference. With this method we would get little or no fight from the middle class. We might get buy in. Of course significant infrastructure changes would be needed but it must be possible to do something. With decreased numbers in the poor areas we can have magnets and smaller class sizes and if done at the elemenatary level maybe we can have more Kindergarden. Lets get these poor children in school earlier!

My 2 pennies.

Choice zones is a great idea! It seemed to work in High Point by quieting down a very outspoken group of people and made everybody happy. If the parents are willing to put their children on a bus, let them, but everybody has the option to stay in their closest school. Doing this at the elementary level is even better. Since you have 6 different grades it wouldn't impact any one grade too much.

Certainly Allen will respond to this solution.

I'll have a look at the study, but I wonder first how significantly better the poorer children do when put into the middle-class classes. Do they track them on through to getting into college and having successful careers? Or is it sheer reading ability at the elementary level?

I know plenty of sucessful businesspeople and others who make good incomes who barely read (voluntarily) beyond the eigth grade level. It doesn't take much to dissect a graph in a business report, and the lingo one picks up like any street slang. It's not James Joyce. Not even Melville.

I'll have a look at the study, but I wonder first how significantly better the poorer children do when put into the middle-class classes. Do they track them on through to getting into college and having successful careers? Or is it sheer reading ability at the elementary level?

I know plenty of sucessful businesspeople and others who make good incomes who barely read (voluntarily) beyond the eighth grade level. It doesn't take much to dissect a graph in a business report, and the lingo one picks up like any street slang. It's not James Joyce. Not even Melville.

Sis,

Allen doesnt like to "join in" and propose solutions. Its easier to sit on the side lines it seems.

Business as usual.

No comment from Allen. As expected!

In light of the recent Supreme Court decision against voluntary school desegregation programs we proposed some solutions three weeks ago. I also proposed solutions in this thread on July 13:

1. Continue to push magnets.
2. Pay bonuses to place the very best teachers in the neediest schools.
3. Locate schools as centrally as possible.
4. Coordinate school planning with residential growth planning, which does not happen now.

One footnote: No Child Left Behind has created a disincentive for teachers to go to schools labeled as failing. Accountability is fine, until it winds up helping to perpetuate poor learning environments.

Is it the "labeling" that turns teachers away from the struggling and downright failing schools, or is it the efficient grapevine among teachers relaying the travails to be faced there? The de facto combat pay offered science and math teachers to tackle the Mission Possible should work just as well to attract more new star teachers to those schools, if it were offered them, shouldn't it? If not, why not?

Magnets in the core of the city, I predict, particularly in majority-minority neighborhoods, will have a tough time re-integrating by peeling kids from the nearest suburbs. Many parents choose, depsite gas prices, to drive their children to school and pick them up. Both the distance and the often-exaggerated fear of "crossing the tracks" will keep away a lot of parents who would otherwise be delighted to send their child to a magnet.

The other question is, why must we have have magnets monopolizing the most creative, intense programs of instruction? Can't slimmed-down versions of their curricula be implemented more widely? Or has it really devolved into little more than rote instruction to the tests everywhere else?