Friday, September 30, 2011

Priority Round Manipulations in the Choice Plan

We jumped a huge hurdle last year when the board eliminated socio-economic discrimination from the magnet selection process. Now it appears that it is creeping back in, albeit in a different form.

WCPSS has posted the latest assignment plan presentation on their assignment website: "http://assignment.wcpss.net/next/board-work-session-presentation--09-20-2011.pdf" It includes the following priority rounds:

Priority 1: Incoming siblings of current WCPSS students

Priority 2: Students who live within 1.5 miles of their first-choice school

Priority 3: Students whose nearest school is more than 1.5 miles from their home and who select that school as their first-choice school

The first 3 priorities are the same as they've always been and besides the fact that you're still not guaranteed a spot in rounds 2 and 3, there's really nothing to complain about here. Well, I take that back. One factor not addressed here is feeder patterns for middle and high school selection. This question was asked at the Millbrook High info meeting and they said that feeder pattern comes before siblings. So for middle and high schools, the first priority goes to students following the feeder pattern, then they move on to siblings. Since the feeder patterns are designed to fill the middle and high schools naturally, how many seats will actually be available for those who want to leave their feeder pattern or for newcomers to the system?

Priority 4: Group 2 Proximity and Group 3 magnet students rising into 6th or 9th grade that have attended a Group 2 or Group 3 magnet elementary school whose first choice is the magnet middle or high school for their magnet program pathway

First, a reminder of what Group 2 and Group 3 elementary magnets are. Group 2 are: Brooks, Combs, Conn, Douglas, Joyner, Underwood, & Wiley. Group 3 magnets are: Farmington Woods, Smith, Wendell & Zebulon. Group 2 magnets are located in middle to upper income areas and are to be filled with 40-45% Magnet students/55-60% Proximity. They say that Group 3 magnets are located in the further reaches of the county and are there as 'equity magnets'. Wendell and Zebulon were indeed opened as equity magnets, but I don't think Farmington Woods was and Smith definitely wasn't. Group 3 magnets are to be filled with 10-20% magnet/80-90% proximity students.

Second, the magnet lottery is separate from the 'regular' lottery so I wouldn't think that too many of the Group 3 elementary magnet students would have the magnet middle and high schools on their 'choice lists'.

Third, I find it interesting that Group 2 Proximity students get priority for the middle and high magnets but the Group 3 Proximity students don't. Why is that? Will there be an explanation? Is there a way for Group 3 Proximity students to get a 'magnet' seat so they can automatically follow the feeder pattern?

Priority 5: Students residing in a node designated as “low-performing” whose first-choice school is a regional school choice (R1 or R2)

It appears that instead of calling them 'achievement' or 'high performing' schools, WCPSS is now calling them 'regional school choices'. They have divided the county into 4 regions, starting from central Raleigh/Inside the Beltline. The 'achievement' school choices are within your region.

They are obviously trying to balance for achievement, but I wonder if this will backfire on them. A few years ago, Chuck Dulaney and the previous board came up with an idea for attracting more low income families to Year Round schools. They changed the selection criteria for year round so that if you lived in a high poverty node and were assigned to a high poverty school, you had priority for a year round school. It backfired and middle class families in those nodes who had previously been denied YR were finally accepted.

I am not against giving families an 'achievement' choice, just pointing out that WCPSS may not have thought this through very well if their goal is balancing the schools by 'achievement'.

Priority 6: Students residing in a node designated as “high-performing” whose first-choice school is a magnet school and/or is located in a low-performing area

This is where the sneaky manipulation really comes in. First, since the magnet lottery is separate, are we talking about nodes having magnet schools on their 'choice lists'? Which nodes have which magnets on their lists? Are these all proximate nodes or are they farther away? I ask because as I've illustrated in a previous post, there are nodes north of I-540 that had Brentwood and Millbrook magnet elementaries on their choice lists when there were more proximate schools not on their lists.

Second, this could play a part in filling the Group 2 magnet proximity seats. If there aren't enough students in the middle to upper income areas surrounding those magnet schools to fill the 55-60% proximity seats, then they have to start drawing from students who have those schools on their 'choice list'. Each student whose closest school is a Group 1 magnet (those located in low income areas) has the following choice list: closest Group 1 magnet, next closest Group 1 magnet, proximate Group 2 magnet, 3 Regional Choices, proximate traditional non-magnet and proximate year round non-magnet.

I think that most of those families will pick their closest and second closest Group 1 magnet as their first 2 choices. There are not enough proximity seats at those magnets to fit all of the students who will choose them, so they will be moved on down to their 3rd choice. My guess is that the 3rd choice will be the proximate Group 2 magnet or the proximate tradtional non-magnet, whichever is closer. Since there aren't many proximate non-magnets in those areas, I would think the proximate Group 2 would be chosen as 3rd. This might create a problem if 'too many' of the kids from the low achieving areas were given seats at those schools. By placing a priority on students applying from high achieving nodes, they ensure that won't be a problem. It would be interesting to see who has each magnet on their regular choice list. I've requested maps showing this for each school, but was told they don't exist.

Third, and most important, we are introducing a new form of discrimination into the selection process. They finally got rid of SES as a factor but they are now substituting 'academic performance'. So if you are in a "high performing" node you deserve the magnet extras but if you're unfortunate enough to live in a "low performing" node you don't.

Priority 7: Students whose nearest school is severely overcrowded and select a school that is not overcrowded as their first choice

How does a school get severely overcrowded in a controlled choice plan? One of the main selling points of this plan is that they set the capacity of the school and fill the school to that capacity level through the lottery. Once that school is at capacity, students are sent to one of their other choices. The only way I can really see this coming into play is in the first couple of years if a student who is currently at an overcrowded school applies for a less crowded school on the choice list. We all supposedly get to stay at our current schools if we want to so some schools will remain overcrowded. But for any newcomers to the system it shouldn't be a factor at all.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Who Likes the Choice Plan?

I attended a candidate question and answer session at Baileywick Park last night, which was truly wonderful. My favorite part of campaigning is talking with people about the issues. Not just telling them my viewpoints, but hearing theirs and having conversations. This has been true for me during all my years of advocacy on various school issues. I always come away with something positive from these conversations: an argument I had never thought of, a different interpretation of an argument, and always something to think about. So last night was wonderful because we had conversations. It got a little heated at times, but it was respectful and productive and I walked away with all kinds of thoughts spinning in my head.

The greatest conversations for me were about the Choice Plan. I rarely meet anybody who likes the choice plan and the ones who do say it's because "I get to pick which school I want". When we start talking about the lack of guarantees, however, they aren't so enthusiastic. But last night I heard from some parents who really like the choice model and for a good reason: nobody gets kicked out of their current school.

The parents I met have high schoolers and older children who went through the system. They've lived in Raleigh for many years--before developments like Falls River, Riverside, Bedford and Wakefield existed. As additional schools were built to handle the new growth, these families got reassigned from their 'neighborhood schools' to make room for newcomers. Not fair, in their eyes, and I completely understand their point of view. They want to stay in the school community they've been a part of for years.

I keep thinking about communities moving forward under this plan. I worry about the new family who moves into a neighborhood where most of the kids go to a school that isn't even on the new 'choice list' (this is the case for my node) or is so full that rising kindergarteners and other new students get bumped to a farther away school. What happens to our sense of community then? Or to the support that our communities at large give to our schools?

Complicating the situation is the fact that we've never had 'normal' reassignments. When a new school opened up it wasn't just the logical neighborhoods that were moved to fill the school--'diversity' was always taken into account, which often ended up creating a domino effect moving more students than truly necessary. Would parents have been as upset if the moves were logical? Would a family-friendly grandfathering policy have made a difference?

Whatever the new plan ends up looking like, we need to make sure our decisions are based on how things should be and not based on a reaction to the nonsensical moves of the past. There are still a lot of questions to be answered and many that haven't been asked yet. We all need to continue to talk about the assignment plan and ask questions. I was encouraged last night at Baileywick Park and I hope people continue to engage each other in conversation. It's the only way we'll ever get where we need to be.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

A Few More Maps

I've decided to go ahead and post some of the other maps I did for addresses in District 3.


View 2308 Lemuel Dr in a larger map



View 7409 Bolero Way in a larger map

This last map is a little different. The green schools are elementary, blue are middle and red are high schools.


View 4600 Pooh Corner Dr in a larger map

Monday, September 19, 2011

Why Transparency is Key

In my letter asking the board to stop work on the blue plan, I stressed that transparency was essential for any assignment plan to be successful. After the turmoil of the past decade(s) not knowing when and why our neighborhood might be targeted for reassignment, we need an assignment policy that makes sense and is open to scrutiny. When Wake Education Partnership first unveiled their "Alves Plan", upon which our new assignment model is based, one of my first thoughts was that it was too easy to manipulate. Without maps to see who has which schools to choose from, it's impossible to know what is happening.

The elementary choices that my node has are the 5 closest schools. That's what we've been told--that our choices will pretty much be those in closest proximity to us with the addition of an achievement school that might be further away. I decided to look up some other nodes in District 3 to see if that was the case and unfortunately it isn't. I found nodes in North Raleigh that have Reedy Creek, Dillard Drive and Weatherstone as some of their choices. How does that make any sense?

The choices often varied a lot for people who lived fairly close to each other. I found 2 nodes that were a perfect example of this and mapped them in google. The green and blue push pins represent an address and the matching colored teardrops represent the elementary schools those addresses each have to pick from. The two red teardrops are schools that each address has in common: Wildwood Forest and Durant Elementary.



View Farmlea Cir & Riverside in a larger map


Why are the options so different for these two nodes that are directly across the road from each other? This illustrates to me that it will be so easy for WCPSS to manipulate your choices in this plan to steer you where they want you to go. No longer will we be able to see entire nodes getting moved and question it--it will all be done under cover and we will never know about it.

** Edited to add: These school choices are so ridiculous that Wake Forest Elementary barely even shows up on the map. It's green and is way up at the top.

Saturday, September 17, 2011

The Blue Plan Debacle

Following is the letter I sent the Wake County School Board asking them to stop working on the blue plan and get more feedback from parents:

To the Members of the Wake County Board of Education:

On behalf of the parents and taxpayers of Wake County, I request that you immediately stop pursuing the “Choice-Based Plan” (formerly known as the Blue Plan) and begin looking for an alternative model that meets the true needs and desires of Wake Schools families. From the beginning, you’ve forced the public into a false choice between the "Blue Plan" and “Green Plan”, ignoring common sense approaches. Thursday night’s information session made it clear to me that this plan will not be ready for implementation in a few months as planned. After the never ending controversy and upheaval we experienced with previous assignment policy, it should be clear to you that any new assignment plan must have transparency to be successful. Under this controlled choice model, parents may not get their first, second or even third choice in this plan and they will never know why. We need an assignment plan that addresses the core principles that voters have asked for, including base assignments to schools which are reasonably close to home, magnet and calendar choice options for those that seek alternatives to their base school, diversion of transportation spending back into the classroom, and simplicity in how the plan is administered.

Consider the following:

  • The public has insufficient information to evaluate these options. How many students live within 1.5 miles of each school? How many have each school as their closest school? Where are the maps illustrating these numbers?
  • The Blue Plan is overly complex and is lacking in the transparency in assignment decisions that voters demanded in the 2009 elections.
  • You asked parents if choice was important and they responded with a resounding ‘yes’, but you failed to ask the critical questions: Do parents really want to choose from 5 base schools? Or do they want a choice of calendar and magnet programs? You must answer these crucial questions before proceeding any further. Rather than asking parents what they want, it seems the question was designed to fit the plan that staff already had in mind.
  • Feeder patterns are disruptive in many areas.
  • The proposed assignment model may result in bus transportation to numerous non-magnet ‘base’ schools being provided to students living on the same street. We simply cannot afford to spend money on school buses instead of teachers in this challenging economic environment.
  • The model’s use of “achievement schools” is perilously close to repeating the mistakes made by previous school boards: attempting to use an assignment plan to address an educational issue – something Wake County voters resoundingly rejected in 2009.
  • In Cambridge, MA, which uses a similar controlled choice model, only 83% of families received their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd choice for the school year 2009-10. What factors contributed to this and could that be repeated here in Wake County?
  • Transportation costs have still not been calculated for the plan and one Student Assignment Task Force member expressed concern that those costs will ‘blow up the plan’.
  • Magnet programs and how they fit in the assignment model have not been adequately discussed and neither have our new ‘themed’ schools. We cannot develop a lasting student assignment plan without an objective review of those schools and their roles in the system.

Once again, the needs of parents and students have been forgotten, and your “Blue Plan” only takes us further from a path to a sensible assignment model. Please don’t waste any more time and resources toward developing this flawed model. The results of the Blue Plan "test drive" made it clear that the factors most valued by parents were proximity and calendar choice. We only have one chance to get this right. For the time being, let’s focus on fixing any onerous school assignments remaining from the previous assignment policy and let’s have a discussion about magnet programs and themed schools. Staff should be able to quickly develop a sensible assignment model which reflects the desires of Wake County parents and taxpayers in a transparent and user-friendly manner.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Mansfield
Wake County taxpayer, parent of 2 WCPSS students, and long time advocate for equity in Wake Schools