Re: Cambridge Schools Try Integration by Income

["Art Burke" <aburke@vansd.org>]

What Thrernstrom actually said was that poor kids need good teachers. 
She did not say that we should not spend more money to get that.   

Art

>>> pfarr@uclink4.berkeley.edu 05/08/03 06:28AM >>>
Front page article in the NY Times.  Notice how quick is the
conservative A 
Thernstrom to dismiss the significance of social class inequity in
school 
outcomes.  Notice how she uses the No Excuses "data" from the
right-wing 
Heritage Foundation to argue that school funding levels do not
determine 
student test performance.  This data on supposedly low income,
supposedly 
high performing schools has been exposed as flimsy and duplicitous by
real 
researchers and educators, but the conservative idealogues control the

media so they control the message.  The importance of class inequality
in 
schooling, and the fact that no children can learn well in underfunded

schools, is the big secret that must be hidden from the US public.


May 8, 2003
Cambridge Schools Try Integration by Income
By SARA RIMER

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/08/national/08CAMB.html 

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — This city has joined a small but growing movement
to use 
income, not race, as a primary factor in assigning students to
schools.

For 4-year-old Noah Chisholm, that has meant attending kindergarten at
the 
Fletcher-Maynard Academy this year, a school where most children are
poor 
enough to receive free or discounted lunches. Noah, whose parents are
both 
architects, is among a small group of middle-class children who school

officials hope will have a powerful impact on improving achievement for
all 
the school's children.

Noah's assignment to Fletcher-Maynard was primarily driven by his
family's 
income, but it also helped the district meet another goal for the
school: 
greater racial balance. Noah is white. Fletcher-Maynard's 264 students
are 
predominantly black or Hispanic.

Cambridge's goal in turning to economic integration is twofold: raising
the 
academic performance of students and achieving racial balance, without

resorting to race-based formulas that are increasingly being rejected
by 
federal courts.

In addition to Cambridge, school districts in Wake County and 
Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C.; South Orange-Maplewood, N.J.; Manchester,

Conn.; St. Lucie County, Fla.; and San Francisco have adopted economic

integration plans in recent years.

In LaCrosse, Wis., the first district to endorse economic integration
when 
it did so in the early 1990's, scores have risen, and the district has
a 
very low dropout rate, despite a relatively high poverty rate.

Proponents of economic integration say there is ample evidence that all

children learn better at schools where middle-class students are in the

majority.

"While there are a handful of exceptions, in general high-poverty
schools 
don't work," said Richard D. Kahlenberg, an educational researcher at
the 
Century Foundation who is a leading advocate for economic integration
as 
the way to raise achievement among poor children.

But critics say that the way to help low-income students make
educational 
gains has to be more effective teaching — not moving children around.

"There's something wrong with the assumption that if you've got too
many 
low-income kids in a classroom, you can't teach them," said Abigail 
Thernstrom, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who has
extensively 
researched race and education. "My response to that is: No excuses.
Start 
to educate the kids."

Dr. Thernstrom and others also say that economic integration has no 
relevance for large, predominantly poor urban school districts like 
Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington. "What are you going to do
— 
helicopter the kids in?" Dr. Thernstrom said. Supporters of economic 
integration counter that children in poor urban areas should have the 
opportunity to cross district lines and attend middle-class schools.

Just as racial integration
of schools was resisted by many whites,
middle- 
and upper-income families may object to economic integration. Moreover,

some civil rights advocates say that economic integration does not go
far 
enough in achieving racial integration.

In Cambridge, however, the idea gained momentum a few years ago. The
belief 
here is that if any place can make economic integration work, it is
this 
mixed city, with its ultraliberal reputation and its 7,000 public
school 
students — some the children of professors at Harvard and the
Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology and others born to single mothers receiving
public 
assistance.

Educators here point to the Morse School, where they said an influx of

middle-income students in the mid-1990's helped turn around what had
been a 
low-performing, unpopular school.

Cambridge has 15 elementary and middle schools and one high school.
While 
the city spends $17,000 a year on each public-school student, the
schools' 
quality is considered uneven. The student population, about 40 percent
of 
whom qualify for a free or reduced-rate lunch, is 40 percent white, 23

percent African-American and 11 percent other black, 14 percent
Hispanic, 
11 percent Asian, and 1 percent American Indian.

For 20 years, Cambridge's voluntary approach to racial integration —
which 
relied not on forced busing but on giving parents considerable choice
in 
schools — was considered a model by educators. Many children did end
up 
riding buses to schools, but with Cambridge only 6.2 square miles, no
one 
had to travel very far.

Across the river in Boston and in Lynn, though, where parents were 
contesting race-based integration plans, Cambridge school officials
became 
concerned that their own plan was vulnerable to legal challenges.

Officials were also worried about a handful of schools — including
the two 
that became Fletcher-Maynard — that had high concentrations of
impoverished 
students and low state achievement test scores. Schools in Cambridge
were 
fairly racially diverse and, in theory, open to everyone, but middle-
and 
upper-middle-income parents tended to choose certain schools, and poor

parents others.

Two years ago, persuaded by the work of Mr. Kahlenberg and others that
one 
way to help the low-performing, high-poverty schools was to raise the 
number of middle-class students attending them, the Cambridge school 
committee adopted a plan that emphasized socioeconomic integration in 
student assignments.

At the same time, it allocated extra resources to low-performing
schools 
like Fletcher-Maynard; officials hoped not only to improve achievement,
but 
also to attract more middle-class parents to those schools. The plan,
which 
will be phased in over three years, began with this year's kindergarten
class.

Economic integration is turning out to be controversial in a city where

low-income and middle- and upper-income parents — and white and
minority 
parents — often have very different ideas about what makes a good
school.

Noah Chisholm's parents, Scott Chisholm and Afshan Bokhari, were not
happy 
when they learned that he had been assigned to Fletcher-Maynard. It was
not 
one of the three schools they had listed as preferences. Only about 10

percent of parents in Cambridge do not get one of their three choices.

In assigning students, the district uses a complicated lottery that
takes 
into account family income, siblings, proximity, and — as a last
resort if 
a school falls out of racial balance — race. Under the new
socioeconomic 
diversity, the district classifies low-income students as those who
qualify 
for free and reduced-price lunch, while those who pay are considered 
middle-income.

Alex Ivan, whose father is a biotechnology scientist and whose mother
is a 
neurologist, was also assigned to Fletcher-Maynard. Noah and Alex are
among 
the 4 children of the class of 13 who do not qualify for free or 
reduced-price lunch. They are also the class's only two white
children.

"F
irst we were, sort of, `Hey, how do we get out of here?' " Ms.
Bokhari 
recalled. She added that the school's racial or economic makeup did not

concern her but that she had known nothing about the school when Noah
was 
assigned there.

Still, Noah and Alex's parents were won over by their sons' teacher,
Ali 
Barr, and her assistant, Betty Snell. They were also impressed by the
other 
kindergartners, and by the principal, Robin Harris.

Ms. Bokhari said she had tried to convince a friend to send her two 
children to the school. But she said the friend, a computer programmer,

preferred a school with a lot of demanding upper-income parents. "She
says, 
`I want the rich moms to help me bring up my children,' " Ms. Bokhari
said.

Her friend has a point. Middle- and upper-middle-income parents tend to
be 
more aggressive about making sure their schools have everything, from
top 
teachers to special arts programs, experts said. "Middle-class parents

provide quality control," said Nancy Walser, a member of the Cambridge

school committee and the author of a guide to the Cambridge public
schools. 
"They're like canaries in a mine."

Some people fear that under the plan middle- and upper-income parents
will 
flee the Cambridge system if they must contend with unqualified
teachers 
and inadequate resources.

Ms. Bokhari, who has degrees from Wellesley and Harvard and is pursuing
a 
Ph.D. in art history at Boston University, said that when it came to
her 
three children's education, what mattered most was achievement. She
said 
Noah would probably return to Fletcher-Maynard next year. After that,
she 
is not sure. Her oldest son, Essah, a second grader at another public 
school where, Ms. Bokhari said, he was not sufficiently challenged,
would 
be attending Shady Hill, a high-achieving, $14,000-a-year priate
school. 
Noah may eventually follow, she said. Her third child, who is 2, is not
yet 
in the school system.

One of Noah's best friends is his polite, serious classmate, 6-year-old

Omar Maxwell. Omar's family lives in public housing two blocks from 
Fletcher-Maynard. In contrast to Noah's parents, Omar's mother, Keyonna

Maxwell, said that the school's proximity to her home was one of its
most 
important attributes. She is attending nursing school, and likes the 
convenience — and safety — of having Omar close by.

Ms. Maxwell said she did not believe her son needed middle-income 
classmates to succeed. "It all depends on the teachers," she said.

With all its benefits — classes capped at 17 students, experienced 
teachers, the district's only full-time art teacher for kindergarten 
through eighth grade, computers for all fifth graders and above — 
Fletcher-Maynard still has 47 vacancies. There is a waiting list of 
low-income children from the neighborhood. But under the plan the
available 
slots must be held for middle-class families.

"The only way they're going to come is if we increase the test scores,"
Ms. 
Harris said, adding that she was not waiting for middle-class
students.

"If we had 100 percent children of color and poor, we'd still get the
job 
done," she said. "You set the bar high, and they excel."

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