Low income students need more support, not achievement district
Published February 3, 2016
by Chris Fitzsimon, NC Policy Watch and NC SPIN panelist, February 2, 2016.
The public rationale for many of the efforts to dismantle traditional public education with various privatization schemes almost always includes the claim that it is all about helping students do better, most often low-income and minority kids.
Supporters of the sketchy North Carolina voucher program say that often, that it’s all about helping poor kids. The program, euphemistically called opportunity scholarships, currently has income eligibility limits, though they have already been increased once and the long term plan is to make vouchers available to thousands of more students.
The same is true of the state’s current experiment with unproven virtual charters, one run by K12, Inc., a company embroiled in scandals in other states and run out of Tennessee.
The online for profit charters will help kids who are struggling in traditional public schools. That’s the line anyway.
There’s no real evidence that any of the privatization plans actually help low-income kids achieve more academically, but it’s easier to build support for dismantling a popular and successful public institution talking about poor kids than it is making a purely anti-government ideological argument.
And it’s especially effective when low-income students are struggling in public schools whether it’s the schools fault or not.
The scene is playing out again in the latest school privatization battle in North Carolina, the debate over something called achievement school districts. The idea, proposed by Rep. Rob Bryan, is to convert a certain number of low-performing schools into charters which may be operated by for profit companies who keep popping up to capitalize on the school privatization frenzy.
Never mind that school turnaround efforts by the N.C. Department of Public Instruction are showing some promising results despite the lack of resources provided by the General Assembly that makes it impossible for DPI to focus on all the schools that need extra help.
Some lawmakers who seem to be warming up to Bryan’s proposal—which has failed miserably in neighboring Tennessee—are understandably frustrated that schools with a high percentage of low-income students are not performing as well as more affluent schools and are constantly branded as failing by the state’s absurd A-F grading system.
But there’s another way to address that problem, by helping the students and their families before the kids show up at school.
No one can deny the correlation between education and poverty. That doesn’t mean that low-income kids can’t learn. It means that they face extraordinary hurdles that most other students do not, and many of the problems are difficult for schools to solve.
But it’s not impossible. It just takes policymakers and education officials working together. They need to talk to Tiffany Anderson, the former head of the schools in Jennings, Missouri who recently accepted a job to run the schools in Topeka, Kansas.
As reported recently in the Washington Post, Anderson turned around the overwhelmingly poor schools in the Jennings School District not by supporting privatizing them or converting them to charters. She did it by helping the students and their families by setting up a food bank and medical clinic at the high school.
She installed washers and dryers that parents could use if they volunteered at the school. She even started a shelter for homeless teens. She started a Saturday school and reinstated arts programs.
The results were dramatic. The school was in danger of losing its accreditation but is now fully accredited and the students have made huge progress with many kids now considering college for the first time.
The lesson seems pretty obvious. One of the best ways to help poor kids do better in schools is to address the challenges they face because of their poverty.
If Rep. Bryan wants to help low-performing schools, maybe he should fight to make sure that all the at-risk four year olds have access to NC PreK so they show up at school ready to learn. Maybe he should support expanding Medicaid so the parents of low-income students can get regular medical care when they need it.
Maybe the real innovations lawmakers should consider are the things that Tiffany Anderson did, providing support services at the schools and help for students’ families in the community.
Converting a public school with lots of low-income students to a for-profit charter won’t make it any more likely that a third-grader with an abscessed tooth can afford to see a dentist.
We don’t need achievement school districts and for profit charters to help poor kids do better at school. And we don’t need vouchers either.
We need a commitment to help the students and their families with the things that make it harder for them to succeed. It may not accomplish the philosophical aims of the privatizers, but it would transform the lives of low-income kids in North Carolina.
February 3, 2016 at 10:38 am
Norm Kelly says:
We know Chris is a die-hard lib, Billary supporter. But we also need to remember that Chris is the one who created the idea of referring properly to public schools as 'government education monopoly'. I use it often in order to be most descriptive.
What part of inappropriate non-grade-level reading materials for young kids makes sense? None of it does! Yet, parents are told all across the nation that they must accept it because it's part of the scheme!
What part of long, drawn-out, confusing math solutions HELPS kids learn math? So much of the garbage that is taught to kids as to how to solve math problems simply adds steps, making the process longer, creates more confusion, and does not relate to future solutions. Why does it take 10 or 14 steps to solve '14+4='? How many kids across the nation have points deducted because they can solve this problem without using the required steps dictated by Communist Core? We have been repeatedly told that Communist Core schemes would HELP kids learn and achieve but instead it's causing frustration and point deductions. With Communist Core standards/schemes, kids aren't learning they are following the rules. Which is the goal of the Government Education Monopoly!
Why do libs oppose alternatives to big education? Libs constantly claim, repeated often by Billary, that everything they do is 'for the kids', including state-sponsored gambling, yet when it comes to education, they refuse to try ANYTHING new or different. Even in Wake County when voters put Republicans in charge of the school system, parents were listened to, kids were 'allowed' to attend schools closer to home instead of being bused, libs objected. Then when libs were put back in charge of education, one of the first steps they took was to implement forced busing once again! No more listening to parents! No more allowing parents to choose. Busing was/is more important to libs than experimenting with allowing kids to attend a school close to home. If parents of 'the poor' kids who are bused cross-county can't get to the school their kids are bused to, how can these parents participate in their kids education? Yet, removing 'poor kids' from their parents is exactly what libs in education call for and implement. No alternative to lib education schemes allowed. Not with busing, not with school choice, not with Communist Core. It's the lib way, the lib scheme, Government Monopoly, or nothing!
How about libs start actually looking at plans/alternatives that just might be good 'for the children' instead of looking at everything from the perspective of what's better for the lib machine? Take personal advantage out of the picture, and start thinking about 'the children'. Start thinking about how telling people that gambling is good ONLY if it's state-sponsored and the profits are theoretically directed to 'education'. Gambling is bad always! Misleading people is bad always! Lib schemes are bad ALWAYS! Government monopolies are worse than private sector monopolies! Always!
February 4, 2016 at 11:03 am
Richard L Bunce says:
Low income parents need more support in getting their children out of traditional government schools that have failed their children and into alternate schools of the parents choice. Increase NC Education Vouchers. Parents are accountability in education when they control the education funds.
February 4, 2016 at 11:06 am
Richard L Bunce says:
Traditional government schools have abandoned their education function, and given their dismal results over the recent decades that should have been expected, and are now fully engaged in social engineering that was never their function. Parents need to get their children out before it is too late.
