A few days ago, I observed in an e-mail to a friend
I heard about this [The Office for Civil Rights’ report, Reveling New Truths About the Nation’s Schools] on NPR’s Talk of the Nation today, so I looked it up. This is perhaps old stuff to you, but I find it most interesting and revelatory. Granted that these are big city schools far removed from us, still, I wonder if some of these patterns do not exist in Idaho, to a lesser degree and with different demographics, of course. We are constantly blamed for how poorly prepared our students are for college, but notice the number of schools who even offer Algebra II (passing it is another matter) and beyond; many also do not even offer Chemistry. Pp 6-10. The data on teacher equity in both pay and assignments is also interesting. But “this touches not us,” no doubt. http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/crdc-2012-data-summary.pdf
He replied
Sue and I were amazed, when we were living in Maryland, when one of the local high schools attained accreditation, apparently for the first time in a while. Last time I was aware, in Idaho, there was hell to pay in the press if the high school did not receive high marks in accreditation.
Of course, when I went to high school American Falls had the reputation of being the richest school district in the state.
The foregoing is prologue. I would imagine that in Maryland, Montgomery County schools such as Chevy-Chase High School or Montgomery Blair High School have little problem with accreditation.http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/currentyear/schools/04406.pdf Herein lies a little problem the Reformists or the media who report them do not seem quick to acknowledge.
In Idaho, even the not-so-affluent districts generally get their accreditation. There will be some who will be “advised.” A few will be “warned.” Evidently the problems get fixed. I can’t remember when I last heard of an Idaho school district losing its accreditation. But even in the smallest, humblest district there are enough parents who would raise bloody Hell if their school lost its accreditation. Patrons may not feel as deeply about the accreditation of the academic programs as they do about the football team, but it would certainly raise concern enough that patrons would demand answers and solutions. But in a really large district, especially if the schools are very large, and if some of those schools draw from less prosperous neighborhoods, it may well be that this sense of community ownership is not so strong if it exists at all.
This is even more pernicious if there is a wide gap in income and class between schools. Income and class have become the “new race,” and with this comes an us-them mentality. Usually and predictably, board members (or whatever governing body) come from the “better” neighborhoods. It is not surprising if they are more solicitous of “their” schools than the “others.” This was brought home forcefully to me several years ago in one of the classes I had to take for my administrator’s certificate. In an after-class discussion, one Boise teacher wondered why school A seemed to get preferential funding and more “goodies” than school B. Another Boise teacher replied, “Why, because you have a better class of kid at School A, of course.” I have never forgotten that.
Some years later, but still several years ago, I was at an NHPO (a parent organization for Nampa High School) meeting. The English department had recently un-tracked itself for reasons that still seem legitimate. As part of this untracking, AP was dropped. (It has since come back, but the “remedial” classes have not, and good riddance). One angry father, red-faced, indignantly sputtered, “But… But that means my daughter will have to be in classes with all those other kids!” I have never forgotten that. I think that one reason Shirley Vendrell lost her job as principal was that she bucked the district leadership and campaigned long and hard against the district leadership and its idea that the new high school should be the academic high school, and NHS would the “vocational” school. In other words, rich-poor; white-brown.
As long as the “good” schools are doing well and have no trouble being accredited, no one much cares about the “bad” ones.
Furthermore, not all districts are created equal. Some have much better tax bases than others. Rich districts – poor districts. This is most apparent in declining urban districts. (http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2011/02/07/captured-the-ruins-of-detroi) The middle class flees to the suburbs (white flight), taking the tax base with them. Jonathan Kozol discusses this at length in Savage Inequalities (1992)
The Civil Rights Data Collection report, referred to earlier, points this up. Page 10 shows that more novice (cheaper) teachers are assigned to the schools with the most African-American and Hispanic students. Likewise, at those schools, teachers in general earn less, perhaps because, in general, they are less experienced and therefore are farther down on the salary schedule. We gather from this that less experienced teachers are less capable in managing kids’ behavior, and probably academically as well. After all, this study was originally about discipline. I know, the Reformists say that there is absolutely no link between teacher experience and teacher effectiveness (I have never seen any statistical evidence to this effect), but I don’t believe it. I am sure that when I retired, I was a much better teacher than I had been 40 years earlier, or even 10 years earlier. I certainly had fewer behavior problems in my classes.In fact, remembering my first few years is sort of embarrassing. For most of a half-century, I have heard education Policy-Makers enthuse about young blood and new ideas to justify preferring to hire less experienced (cheaper) teachers.