U.S. Kids Keep Getting Dumber; Ranked 31st Of 35 Developed Nations In Math, New Study Reveals
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The gwb poster link I copy. Is opposite of the posters peilthetraveler and AAA blame to latino and black people for USA decline.
RALEIGH, N.C. – Lead Mine Elementary School is sandwiched between layers of rolling hills, new shopping centers and sprawling tract homes and condominiums in this city’s northern suburbs.
But this 20-year-old school isn’t tethered to neighborhood demographics, where census figures show that more than 80 percent of its residents are white and middle-class, as much as it is dedicated to upholding ideals of educational equality.
Around 46 percent of its 489 students are on free and reduced lunch – a percentage that the Wake County Board of Education tries to ensure doesn’t go much higher than that at most of its schools.
Forty-eight percent of Lead Mine’s students are white, while 37 percent are black, 12 percent are Hispanic, and 3 percent are Asian. While most of Lead Mine’s students are from middle to upper-income families, a number of them hail from families that live in subsidized or lower-middle class housing, said its principal, Gary Baird.
“This school has a mix of families,” Baird said. “Some are unemployed…we used to have two or three homeless kids. Now we have a dozen.”
“We don’t have a whole lot of attention to it [racial and ethnic makeup] to tell you the truth,” he said.
“We’ve alwa
ys had the philosophy that [when] you come through the door, we’re going to teach you, and you’re going to learn…it’s always changing, the population.”
But while Lead Mine’s population may be constantly changing, its achievement levels continue to remain impressive.
Eighty-three percent of its third, fourth and fifth-grade students’ scores were at or above grade level in reading this past year on North Carolina’s end-of -grade assessment tests.
That’s better than the district’s 73.4 percent score and the 67.6 percent that was registered statewide.
On math, 87.6 percent of Lead Mine’s students’ scores were at or above grade level. And again, that’s a better showing than the district’s 83.4 percent score and the state’s 80 percent score.
More remarkable than that, however, is the school’s progress on bridging what has become known as the black-white achievement gap.
Last year, 69.3 percent of its black students’ scores were at or above grade level in reading and math, while 95 percent of its white students scored at that level.
That’s a significant improvement over the 2007-2008 school year when only 42 percent of Lead Mine’s black students’ scores were at or above grade level.
It’s clear that Lead Mine, as well as other schools throughout North Carolina and the nation, have a long wayk, to go to close the racial achievement gap. But Baird and other Wake County education officials attribute the progress in bridging that gap at Lead Mine, in large part, to its diversity policy.
It’s a policy that has been in effect since 2000; one that uses socioeconomics, instead of the politically-charged standard of race, in trying to ensure that few schools as possible become identifiable as mostly poor and, in most cases, mostly black or Hispanic.
That’s because when that happens – and it generally happens in most school districts throughout the country because of segregated neighborhood patterns – it becomes tougher to recruit high-quality teachers to schools with high concentrations of students from poor families. Parental involvement in these schools also is more difficult, as poorer parents have little time and fewer resources at their disposal.
UPDATE: On March 2, 2010, the Wake County school board voted to end the district's diversity policy in favor of neighborhood schools. By a 5-4 vote, the board gave the first of two approvals needed to end busing for diversity, the Raleigh News & Observer reported.
Since 2000, after two Supreme Court rulings which weakened the use of race as a factor for school diversity, the Wake County school system began using family socioeconomic status to continue to keep its schools diverse. The policy had made Wake County schools a model for districts across the county. It is the largest district in North Carolina.
“Teaching is hard in the best of circumstances, and I think that when you go to a high-poverty situation, it’s more difficult in terms of resources, [and] the amount of energy you need to spend,” said Baird.
But at Baird’s school, where there is a balanced mix of students from various economic backgrounds, the push for academic excellence is showing results.
“Earlier in the year, we did a math night, and we had a big turnout for that,” he said. “I think percentagewise, it was the largest percentage of minority parents that we’ve had at any event, including carnivals and all of that.
“We were like, ‘Wow, this is awesome.’ That they came out for a curriculum event was really cool.”
Brown versus the neighborhood
The Wake County School District sits in the midst of North Carolina’s Research Triangle – an area that’s anchored by the cities of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, N.C. and Duke, North Carolina and North Carolina State Universities.
Wake is also number one in the nation for having the most certified teachers – a fact that many attribute to it being situated in the triangle and to its diversity policy.
That policy is one way that Wake County has sought to uphold the ideal of the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown decision. In it, the high court ruled that “separate but equal,” schools were unconstitutional, and ordered school systems to desegregate.
The court, however, left it to the states to enforce its school desegregation decision, and most states, North Carolina included, delegated that responsibility to local counties and municipalities.
Between the 1960s and 1980s, many school systems sought to use busing and other controversial strategies like school clusters and magnet schools to ensure that black students received an education equal to that of their white counterparts – regardless of where they lived.
It also spawned backlash.
Whites abandoned the cities for the suburbs in droves and thwarted desegregation efforts. The schools they left behind became blacker, poorer and more socially isolated. And rulings by a more conservative Supreme Court, such as its 2007 decision in a case that challenged the use of race in assigning students to schools in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., have made it tougher for school districts – at least those with the political will to do so – to desegregate public schools.
Segregated housing patterns have led to higher concentrations of high-poverty neighborhood schools; schools that tend to be stigmatized by low achievement levels. That predicament is a huge part of what fuels the persistent achievement gap between black and white students; a gap in which only 14 percent of black fourth-graders nationally are proficient in reading on national achievement tests, compared to 43 percent of white fourth graders.
If school systems are serious about closing the achievement gap, then they cannot ignore the impact of high-poverty schools in poor, mostly-black neighborhoods, experts say.
Drawing school boundary lines is “a very political process,” said Bob Davis, chairman of the Department of Sociology and Social Work at North Carolina A&T State University.
But the data have shown that what Wake County is doing works, Davis said. And Wake County’s success is backed up by more data which show the socioeconomic composition of a school is a key predictor of the academic success of its students.
A 2004 report by the U.S. Department of Education found that schools in which 75 percent or more of the students were from low-income families had three times as many uncertified, or out-of-field, teachers in English and science schools with lower concentrations of poverty.
Data from the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which also is tracked the achievement gap, found that among fourth graders taking math assessment tests, poor students attending more affluent schools scored 20 points higher than poor students at high-poverty schools.
“From working for nine years as superintendent in a school district that was high poverty, that was urban, I can tell you that what the child does have [in a school with low-poverty levels] is the benefit of a school where volunteers come in,” said Ann Denlinger, president of Wake Education Partnership, a non-profit that works to further diversity and quality education in Wake County.
“There are adults in the school. You have PTAs that are interested in the school. You have businesses that support the school. And most importantly, every child in that school has the benefit of a higher-level teacher, a better teacher, than they would have if the school was high poverty.”
Then, there are the intangible benefits of children from different economic backgrounds attending school together.
“My son played ball, so we got to know the parents a lot,” said Teresa Abron, a retired Wake County teacher and principal. “Some parents of his friends would attend ball games but wouldn’t attend the teacher conferences.
“So by networking, communicating, we would talk: ‘What’s going on? Have you tried this? Hey, has your child taken the SAT yet? We exposed parents – then it trickled down to their children – to resources…“I think absolutely association made a difference. It had a ripple effect on some of his friends who were not as savvy in the school world because of their parents.”
Wake’s challenge
Until recently, Wake County’s use of socioeconomics to ensure school diversity was moving along well. Eight of the district’s nine school board members favored the policy.
Then the county had an election.
Four new board members, who campaigned on a return to neighborhood schools, have pledged to end Wake County’s diversity policy, saying that it foments family instability because parents don’t like the idea of their children being moved around from year to year – and that students ought to be able to attend the school that is closest to them.
The problem with that thinking, supporters of the policy say, in addition to the fact that doing away with the policy will lead to more high-poverty schools, is that diversity isn’t the reason behind the instability.
Growth is.
“Folks in high-growth areas believe…that diversity is the reason that students have been moved around,” said Julie Crain, vice president of programs at Wake Educational Partnership.
“The reason that students have been moved around is that we’re adding four, five, six, 7,000 students a year, and you have to move students to fill schools that you’re building.
“Growth is the major driver. Diversity is the lightning rod.”
Yet even though the board’s new 5-4 majority is against the diversity policy, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is doomed. In fact, says Mark Dorosin, senior managing attorney at the University of North Carolina Center for Civil Rights, practicality may slow the Wake County board’s move to undo the diversity policy.
“A neighborhood schools policy will potentially mean substantial overcrowding in certain schools, substantial underutilization of other schools, and there will be potentially significant costs associated either with building new schools or even with some temporary measures like mobile classrooms or trailers or whatever they do,” Dorosin said.
And, said Benita Jones, an attorney and education fellow at the center, if such changes lead to a substantial drop in access to a quality education for all students in Wake County, the board could potentially open itself up to being sued under the Leandro case ruling. In that 1997 decision, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled the state had an obligation to fund a sound, basic education for every student.
Even now, about a third of schools in Wake County are out of compliance with district’s 40 percent poverty maximum, Jones said. But she and other advocates of the diversity policy believe that can be fixed.
They also believe that setting goals for school socioeconomic diversity is still a good strategy for getting at racial and ethnic diversity.
That’s important.
By 2050, racial and ethnic minorities will make up the majority of the U. S. population. To make sure they are well educated, school districts will have to find the political will to break the shackles of neighborhood segregation.
At Lead Mine Elementary, they get why doing this is key. Its mission states that it will be “actively engaged in building a foundation for all students to be successful in a global society.”
“A global society, I think, is a mixed society,” Principal Baird said. “Lead Mine is a microcosm of that.”
Index of Black-White Achievement Gap Stories
Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies 12118 Faulkner Drive, Owings Mills, MD 21117, 410-902-1557
Copyright © 2007 Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies.
RALEIGH, N.C. – Lead Mine Elementary School is sandwiched between layers of rolling hills, new shopping centers and sprawling tract homes and condominiums in this city’s northern suburbs.
But this 20-year-old school isn’t tethered to neighborhood demographics, where census figures show that more than 80 percent of its residents are white and middle-class, as much as it is dedicated to upholding ideals of educational equality.
Around 46 percent of its 489 students are on free and reduced lunch – a percentage that the Wake County Board of Education tries to ensure doesn’t go much higher than that at most of its schools.
Forty-eight percent of Lead Mine’s students are white, while 37 percent are black, 12 percent are Hispanic, and 3 percent are Asian. While most of Lead Mine’s students are from middle to upper-income families, a number of them hail from families that live in subsidized or lower-middle class housing, said its principal, Gary Baird.
“This school has a mix of families,” Baird said. “Some are unemployed…we used to have two or three homeless kids. Now we have a dozen.”
“We don’t have a whole lot of attention to it [racial and ethnic makeup] to tell you the truth,” he said.
“We’ve alwa
But while Lead Mine’s population may be constantly changing, its achievement levels continue to remain impressive.
Eighty-three percent of its third, fourth and fifth-grade students’ scores were at or above grade level in reading this past year on North Carolina’s end-of -grade assessment tests.
That’s better than the district’s 73.4 percent score and the 67.6 percent that was registered statewide.
On math, 87.6 percent of Lead Mine’s students’ scores were at or above grade level. And again, that’s a better showing than the district’s 83.4 percent score and the state’s 80 percent score.
More remarkable than that, however, is the school’s progress on bridging what has become known as the black-white achievement gap.
Last year, 69.3 percent of its black students’ scores were at or above grade level in reading and math, while 95 percent of its white students scored at that level.
That’s a significant improvement over the 2007-2008 school year when only 42 percent of Lead Mine’s black students’ scores were at or above grade level.
It’s clear that Lead Mine, as well as other schools throughout North Carolina and the nation, have a long wayk, to go to close the racial achievement gap. But Baird and other Wake County education officials attribute the progress in bridging that gap at Lead Mine, in large part, to its diversity policy.
It’s a policy that has been in effect since 2000; one that uses socioeconomics, instead of the politically-charged standard of race, in trying to ensure that few schools as possible become identifiable as mostly poor and, in most cases, mostly black or Hispanic.
That’s because when that happens – and it generally happens in most school districts throughout the country because of segregated neighborhood patterns – it becomes tougher to recruit high-quality teachers to schools with high concentrations of students from poor families. Parental involvement in these schools also is more difficult, as poorer parents have little time and fewer resources at their disposal.
UPDATE: On March 2, 2010, the Wake County school board voted to end the district's diversity policy in favor of neighborhood schools. By a 5-4 vote, the board gave the first of two approvals needed to end busing for diversity, the Raleigh News & Observer reported.
Since 2000, after two Supreme Court rulings which weakened the use of race as a factor for school diversity, the Wake County school system began using family socioeconomic status to continue to keep its schools diverse. The policy had made Wake County schools a model for districts across the county. It is the largest district in North Carolina.
“Teaching is hard in the best of circumstances, and I think that when you go to a high-poverty situation, it’s more difficult in terms of resources, [and] the amount of energy you need to spend,” said Baird.
But at Baird’s school, where there is a balanced mix of students from various economic backgrounds, the push for academic excellence is showing results.
“Earlier in the year, we did a math night, and we had a big turnout for that,” he said. “I think percentagewise, it was the largest percentage of minority parents that we’ve had at any event, including carnivals and all of that.
“We were like, ‘Wow, this is awesome.’ That they came out for a curriculum event was really cool.”
Brown versus the neighborhood
The Wake County School District sits in the midst of North Carolina’s Research Triangle – an area that’s anchored by the cities of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, N.C. and Duke, North Carolina and North Carolina State Universities.
Wake is also number one in the nation for having the most certified teachers – a fact that many attribute to it being situated in the triangle and to its diversity policy.
That policy is one way that Wake County has sought to uphold the ideal of the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown decision. In it, the high court ruled that “separate but equal,” schools were unconstitutional, and ordered school systems to desegregate.
The court, however, left it to the states to enforce its school desegregation decision, and most states, North Carolina included, delegated that responsibility to local counties and municipalities.
Between the 1960s and 1980s, many school systems sought to use busing and other controversial strategies like school clusters and magnet schools to ensure that black students received an education equal to that of their white counterparts – regardless of where they lived.
It also spawned backlash.
Whites abandoned the cities for the suburbs in droves and thwarted desegregation efforts. The schools they left behind became blacker, poorer and more socially isolated. And rulings by a more conservative Supreme Court, such as its 2007 decision in a case that challenged the use of race in assigning students to schools in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., have made it tougher for school districts – at least those with the political will to do so – to desegregate public schools.
Segregated housing patterns have led to higher concentrations of high-poverty neighborhood schools; schools that tend to be stigmatized by low achievement levels. That predicament is a huge part of what fuels the persistent achievement gap between black and white students; a gap in which only 14 percent of black fourth-graders nationally are proficient in reading on national achievement tests, compared to 43 percent of white fourth graders.
If school systems are serious about closing the achievement gap, then they cannot ignore the impact of high-poverty schools in poor, mostly-black neighborhoods, experts say.
Drawing school boundary lines is “a very political process,” said Bob Davis, chairman of the Department of Sociology and Social Work at North Carolina A&T State University.
But the data have shown that what Wake County is doing works, Davis said. And Wake County’s success is backed up by more data which show the socioeconomic composition of a school is a key predictor of the academic success of its students.
A 2004 report by the U.S. Department of Education found that schools in which 75 percent or more of the students were from low-income families had three times as many uncertified, or out-of-field, teachers in English and science schools with lower concentrations of poverty.
Data from the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which also is tracked the achievement gap, found that among fourth graders taking math assessment tests, poor students attending more affluent schools scored 20 points higher than poor students at high-poverty schools.
“From working for nine years as superintendent in a school district that was high poverty, that was urban, I can tell you that what the child does have [in a school with low-poverty levels] is the benefit of a school where volunteers come in,” said Ann Denlinger, president of Wake Education Partnership, a non-profit that works to further diversity and quality education in Wake County.
“There are adults in the school. You have PTAs that are interested in the school. You have businesses that support the school. And most importantly, every child in that school has the benefit of a higher-level teacher, a better teacher, than they would have if the school was high poverty.”
Then, there are the intangible benefits of children from different economic backgrounds attending school together.
“My son played ball, so we got to know the parents a lot,” said Teresa Abron, a retired Wake County teacher and principal. “Some parents of his friends would attend ball games but wouldn’t attend the teacher conferences.
“So by networking, communicating, we would talk: ‘What’s going on? Have you tried this? Hey, has your child taken the SAT yet? We exposed parents – then it trickled down to their children – to resources…“I think absolutely association made a difference. It had a ripple effect on some of his friends who were not as savvy in the school world because of their parents.”
Wake’s challenge
Until recently, Wake County’s use of socioeconomics to ensure school diversity was moving along well. Eight of the district’s nine school board members favored the policy.
Then the county had an election.
Four new board members, who campaigned on a return to neighborhood schools, have pledged to end Wake County’s diversity policy, saying that it foments family instability because parents don’t like the idea of their children being moved around from year to year – and that students ought to be able to attend the school that is closest to them.
The problem with that thinking, supporters of the policy say, in addition to the fact that doing away with the policy will lead to more high-poverty schools, is that diversity isn’t the reason behind the instability.
Growth is.
“Folks in high-growth areas believe…that diversity is the reason that students have been moved around,” said Julie Crain, vice president of programs at Wake Educational Partnership.
“The reason that students have been moved around is that we’re adding four, five, six, 7,000 students a year, and you have to move students to fill schools that you’re building.
“Growth is the major driver. Diversity is the lightning rod.”
Yet even though the board’s new 5-4 majority is against the diversity policy, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is doomed. In fact, says Mark Dorosin, senior managing attorney at the University of North Carolina Center for Civil Rights, practicality may slow the Wake County board’s move to undo the diversity policy.
“A neighborhood schools policy will potentially mean substantial overcrowding in certain schools, substantial underutilization of other schools, and there will be potentially significant costs associated either with building new schools or even with some temporary measures like mobile classrooms or trailers or whatever they do,” Dorosin said.
And, said Benita Jones, an attorney and education fellow at the center, if such changes lead to a substantial drop in access to a quality education for all students in Wake County, the board could potentially open itself up to being sued under the Leandro case ruling. In that 1997 decision, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled the state had an obligation to fund a sound, basic education for every student.
Even now, about a third of schools in Wake County are out of compliance with district’s 40 percent poverty maximum, Jones said. But she and other advocates of the diversity policy believe that can be fixed.
They also believe that setting goals for school socioeconomic diversity is still a good strategy for getting at racial and ethnic diversity.
That’s important.
By 2050, racial and ethnic minorities will make up the majority of the U. S. population. To make sure they are well educated, school districts will have to find the political will to break the shackles of neighborhood segregation.
At Lead Mine Elementary, they get why doing this is key. Its mission states that it will be “actively engaged in building a foundation for all students to be successful in a global society.”
“A global society, I think, is a mixed society,” Principal Baird said. “Lead Mine is a microcosm of that.”
Index of Black-White Achievement Gap Stories
Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies 12118 Faulkner Drive, Owings Mills, MD 21117, 410-902-1557
Copyright © 2007 Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies.
The gwb poster link I copy. Is opposite of the posters peilthetraveler and AAA blame to latino and black people for USA decline.
RALEIGH, N.C. – Lead Mine Elementary School is sandwiched between layers of rolling hills, new shopping centers and sprawling tract homes and condominiums in this city’s northern suburbs.
But this 20-year-old school isn’t tethered to neighborhood demographics, where census figures show that more than 80 percent of its residents are white and middle-class, as much as it is dedicated to upholding ideals of educational equality.
Around 46 percent of its 489 students are on free and reduced lunch – a percentage that the Wake County Board of Education tries to ensure doesn’t go much higher than that at most of its schools.
Forty-eight percent of Lead Mine’s students are white, while 37 percent are black, 12 percent are Hispanic, and 3 percent are Asian. While most of Lead Mine’s students are from middle to upper-income families, a number of them hail from families that live in subsidized or lower-middle class housing, said its principal, Gary Baird.
“This school has a mix of families,” Baird said. “Some are unemployed…we used to have two or three homeless kids. Now we have a dozen.”
“We don’t have a whole lot of attention to it [racial and ethnic makeup] to tell you the truth,” he said.
“We’ve alwa
ys had the philosophy that [when] you come through the door, we’re going to teach you, and you’re going to learn…it’s always changing, the population.”
But while Lead Mine’s population may be constantly changing, its achievement levels continue to remain impressive.
Eighty-three percent of its third, fourth and fifth-grade students’ scores were at or above grade level in reading this past year on North Carolina’s end-of -grade assessment tests.
That’s better than the district’s 73.4 percent score and the 67.6 percent that was registered statewide.
On math, 87.6 percent of Lead Mine’s students’ scores were at or above grade level. And again, that’s a better showing than the district’s 83.4 percent score and the state’s 80 percent score.
More remarkable than that, however, is the school’s progress on bridging what has become known as the black-white achievement gap.
Last year, 69.3 percent of its black students’ scores were at or above grade level in reading and math, while 95 percent of its white students scored at that level.
That’s a significant improvement over the 2007-2008 school year when only 42 percent of Lead Mine’s black students’ scores were at or above grade level.
It’s clear that Lead Mine, as well as other schools throughout North Carolina and the nation, have a long wayk, to go to close the racial achievement gap. But Baird and other Wake County education officials attribute the progress in bridging that gap at Lead Mine, in large part, to its diversity policy.
It’s a policy that has been in effect since 2000; one that uses socioeconomics, instead of the politically-charged standard of race, in trying to ensure that few schools as possible become identifiable as mostly poor and, in most cases, mostly black or Hispanic.
That’s because when that happens – and it generally happens in most school districts throughout the country because of segregated neighborhood patterns – it becomes tougher to recruit high-quality teachers to schools with high concentrations of students from poor families. Parental involvement in these schools also is more difficult, as poorer parents have little time and fewer resources at their disposal.
UPDATE: On March 2, 2010, the Wake County school board voted to end the district's diversity policy in favor of neighborhood schools. By a 5-4 vote, the board gave the first of two approvals needed to end busing for diversity, the Raleigh News & Observer reported.
Since 2000, after two Supreme Court rulings which weakened the use of race as a factor for school diversity, the Wake County school system began using family socioeconomic status to continue to keep its schools diverse. The policy had made Wake County schools a model for districts across the county. It is the largest district in North Carolina.
“Teaching is hard in the best of circumstances, and I think that when you go to a high-poverty situation, it’s more difficult in terms of resources, [and] the amount of energy you need to spend,” said Baird.
But at Baird’s school, where there is a balanced mix of students from various economic backgrounds, the push for academic excellence is showing results.
“Earlier in the year, we did a math night, and we had a big turnout for that,” he said. “I think percentagewise, it was the largest percentage of minority parents that we’ve had at any event, including carnivals and all of that.
“We were like, ‘Wow, this is awesome.’ That they came out for a curriculum event was really cool.”
Brown versus the neighborhood
The Wake County School District sits in the midst of North Carolina’s Research Triangle – an area that’s anchored by the cities of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, N.C. and Duke, North Carolina and North Carolina State Universities.
Wake is also number one in the nation for having the most certified teachers – a fact that many attribute to it being situated in the triangle and to its diversity policy.
That policy is one way that Wake County has sought to uphold the ideal of the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown decision. In it, the high court ruled that “separate but equal,” schools were unconstitutional, and ordered school systems to desegregate.
The court, however, left it to the states to enforce its school desegregation decision, and most states, North Carolina included, delegated that responsibility to local counties and municipalities.
Between the 1960s and 1980s, many school systems sought to use busing and other controversial strategies like school clusters and magnet schools to ensure that black students received an education equal to that of their white counterparts – regardless of where they lived.
It also spawned backlash.
Whites abandoned the cities for the suburbs in droves and thwarted desegregation efforts. The schools they left behind became blacker, poorer and more socially isolated. And rulings by a more conservative Supreme Court, such as its 2007 decision in a case that challenged the use of race in assigning students to schools in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., have made it tougher for school districts – at least those with the political will to do so – to desegregate public schools.
Segregated housing patterns have led to higher concentrations of high-poverty neighborhood schools; schools that tend to be stigmatized by low achievement levels. That predicament is a huge part of what fuels the persistent achievement gap between black and white students; a gap in which only 14 percent of black fourth-graders nationally are proficient in reading on national achievement tests, compared to 43 percent of white fourth graders.
If school systems are serious about closing the achievement gap, then they cannot ignore the impact of high-poverty schools in poor, mostly-black neighborhoods, experts say.
Drawing school boundary lines is “a very political process,” said Bob Davis, chairman of the Department of Sociology and Social Work at North Carolina A&T State University.
But the data have shown that what Wake County is doing works, Davis said. And Wake County’s success is backed up by more data which show the socioeconomic composition of a school is a key predictor of the academic success of its students.
A 2004 report by the U.S. Department of Education found that schools in which 75 percent or more of the students were from low-income families had three times as many uncertified, or out-of-field, teachers in English and science schools with lower concentrations of poverty.
Data from the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which also is tracked the achievement gap, found that among fourth graders taking math assessment tests, poor students attending more affluent schools scored 20 points higher than poor students at high-poverty schools.
“From working for nine years as superintendent in a school district that was high poverty, that was urban, I can tell you that what the child does have [in a school with low-poverty levels] is the benefit of a school where volunteers come in,” said Ann Denlinger, president of Wake Education Partnership, a non-profit that works to further diversity and quality education in Wake County.
“There are adults in the school. You have PTAs that are interested in the school. You have businesses that support the school. And most importantly, every child in that school has the benefit of a higher-level teacher, a better teacher, than they would have if the school was high poverty.”
Then, there are the intangible benefits of children from different economic backgrounds attending school together.
“My son played ball, so we got to know the parents a lot,” said Teresa Abron, a retired Wake County teacher and principal. “Some parents of his friends would attend ball games but wouldn’t attend the teacher conferences.
“So by networking, communicating, we would talk: ‘What’s going on? Have you tried this? Hey, has your child taken the SAT yet? We exposed parents – then it trickled down to their children – to resources…“I think absolutely association made a difference. It had a ripple effect on some of his friends who were not as savvy in the school world because of their parents.”
Wake’s challenge
Until recently, Wake County’s use of socioeconomics to ensure school diversity was moving along well. Eight of the district’s nine school board members favored the policy.
Then the county had an election.
Four new board members, who campaigned on a return to neighborhood schools, have pledged to end Wake County’s diversity policy, saying that it foments family instability because parents don’t like the idea of their children being moved around from year to year – and that students ought to be able to attend the school that is closest to them.
The problem with that thinking, supporters of the policy say, in addition to the fact that doing away with the policy will lead to more high-poverty schools, is that diversity isn’t the reason behind the instability.
Growth is.
“Folks in high-growth areas believe…that diversity is the reason that students have been moved around,” said Julie Crain, vice president of programs at Wake Educational Partnership.
“The reason that students have been moved around is that we’re adding four, five, six, 7,000 students a year, and you have to move students to fill schools that you’re building.
“Growth is the major driver. Diversity is the lightning rod.”
Yet even though the board’s new 5-4 majority is against the diversity policy, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is doomed. In fact, says Mark Dorosin, senior managing attorney at the University of North Carolina Center for Civil Rights, practicality may slow the Wake County board’s move to undo the diversity policy.
“A neighborhood schools policy will potentially mean substantial overcrowding in certain schools, substantial underutilization of other schools, and there will be potentially significant costs associated either with building new schools or even with some temporary measures like mobile classrooms or trailers or whatever they do,” Dorosin said.
And, said Benita Jones, an attorney and education fellow at the center, if such changes lead to a substantial drop in access to a quality education for all students in Wake County, the board could potentially open itself up to being sued under the Leandro case ruling. In that 1997 decision, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled the state had an obligation to fund a sound, basic education for every student.
Even now, about a third of schools in Wake County are out of compliance with district’s 40 percent poverty maximum, Jones said. But she and other advocates of the diversity policy believe that can be fixed.
They also believe that setting goals for school socioeconomic diversity is still a good strategy for getting at racial and ethnic diversity.
That’s important.
By 2050, racial and ethnic minorities will make up the majority of the U. S. population. To make sure they are well educated, school districts will have to find the political will to break the shackles of neighborhood segregation.
At Lead Mine Elementary, they get why doing this is key. Its mission states that it will be “actively engaged in building a foundation for all students to be successful in a global society.”
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“A global society, I think, is a mixed society,” Principal Baird said. “Lead Mine is a microcosm of that.”
Index of Black-White Achievement Gap Stories
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This article outlines why Wake County in North Carolina is so hugely successful across all demographics in education. I will note that both my wife and oldest daughter are Wake County school teachers.
Allow me to make a few points:
1) Wake County focuses on educating each child, by natural outline of the neighborhoods most schools have a racially diverse population. Most schools tend to somewhat match the actual diversity of the county. We don't have all black schools in the inner-city and all white schools in the suburbs.
2) For a period of time Wake County attempted busing of students to improve diversity. Despite the commentary in the article, this project proved to be an huge failure. Any student who was bused (of any race) had decreased performance in school. Primarily this is due to the long period of time spent on the bus and the lower parental support of the school due to distance. The school board that put this policy into place which angered parents of every race was firmly voted out of office in a single election and replaced with a board focused on neighborhood schools. Test scores only went up after the re-implmentation of neighborhood schools (both in Raleigh and Charlotte). Also by reverting the neighborhood schools, the number of "high poverty"schools actually dropped to the lowest level ever. This is primarily due to the use of magnet schools and different track schools to attract students voluntarily to attend their non-base school.
3) Wake County strongly states each student and their parent(s) must take personal responsibility for their education. This is missing in many urban inner-city under-performing schools in the U.S.
4) Wake County has the strongest system of specialty Magnet schools in the U.S.. If your child is interested in arts, engineering, languages, or any other subject there are specialty magnet schools which you can enroll them in. The school system will provide transportation and other support for families who select this option.
5) Wake County offers both traditional schedule (summer off) and year-round schools. Parents can select either. There are also options for K-8 type schools and other types of academies.
6) Wake County is also home to some to the top Charter schools in the U.S. (for example Raleigh Charter).
7) Part of the success of Wake County is due to demographics. Wake County is home of most of the workforce of Research Triangle Park. Many of the parents tend to be highly educated and very supportive of the school system in terms of donating both time & money. The good news is this pulls up the ability of the schools to improve the education of lower income students.
8) In terms of the point above, I will make the observation that if you are a student in a urban school system such as Washington D.C. where over 85% of the students are low-income and minority -- it is very difficult to get good parental support or involvement, and this is one reason why education lags in the these urban cities.
Nothing that Nine_Ender stated is credible. Considering the achievement gap in the Toronto school system between blacks and whites is greater than nearly all school systems in the U.S., Nine_Ender has no facts or data to stand on.
Hopefully you understand that the article I posted is about the education system in Toronto. Toronto is a city in Canada, and not in the U.S - your post appears to lump Toronto as a U.S. issue.
One issue with the performance of minority students in urban schools system is the lack of personal responsibility and a racial culture which promotes that actually learning & being educated is a negative.
While I agree that the U.S. can certainly make improvements in educating low-income minority students in urban areas -- it is important to remember that education is a two way street. Students and their families must step up and take personal responsibility for their education in order to have success.
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Apologize for not translate the article above.
World Bank says Cuba has the best education system in Latin America and the Caribbean
Salim Lamrani | Paris - 09/03/2014 - 13h17
According to the international organization, Cuba is the only country in the region that has a high quality educational system
The World Bank has just published a revealing report on the issue of education in Latin America and the Caribbean. Titled excellent teachers. How to improve learning in Latin America and the Caribbean , the study examines the public education systems of the continent and the major challenges they face. 1
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According to the World Bank, "no Latin American school system, with the possible exception of Cuba", reaches global parameters
In Latin America, the basic education teachers (preschool, primary and secondary) is a human capital 7 Million, or 4% of the region's active population, and more than 20% of technical and professional workers. Their wages absorb 4% of the continent's GDP and their working conditions vary from one region to another, even within national borders. Poorly paid teachers are mostly women - an average of 75% - and they belong to modest social classes. In addition, faculty are over 40 years of age and considered to be "aged." 2
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The World Bank recalls that all governments around the globe are scrutinizing "the quality and performance of teachers" as the goals of education systems adapt to new realities. Now the focus is on acquiring skills and not merely simply accumulating knowledge.
The report's conclusions are relentless. The World Bank emphasizes "the low average quality of teachers in Latin America and the Caribbean," which is the main obstacle to the advancement of education on the continent. Academic content is inadequate and practices inefficient. Little and poorly trained, teachers devote only 65% of the time to instruction, "which amounts to missing a full day of instruction per week." On the other hand, the available didactic material remains little used, particularly the new information and communication technologies. In addition, teachers can not impose their authority, keep students' attention and encourage participation. 3
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According to the international financial institution, "no faculty in the region can be considered high quality compared to the world parameters", with the notable exception of Cuba. The World Bank notes that "at present, no Latin American school system, with the possible exception of Cuba, is close to showing high standards, strong academic talent, high or at least adequate remuneration and high professional autonomy Which characterizes the most effective education systems in the world, such as Finland, Singapore, Shanghai (China), the Republic of Korea, the Netherlands and Canada. " 4
In fact, only Cuba, where education has been a top priority since 1959, has an efficient education system and high-level teachers. The Antillean country has nothing to envy of more developed nations. The Caribbean island is, moreover, the nation of the world that devotes the highest part of the national budget (13%) to education. 5
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is not the first time that the World Bank praises the education system of Cuba. In a previous report, the organization recalled the excellence of the social system of the island:
"Cuba is internationally recognized for its achievements in the fields of education and health, with a social service that surpasses that of most developing countries and in Certain sectors compares to developed countries. Since the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and the subsequent establishment of a single party communist government, the country has created a system of social services that guarantees universal access to education and health, provided by the state.This model has enabled Cuba to achieve universal literacy, to eradicate certain diseases, to provide general access to safe drinking water and basic public health, to achieve the lowest rates in the region of infant mortality and one of the highest expectations of life. A review of Cuba's social indicators reveals an almost continuous improvement from 1960 to 1980. Several key indicators, such as life expectancy and infant mortality rates, continued to improve during the country's economic crisis in the 1990s. Currently, Cuba's social services are among the best in the developing world, as documented by numerous international sources, including the World Health Organization, the United Nations Development Program, and other UN agencies and the World Bank. ]. Cuba largely surpasses Latin America, the Caribbean and other middle-income countries in the main indicators: education, health and public health. " 6
The World Bank points out that the development of good educational systems is vital for the future of Latin America and the Caribbean. It also reinforces the example of Cuba, which has achieved excellence in this sector and is the only country on the continent that has a high quality teaching staff. These results are explained by the political will of the government of the Caribbean country to place youth at the center of the society project, dedicating the necessary resources to acquire knowledge and skills. Despite the limited resources of a Third World nation and the economic state imposed by the United States for more than half a century, Cuba, based on the adage of its apostle and national hero, "to be worshiped to be free" , Demonstrates that quality education is within reach of all nations.
Considering that Cuba does not participate in PISA or any other international student testing, it is absurd to make the any assertion about the Cuban K-12 school system and student results compared to other countries.
The above article is merely propaganda.
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I read all the 3 response you write to my posts. To agree with you,yes for some things you talk about with responsibility. Yes. Then I see this post of you from above.
You do not want to believe Cuba education is equal to first world wealthy country. Why? Is your bias. For economically we are poor with houses, cars, clothes, jewelry, yes correct. But so the investment go to education of the young with math and science is so far above USA. Mulatto, Black, white, ALL are educated because is very strict but very purpose driven to succeed and understand.
My point is that no one can make a case that education in Cuba is either better or worse than other countries -- because Cuba does not participate in any standardized world-wide testing such as PISA. Nor does Cuba release realistic budget information on the money spent on education.
Cuba has put out all sorts of propaganda over time about how great their K-12 education is. However people who escaped the island state that most schools in Cuba lack windows and technology while having minimal amount of books (Go read the stories from refugees in Miami). The few schools that the Cuban government promotes as "examples" are merely propaganda locations.
In regards to education in Cuba basic questions should be asked such as "How do you expect the country to be a leader in education in a nation where schools and private homes are not allowed to connect to the Internet?"
The bottom line is that Cuba may have an excellent K-12 education system or a horrible one. Until the Castro regime opens up and allows outside access, nobody will really know.
(Note - Internet question is an Edit)
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Actually, nothing that you are stating is credible at all. You seem to lack the critical thinking needed to understand your sources, what they are saying, and the limitations of what it means. Toronto is the #1 destination for recent immigrants in Canada. So there will always be some performance issues for that group initially. Despite that reality, our kids as a whole outperform the kids in North Carolina and most if not all US states. The studies are credible and have no political pretense other then roughly evaluate education standards.
Your racist focus on segmenting out black kids and trying to suggest that Toronto is somehow not diverse because it's not black enough for you are disgusting themes. Diversity means so much more then this American bs about blacks vs whites and scapegoating people. Shame on you as a human being going down this route.
Quite seriously, you seem incredibly dense for a man who thinks he's intelligent.
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Canada doesn't need to exclude it's biggest cities or worst schools to feel good about it's education scores. LA is part of your country. You've created a country where medical care, education, job opportunities are based more on financial backing then things like talent, ability, hard work, and need. That kind of system cannot sustain itself, you are already slowly falling apart at the seams.