Trudy and the Flynn-Blackmer audit

In a recent post, I suggested that school board member Trudy Sargent ignored testimony presented by John Wilhelmi and Sara Allan about the reality of school segregation in Portland.  Trudy's comments would lead us to believe that the neighborhood school assignment system was responsible for the increasing concentration of poor and minority kids in all but four of Portland's high schools.

She also ignored the audit of PPS' transfer policy prepared by Suzanne Flynn and Gary Blackmer.  The audit stated quite bluntly:

"In addition, we found that the District’s schools were less diverse in terms of low income and minority representation than would be the case if all students attended their neighborhood schools. We concluded that the transfer system has not increased diversity in schools, but actually reduced it."

If you believe Flynn and Blackmer when they say that, "if all students attended their neighborhood schools", schools would be far less segregated by class and by race, then you might think that a discontinuation of neighborhood to neighborhood school transfers would be a good thing, not only for diversity, but as a stabilizing influence on school enrollment.

Trudy concluded quite the opposite.  God knows how many of her board colleagues, wedded to school choice, agree with her.

I bring this up again because the Tribune has an interview up with Gary Blackmer, who just announced his retirement as Portland's city auditor.  The interview doesn't mention Blackmer's audit of the school district.  But fortunately, my pal Lynn Schore reminded readers of Blackmer's PPS connection in a lengthy comment to the article:

"For example, more than $10 million in taxpayer dollars were spent for the auditor to perform three audits of Portland Public Schools. The most critical of those three was Blackmer's audit of the PPS Transfer System, and his trenchant analysis of the segregation which results from it."

The Flynn-Blackmer audit, Lynn continued, "...proved what parents always knew: that our neighborhoods are much more integrated than our PPS schools, because of the PPS transfer policy."

On a related note, Lynn sent along this map of neighborhood housing affordability.  It appears from the map that one of the least affordable and most "gentrified" neighborhoods in inner Southeast Portland corresponds to the attendance area of the popular Sunnyside Environmental School.  Sunnyside Environmental is one of Portland's focus option schools. 

Most of the spots --80%-- at such focus options are reserved for neighborhood residents.  It appears that, rather than chancing the transfer lottery, many well-off parents are moving into the neighborhood, thereby driving the cost of housing up.

One might justifiably conclude, then, that another of the unintended consequences of school choice is neighborhood gentrification, and the further demographic stratification of Portland's schools.