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Global warming deniers beware --brain-eating amoebas may kill your children!

Those who discount the catastrophic effects of global warming, like my younger brother even though he acknowledges the reality of climate change, often counter that warming may not be all that bad. 

Like the melting of the ice in Greenland may turn it into a productive agricultural center for growing wheat and corn and maybe even tomatoes.  Or apples.  After all, we are witnessing an oil rush in the Arctic with countries racing though once unnavigable ice-clogged waters to stake their claims.  In the larger economic scheme of things, what's a few polar bears? 

That's capitalist optimism at work, always seeking  opportunity in disaster for making a few bucks.

Let me suggest that the money makers back off a bit and listen to the scientists.  Rapid global warming --a hundred years is a nano-second in geological time-- could prove disastrous to the ecosystems which sustain life on earth.  It takes a long time for complex organisms to adapt to change, but not so much for microorganisms.

Take the amoeba, for example.  It turns out that a certain brain-eating variety of the one-celled organism likes warm water and will surely expand its range as temperatures rise.  In fact, the mini-blobs have killed six people across the southern United States in the past year alone. 

Does that mean we're all going to die a slow brain death at the hands of these microscopic killers?  No.  But it is one more thing to worry about as we continue pumping greenhouse gases into the skies.  That and the coming infestation of killer bees and the loss of Florida and the dying off of the fish we eat as the oceans warm  and the decimation of  Antarctic penguins.

Those and all the changes and dangers we have yet to even imagine. 

 

School reform 101

It's curious that efforts to raise student achievement --meaning test scores-- are often referred to as school reform.  That's hardly the case.  The testimony at Monday's school board meeting about ways to raise test scores for low achieving students is far from what I consider true school reform.

Nor does it deal with students at the other end of the spectrum, especially so-called "gifted" students who already test as "proficient".   The discussion going on over at Steve Rawley's blog about the inadequacy of Portland's TAG programs highlights some of the issues that real school reform could readily address, like providing the flexibility to group and regroup students to meet their educational needs.  It goes without saying that the needs of good students don't include instruction in how to ace an achievement test.

What is school reform?  Without getting into the details of the ample research showing what works (and what doesn't work) in schools, school reform is basically about two things --what we teach students, and how we go about it.  What we teach is obviously important, but the structures we put in place to deliver instruction are, in my opinion, of far greater importance. 

For example, most reform efforts involve teaming, meaning that teachers team with  colleagues to collaborate on instructional strategies.  They also work with heterogeneous, usually randomly assigned, teams of students.  There are lots of ways that can be done --grade level groupings, multi-grade level groupings-- but the end result is that teachers end up working with fewer total students in a team setting. 

Another crucial element of school reform is interdisciplinary, or fully integrated, instruction.  That means that reading, writing, and math skills should be taught across the curriculum and reinforced throughout the school day.  Same for science and and social studies, the two other core areas.  In a truly integrated setting, traditional subject area course offerings become less important, replaced by thematic and project oriented instruction that approaches a problem or issue from several different angles. 

A third element is team autonomy.  That means teaching teams are given the authority  and the flexibility to decide how they're going to use school time.  It also means that teams are able to group and regroup students based on needs and abilities.  So if high achieving students, the ones currently left behind by NCLB, need more advanced reading materials, for example, they can be broken out of the group for however long the teaching team deems necessary.  Truly gifted students (I don't think there are as many of those as some parents seem to think) can be sent out to another classroom --in a different grade or in a different building, even-- to accommodate their special learning needs. 

Those are the basics.  True school reform involves much more than having a good, or "qualified", teacher in each classroom, or having high expectations for all students, or simply demanding more academic rigor.  And true school reform has much less to do with improved test scores than it does with real student learning.  Higher test scores should follow on the heels of learning anyway.

True school reform frees teachers to develop instructional strategies for the students they encounter in their classrooms.  It frees them to focus on the student rather than the prescribed curriculum.  It frees them to create and improvise to help students learn.  And it frees them to allot the time necessary to make sure that learning does indeed happen. 

The best thing about reforming schools for success is that it can happen in every school. The road to reform, however, is littered with obstacles.  Perhaps the biggest barrier to reform is the heavy weight of tradition.  Traditional subject areas were prescribed over a hundred years ago, and most teachers, other than those in elementary schools, have been trained to think of themselves as academic specialists.  The "specialist" mindset is difficult to overcome.

I will say this, though, and I speak from experience.  After teaching in a team setting,  despite all the hard work involved, few teachers will ever willingly choose to go back to the traditional model of classroom instruction.  I know I wouldn't.   

Teaching to the test

After a long-winded presentation of test data to the school board Monday night demonstrating the progress of Portland schools toward meeting the stringent demands of No Child Left Behind, the testing expert from the district (her name eludes me) said something like this:

"These are just test scores.  They only provide a small measure of what our real goal is --student learning."

And board member David Wynde seemed to agree.  Except that his only suggestion was to substitute a "growth model" in test scores for the absolute proficiency standards demanded  by the state and NCLB.

All in all, it was much ado about very little.  But that didn't prevent the district from trotting out a few principals to explain how their once low achieving schools managed to finally make AYP --Adequate Yearly Progress.  One, the principal from George Middle School, praised her staff for its efforts to raise the literacy of low-achieving students with new curricula, including tools for "breaking" the phonics code, and the use of scripted lessons. 

In other words, they achieved testing success by pretty much teaching to the test!

Is that what learning in our public schools has come down to?

The Oregonian, of course, made a comparable fuss over the rising test scores.  State Superintendent of Schools Susan Castillo demonstrated once again that she has swallowed whole all the NCLB test score accountability malarkey without the slightest understanding of its limitations:

" 'We need to be acting with a sense of urgency. It is not OK that we still have flat numbers coming out of our high schools,' she said."

To Castillo, it's the "numbers coming out of our high schools" that matter. Not the number of well-educated students.

Here's some much-needed perspective on NCLB and its push for ever higher test scores.

Laura Alvarez recently quit her Oakland, CA, elementary teaching job in frustration and went back to Stanford to pursue her PhD:

“ 'The district told us, acting on what No Child Left Behind lays out, that if we didn't improve our scores, we were going to get shut down,” she says. ..."  

“ 'In the past, we'd always helped the kids who needed [it] the most, but suddenly the most important thing was getting kids into the 'advanced' and 'proficient' categories,' Alvarez says.  '...[the school] put resources with kids who were the most likely to push up the scores. I really was frustrated, because what I had learned from my students and from my own research contradicted what I was being forced to do.' ”

In Oregon, outside of Castillo and the George principal, it may not be quite that bad.  The O's article mentions the "professional learning communities" at Gardiner Middle School --newspeak for teaching teams-- and teaching literacy across the the curriculum, a step that school reformers typically call "integrated instruction."  At the school board meeting, the man in charge of one of Marshall High School's small "academies" spoke of reading in music classes.

Those are all good ideas  --for learning, not just raising test scores.  I'm afraid that the more we obsess about test scores, the less we'll focus on real student learning.  The two -- test scores and learning-- are far from synonymous.   

Here's one more bit of perspective from my favorite educational researcher, Gerald Bracey, from a piece he wrote entitled "Yo! Bill Gates! If you're so rich, how come you ain't smart (again)?"

"But Gates is at it again.  Saying really dumb things." ...

"Gates is quoted as saying 'Testing is the only objective measurement of our students. It's incredible that we have no national standard.' Testing is not 'objective' when different students have different opportunities to learn what's on the tests." ...

" 'When we gave up phonics, we destroyed the reading ability of kids.' Not even the National Reading Panel, which went too far towards phonics, went that far."

Phonics and testing.  H'mm.  Maybe that's why Portland is so enamored of Gates' money.

A Tale of Two School Districts, 2002-2007

[Guest column written by school activist and former PPS teacher Zarwen]

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . . .”

Not so long ago, the tiny Corbett school district in east Multnomah County was having the worst of times. Test scores were poor; families who couldn’t move elsewhere were filing transfer-out forms as fast as they could write. As often happens in such a situation, the school board hired a new superintendent.

And that, friends, is what led to the best of times, as chronicled in the O on Sept. 3. Corbett superintendent Bob Dunton, in a few short years, has transformed a hemorrhaging system into something getting national attention. A school district from which students used to flee in droves is now receiving (and granting!) transfer-in applications by the dozens. So what’s the big draw?

On the surface, it’s the test scores, which have improved dramatically during Dunton’s tenure. But what has he done that has made such a dramatic difference?

I invite you to follow the above link to find the answer to that question. For purposes of this piece, I am going to focus on what Dunton didn't do, namely: he didn’t try to fix the parts that weren’t broken. Witness these quotes:

“If you haven’t been small, you don’t get it.”

“The deep, dark secret is, we’ve built our success on understanding how to be small.”

Such a principle was well understood, and even embraced, by Oregon’s largest school district as recently as 5 years ago. Find proof in the Long-Range Facilities Plan 2002 (LRFP), which was written under the auspices of then-Superintendent Jim Scherzinger and a different school board. This amazing document not only discussed the value of small schools repeatedly and at length, but also explored how PPS could best capitalize on that value for the purpose of improving achievement. Flexibility for future changes in demographics, contingency plans for emergencies, and emphasis on education not real estate management, all testify to valuable foresight that seems to have been lost with Scherzinger’s retirement. (Best of all, the document is written in plain, everyday English!)

Could Scherzinger’s grasp of these vital principles have anything to do with the fact that he, unlike his predecessors or successor, is a native son? Interesting, isn’t it, to reflect on the fact that the best superintendent we’ve had in the last 15 years is the only one who wasn’t an east coast castoff!

Check out this passage, a gift for all you NSA members out there:

“Analysis done for this report indicates that two-thirds of the savings from consolidating smaller schools into larger schools is in support personnel rather than facilities operations. As such, PPS will get more results from considering its support personnel formula and from relocating additional uses into underused schools than it will by closing currently operating schools.”

And this:

"The current Oregon Quality Education Model suggests elementary schools of 300-500 students, middle schools with enrollments of 400-600, and high schools of 1200-1500 (w/ autonomous smaller sub-units).”

(It is also worth noting that the Northwest Regional Education Lab [NWREL], based right here in Portland and with whom PPS has a longstanding relationship, recommends elementaries of no more than 400. Please bear this in mind as you read on.)

In 2002, most PPS schools were within these recommended ranges; some were even smaller. There had been a few school closures in 2001, but this new analysis in the LRFP suggested hope for the future in terms of finding other ways to cut costs and still maintain best education practices.

What happened between then and now to make PPS do a 180?

Let’s look back at the climate of PPS just 5 years ago. As with Corbett, it was the worst of times. State funding was not sufficient to maintain school programs, with shortfalls in the tens of millions of dollars, yet PPS had just made a very expensive and publicly derided golden parachute deal to be rid of an ineffective superintendent. (They made similar deals with several of his handpicked underlings.) A hiring process to replace him had ended in disaster. As there seemed to be too many unused or underused school properties, a “Real Estate Trust” was created in an effort to free up the school board’s attention to resolve leadership issues; nevertheless, the board was widely regarded as ineffective and dysfunctional. Several members decided not to run again when their terms expired in 2003.

That last point proved especially fateful, for it was there that local business interests smelled an opportunity. Some of them had already gotten involved with the Real Estate Trust in the hopes of making money off school properties; how much easier would that be if there were a business-friendly school board and superintendent?

And that, my friends, is how real estate interests took over PPS. With their money and influence, they backed four candidates as a unified slate in the 2003 school board election. (Three of them were recently re-elected.) Their first and most important job: hire a new superintendent.

You all know what happened next. I don’t know whether Vicki Phillips (“VP”) or any of the new school board members actually read the LRFP, but if they did, it’s easy to understand why they needed to make it go away: it simply didn’t serve their interests--

With the exception of this passage (and one or two similar):

“The Strategic Plan [2000] anticipates that Open Enrollment will continue and expand. The Plan poses the question of a return to a K-8 format for elementary schools, which—if adopted—would have considerable facilities ramifications.”

Based on what ensued, it would be easy to conclude that VP and her school board minions read this one paragraph and no more. At a meeting in January 2007, then-Board member Doug Morgan recalled that VP had “challenged” the Board to “reduce the district’s footprint, and do it in a way that would raise achievement.” (It is important to note here that controlled studies show no significant difference in student achievement between K-5/6-8 vs. K-8 school configurations.) So, although three elementaries had been closed as recently as 2001, they started out by closing four more small, successful schools (Edwards, Smith, Kenton, Applegate) and then told others on the hit list (Rieke, Hollyrood, Humboldt, Winterhaven) that they had the “choice” to grow or die.

Then, even as high schools were being carved up into little “academies” thanks to Bill Gates and his Small Schools Grant, there followed a series of bizarre “Community Conversations” that spread the “grow or die” threat to any elementary or middle school with fewer than 400 students. (Remember the recommendation from the NWREL?) While these “Conversations” purported to be about public “input,” it soon became obvious that their true intent was to ram large K-8 schools down the throats of lower-income neighborhoods so they could close more schools (Clark [as of next year], Rose City Park, Kellogg, and Clarendon).

(For those of you clamoring for PPS to close more schools, that makes 11 school closures in 7 years. How many will it take to satisfy you?)  How many of those properties will be sold off to developers, as quite a few (Linnton, Kennedy, Glenhaven, Washington and more) already have?

The current result is reconfigured schools in disarray, with overcrowded K-8 buildings (Bridger, Rigler, Winterhaven [as of next year], possibly others by the time all grade levels are added) that need “temporary” portable classrooms to house all the new students they must now serve. Some schools (Roseway Heights [formerly Gregory Heights], Fernwood, Portsmouth, Ockley Green, Binnsmead) have not yet been remodeled to accommodate younger children. The stress affecting both children and adults in these buildings, we can only imagine. 

Furthermore, PPS has only a little over $1 million to spend on capital improvements DISTRICT-WIDE—enough for 2 of those buildings, at best, and only if no other projects get done. (Of course, we now know that it was normal operating procedure for VP to enact big changes without budgeting for them.) There is also a shortage now of “contingency space” that the District can use in emergencies, such as the condemnation of Whitaker a few years ago.

How does any of this serve to “raise achievement”? Was any significant amount of money actually saved as a result of these decisions? You’d think the District would be shouting it from the rooftops if there were. And PPS now reports that enrollment may start to rise as soon as 2011! So now they want new tax money to build new schools. Wouldn’t it have been more cost-effective to leave a few more schools open, or at least unsold, in anticipation of such a possibility, as the LRFP recommended? Oh, right, the interests of the folks who have been so “helpful” to our School Board supersede those of our children.

And so, while 2002 may have felt like the worst of times for PPS, in retrospect, it may have been the best of times; at least then we had a leader who understood the purpose of a school district. Don’t hold your breath for another; since the “controlling interests” of the District have not changed, there is no reason to believe that the next Super won’t serve them too. Ironic that every education guru we hire rushes out to appease the business community, but a man whose field of expertise was in finance placed the emphasis on education.

Now let’s hear from the superintendent over in Corbett one last time:

“If the district becomes too big, it will not be as successful, Dunton says.”

Amen. I hope Corbett does not fall victim to its own success. For now, they can limit incoming transfers; but if that beautiful rural setting gets into the hands of housing developers, then some day Corbett may be unhappily revisiting its worst of times.

A message from the PPS superintendent search survey --no Vicki Phillips this time around!

Not that anyone takes these surveys too seriously.   Or that's there's any real expectation that the decision makers in the district will take community feedback into consideration before hiring the next super. 

However, if they did, here's the message I get from reading a summary of the superintendent survey: 

First, don't hire a super just because she (or he) has a track record of raising achievement test scores in schools with large numbers of poor and minority students.  In another words, don't rehire Vicki Phillips. 

In the section about characteristics of a good superintendent, closing the achievement gap ranked 15th out of 18.  Ranking even lower were these three:

• Experience developing a high performance executive leadership team
• A record of promoting innovation and choice in education
• Experience in turning around low-performing schools

Those four pretty much describe Vicki Phillips, don't you think?

Then there's the section about the most important issues facing PPS.  Ranking 5th out of 19 was this:

• Maintaining a strong network of neighborhood schools

Finishing dead last in this section?

• Providing school choice through focus options and magnet programs

That tells me that the public perceives a gross imbalance between  the efforts the district has devoted to providing educational options and its rather meager track record on strong neighborhood schools.  Hopefully, it will deliver the same message to the school board.

It should be noted that the the number one characteristic of a good super, in the eyes of the public, is one that Phillips took a lot of heat over:

• Ability to listen and engage the community around key decisions

I wonder if survey responders had Jefferson in mind?

Cut war funding now!

Thank goodness Steve Novick has come out in favor of impeaching George W. Bush.  Otherwise I might have switched my allegiance to third party candidate John Frohnmayer who is everything that a Democrat should be --an independent thinker, opposed to the war in Iraq, a champion of free speech, and yes, all for impeaching Bush. 

But Novick stepped up with this eloquent argument for impeachment:

"I do, however, believe that an impeachment investigation by the House of Representatives is strongly warranted by the facts, on at least two grounds: the warrantless wiretapping of American citizens in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, and the false – and possibly deliberately misleading – statements made by the President and others to justify the invasion of Iraq,... ."

Novick, of course, has long opposed the war.  Now, like John Edwards, he argues for cutting funding for the war after setting a date certain for troop withdrawal.  Let Bush veto such a bill.  It won't matter --"no timetables, no funding. No excuses."

Meanwhile Jeff Merkley is fending off assaults from the press about his rental properties and the ethics of robo-calling.  And, let's not forget, he "supports the troops."  Where does he stand on impeachment?  I have no idea.

************************

Speaking of the war, another insider has ratted out the Bush Administration on the motives for the illegal  invasion of Iraq. 

" 'The Iraq war is largely about oil,' former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says in his new book... ."

Many wonder why it took Greenspan so long to say anything.  Probably because he didn't see anything wrong with the economics of fighting a war for scarce resources.  Jonathan Schwarz explains it all here.

Remember that the former fed head was once an acolyte of Ayn Rand, the novelist who spawned a new generation of rabid objectivist/libertarians.   Greenspan once defended Atlas Shrugged against accusations that it was a novel "written out of hate":

" ‘Atlas Shrugged’ is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting.  Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.”

That a man who could say such things was chair of the Federal Reserve under Bill Clinton may be another good reason to vote for someone other than Hillary in the Democratic primaries. 

Reverse racism at Jeff

I guess if you're a 'white' educational activist, you're not supposed to say anything about all the injustices heaped on the predominantly 'black' Jefferson High School by a  white superintendent and a predominantly white school board.

Or even ask questions of those in charge.

That's what my pal Lynn Schore was told by Jeff's principal Cynthia Harris, appointed to the position by that same white superintendent after her earlier choice, Leon Dudley, demonstrated he was incapable of running the school. 

Leon Dudley treated Lynn no better than Harris.  He once forced her out of the school and sent her home in tears.  I guess that's what happens when you stand up for your beliefs, at least when you're dealing with PPS brass.

When you stand up to Cynthia Harris about Jeff's closed lunch policy, you're told that's an issue to be handled in-house between Harris and the students.  Funny thing is, from all that I've read, the students themselves think the policy is unfair.  It's one of the many problems that led to Leon Dudley's resignation.   

That's not all that Harris told Lynn.  She told her, in no uncertain terms, that white people should not meddle in the running of a predominantly black school.  She said that "she didn't need advice from a white outsider" on how to get things done at Jefferson.  If that sounds racist, well, it is.  I wonder if she ever said anything similar to Vicki Phillips, another white woman, and true outsider,  who came up with all sorts of ideas on the best way to run Jeff, from uniforms to single sex academies. 

Here's part of what Lynn wrote to Harris (and the school board) after the "incident":

"Dr. Harris, at the OABA meeting you stated (paraphrasing): 'We need Black people to clean house at Jefferson, not white outsiders seeking glory for themselves.'  It is Portland Public Schools administration that needs to clean its house – of discrimination, inequity, and inadequate curriculum.  Are you saying that all the non-Black families in Jefferson cluster have no say and no stake in their neighborhood high school?  ... Are we now going to limit parental involvement at Jefferson High School based on race?" 

Maybe the "housecleaning" should begin with the resignation of Cynthia Harris. 

(Steve Rawley also has a post up on what transpired at the OABA meeting.)

Linda Baker on school choice in Portland

With all the ruckus being raised by Steve Rawley on the downside of school choice in Portland --resegregation, disinvestment in poor neighborhoods, union busting charter schools, I thought it might be useful to resurrect an article on school choice written two years ago by Portland's Linda Baker for the national publication, In These Times.  Its title, "All for One, None for All", hints at the content of the piece, but its subtitle says it all:

"School choice policies sacrifice universal education in favor of personal freedom"

I first mentioned the article in this post.  Since then I've written frequently about the proliferation of niche schools in Portland and the transfer policy that enables their existence.  Recently Steve Rawley has zeroed in on the neighborhood to neighborhood school transfers that result not only in increased segregation but "divestment" of school funds from poorer neighborhoods.  According to Linda Baker,

"Under the district’s open enrollment policy, over 35 percent of the Portland public school population now attends a school outside of their neighborhood."   

She also points out that school choice enables the simultaneous gentrification of inner city neighborhoods and the resegregation of their schools:

"U.S. public schools have always eerily replicated society’s racial and economic stratification, but the segregation caused by school choice is especially disturbing. First, thanks to urban revitalization efforts around the country, many inner-city neighborhoods are no longer defined by race and class. And yet, as these formerly languishing communities attract new—and wealthier—residents, the schools themselves continue to lose money, students and prestige."

Nowhere is that more evident than in the Roosevelt and Jefferson attendance clusters in North and Northeast Portland as this map by Steve Rawley clearly shows.

Two years ago Linda Baker identified the problem --neighborhoods may improve, but their schools "continue to lose money."  Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that precisely what Steve has been saying? 

Stand for Children fails to stand up for tax reform

In its comprehensive report on tax reform, Oregon Stand for Children acknowledges the "fundamental" need to "change the way Oregon raises and spends revenue."  It then concludes that such fundamental change is not about to happen any time soon:

"Within the current context of voter attitudes and beliefs, there is no viable reform or package of reforms that would generate significant revenue for schools and other services."

So much for Stand's vaunted commitment to a quality pre-K-12 educational system in Oregon. I mean, you can only do so much for schools when you lack the money to support them.

The report, entitled "Stand for Children's Task Force on 'Sensible' Tax Reform", does what a good report should do --except come up with any substantial proposal for real tax reform.  It does describe the problem in Oregon:

• an unstable revenue source
• an imbalance between personal and corporate taxes
• the kicker
• voter mandates, like Measure 5 and Measure 11, which limit money available for schools

But it shies away from bold proposals for dealing with the problem.  Instead, the report timidly proposes half measures like raising taxes on cigarettes and alcohol, increasing the minimum corporate tax, creating a rainy day fund, and limiting tax breaks.  It goes on at length about changing voters' perceptions and electing more sympathetic legislators, by which they mean Democrats.  It's telling that the report's first concrete proposal is this:

Accountability: Tax dollars must be spent wisely.
"Public agencies must be accountable to taxpayers. Oregonians have the right to expect smart, efficient, effective use of their hard earned tax dollars."

Sounds a lot like the Republican-tinged Chalkboard Project*, as well as nearly every member of Portland's school board, kowtowing to the interests first and foremost of the big business community.    How likely is it that the corporate sector will want to raise corporate income taxes?

Stand for Children has in effect thrown up its hands and accepted the tax revenue status quo.  That's a mistake.  People's perceptions are more likely to be changed if they are confronted with bold proposals for true tax reform, like making the income tax more progressive, raising corporate taxes so that their share of the tax burden returns to a reasonable 15 -20%, and repealing Measure 5.  Remember that it took several tries before a property tax limitation was finally accepted by Oregon voters.

It seems to me that we already have too much cautious leadership of this sort in Oregon.

* (Check out Ruth Adkins comment on the Chalkboard link.) 

Exhaustive study proves link between school choice and increased segregation

An extensive study by two sociologists at the College of William and Mary of 22 urban school districts shows a strong correlation between school choice and increased segregation --both racial and economic-- in neighborhood schools. 

The study is so persuasive that it's being used to help decide two Supreme Court cases testing the legality of mandatory racial quotas in Seattle and Louisville. 

Simply stated, what researchers Salvatore Saporito and Deenesh Sohoni found was that the demographics of student enrollment of schools in districts with school choice didn't match neighborhood demographics:

" 'If a school should have been 50 percent white, based on residential composition, it was on average 40 percent white,' said Saporito."

The same is true for economic status.  The percentage of poor kids attending a neighborhood school was 15- 30% greater than the number of poor kids living in the attendance area.

The study's conclusions should come as no shock to readers of this blog or to those who have followed the excellent data summaries by Steve Rawley on the "disinvestment" of the district in poor neighborhoods.  Steve has challenged the district to revamp its transfer policy and to take seriously its pledge to preserve strong neighborhood schools.   Perhaps the William and Mary study will provide another data-based perspective for the school board to consider.

The study, by the way, declines to speculate on why wealthier and whiter parents remove their kids from neighborhood schools to pursue other educational options.  The two researchers plan another study to examine parental motives, including examining the transfer application forms they submit to the district.

I say that the 'why'  of individual choice ultimately doesn't matter.  The results will remain the same, with disadvantaged students left behind in poorer and more racially segregated schools.  However, if the study is done properly, it will probably discover I what know to be true here in Portland based on ample anecdotal evidence:  Many parents would rather not have their children attend lower class neighborhood schools given the option of sending them elsewhere. 

Classism and racism quickly come into play when districts adopt market-based school choice as an educational goal.