Again, this year, we got "the letter": our "neighborhood" middle school was designated a "failing" school per No Child Left Behind ("NCLB") and the Colorado School Accountability Program ("CSAP") testing standards. Because our assigned school has been deemed "failing", we have the option to have our son ride a school bus to a different middle school chosen by the district.
With today's New York Times reporting on increased education spending — including additional NCLB spending, and Bill Gates waxing ecstatic over "his" schools in the Washington Post, let's take a look at the "school reform movement" as it has played in Colorado, an early-adopter of most of the touted reforms.
In reply to "the letter", I sent this e-mail to the district:
Dear Mr. X and Ms. Y: We reside in the Baker Neighborhood, at ** ****** Avenue. Our son, [Younger Son], will be entering the 8th grade next year. [Younger Son] has high functioning autism, and he has been in the K-8 program at [Current School] School. We decided on a K-8 program for [Younger Son] as being less socially difficult as a stand-alone middle school program. However, [Current School] is ending its middle school program this year, and he will be unable to attend [Current School] for the 8th grade.
We received in the mail last week a notification that because of the poor performance of our assigned "neighborhood school" we had the option under NCLB to send [Younger Son] to one of two alternate schools: [Assigned Middle School], or [Assigned K-8], and have transportation provided to either of those schools if they are more than 2.5 miles from our home.
[Assigned Middle School] is more than 8 miles from our home. [Assigned K-8] is more than 10 miles from our home! Meanwhile, [Close Middle School] is 2.5 miles away; [Middle School 3] is 3.8 miles away, and [Chosen School] — our preferred option — has a K-8 program and is a mere 2 miles away.
So my question: how in the world did DPS come up with schools so far away from our home as the schools to which it will transport my son, but deny transportation to schools so much closer to our home? Is it DPS's purpose to ensure that, by "assigning" schools so far away, they will avoid having to provide transportation at all?
This isn't the first time we've gotten "the letter": indeed, it's been an almost annual occurrence here at Casa de Frankenoid, since our elder son entered the middle-school demographic back in 2004. We're on our fourth set of middle school offerings!
How can this be? I mean, beginning in the Republican-dominated 1990s, Colorado's legislature has passed a series of laws instituting a libertarian wet-dream of public school reform.
Colorado is the darling of the Heritage Foundation, which rates the state as very "strong" by its libertarian standards. It's been a standard bearer, instituting state-wide public school choice in 1994; standards-based testing in 1997, long before NCLB reared it's ugly head; and the Colorado Charter Schools Act in 1993 (updated in 1998 to give 95% of state per-pupil spending to charter schools, up from 80% in the original law). The only thing denied to the accountability/choice reformers has been vouchers for private school attendance.
If this stuff worked, after more than a decade — enough time for a class of students to go from elementary through high school — Colorado's schools should be a shining example of educational excellence, right? Right?
Wrong. As judged by the American Legislative Exchange Council ("ALEC"; motto: "Limited Government. Free Markets. Federalism"), Colorado ranks 29th in educational achievement; its ACT weighted rank is 21st of 25 states.
My e-mail to Mr. X and Ms. Y was forwarded to a different bureaucrat in the district, and I received this reply:
Under the rules of NCLB the district must offer choice to the parents of students attending a school designated as being on improvement under NCLB. The receiving schools can be chosen by the district, and they must be schools NOT on NCLB improvement, and should be higher performing than the school from which the student is transferring. We look at capacity to receive students, and the availability of bus routes. We group schools and send the students from schools in one geographic area to the same choice schools so that we can accommodate them with transportation as the law requires.
That being said, [Middle School 3] is not a possibility because it is a sending school itself. [Close Middle School] and [Chosen School] are very full and we would not be able to accommodate a large number of students from a big school attendance area at those schools.
You are always welcome to choose any school in the district through the regular first round choice process. Transportation would possibly be available if there was a bus available. You can apply for transportation through the transportation exception process. If your student has special needs, then you should speak to the student services department regarding whether [Chosen School] would have the correct services for your child.
If you have other questions, please let me know.
In Colorado, "choice" has become a verb, and we speak of having "choiced into" one or another school. Theoretically, any student in Colorado can attend any school in Colorado, provided the school has room for the student, the district's choice procedures have been followed.
This is, of course, in theory. In reality, school choice is largely exercised by middle and upper-middle class families. School districts are not required to provide transportation to a choiced school — you must have a means to get your kid to and from school, and either a stay-at-home parent or work schedule flexibility to have an adult available to provide transportation. Without a means to get the child to the school, "choice" is, really, no choice. This is why special education students whose needs require attendance at one or another specific school are always provided with transportation to that school: without transportation, they couldn't attend the school.
Further, to exercise choice, families must have the means to examine the different school programs available (we have schools offering International Baccalaureate programs; dual-language schools; "British Primary" elementary schools; "fundamental academies"), to determine what is appropriate for their child. And, yes, families (including ours) use the results of the NCLB/CSAP standards-based testing and dig for whatever information is available, including demographics of race and poverty, in selecting which schools we send our children to.
For the fact is, even with increased Title I funds directed to demographically impoverished schools, schools with a wealthier, and less minority, demographic are better funded schools. Equality of funding in public schools is a myth. Schools attended by families with higher incomes rely on those families to make direct monetary donations, which can amount to thousands of dollars more per student per year. Not surprisingly, those dreaded school fund-raisers of gift wrap and butter braids and wrapping paper are more successful in neighborhoods where the residents have discretionary income, or when parents can take the order forms to work and hit up their co-workers for sales.
So a vicious cycle sets up: more affluent families transfer their children to the nearest higher achieving school, concentrating poverty and poor-performance in the schools they leave behind, which causes a further decline in both public and parental funding, leading to a cutting of "specials" classes of music, art or physical education, which causes more families to leave, further concentrating the poverty, the test scores decline even further, leading to NCLB sanctions and even more students leaving the school because they finally have the option of transportation.
But our situation graphically demonstrates the limitations of the whole idea of school choice and testing as the panacea for our public school educational ills: there is no room in an adequately-performing middle school within a reasonable distance of our home.
I did have another question for the district bureaucrat, and sent this e-mail:
I find your explanation that "[Chosen School] [is] very full" quite curious; my understanding, obtained when I dropped off a choice form for [Chosen School], and confirmed yesterday, is that [Chosen School] would love to have more students in their upper grade program — that they currently have only enough students for one class per grade, but have room for at least 2 classes per grade. Perhaps there is some other reason why the [Chosen School] K-8 program is not considered acceptable as an NCLB choice school, but the [Assigned K-8] program is?
In any event, offering a "choice" of transportation to a school more than 10 urban miles away is really no choice at all. We've struggled with [younger son] attending a school 5 miles away — when he had transportation the bus ride was an hour long (or more). Attendance at school events so far away in time and miles is difficult for a two-income family.
I would say that the "choice" faced by families in my neighborhood — where first [Middle School 1], then [Middle School 2], then [Middle School 3], have been deemed "failing" schools per NCLB standards — is indicative of the overall failure of the NCLB/CSAP testing scenario, and the failure of DPS in particular to adequately tend to the problems of the "middle school" demographic. Perhaps DPS should look at restructuring "middle school" entirely, perhaps by keeping sixth grade students in elementary schools, putting 7, 8 and 9th grade in middle schools, and 10, 11 and 12 grade in high schools. Because what you're doing now certainly is not working.
One of the things that happened is that, with all the concentration on improving elementary schools at the beginning of the educational process (Denver passed a mill levy to give additional funding for arts education in the elementary schools, and funding for increased pre-schools), and increasing graduation rates at the high school end, we've dropped the ball in middle schools. It's a difficult time for all kids and, without concerted effort to excite them about school while at the same time providing emotional and social support, we lose them. If one goes digging at the results of those standards-based tests, one will find a huge drop off in scores in the middle school years.
Here in Denver, the most affluent parents simply opt their kids out of public middle schools — it's not at all unusual for the professional class to send their children to public elementary schools, and public high schools, but to send them to private schools for the middle school years. Of course, the loss of those families leads to a disproportionate loss of school funding: they're no longer making those large donations they made to their children's elementary schools and are paying private school tuition instead. Which, of course, leads to the further decline of the available middle school programs.
School competition does not work. It merely concentrates and, eventually, spreads failure. Instead of forcing schools to compete we must, instead, provide adequate public funding for all schools so they are not reliant on the financial largess of attending families to balance the budgets.
We also must stop what is, at base, more affluent parents using donations to their children's schools as an inexpensive alternative to private schools. I mean, why shell out private school tuition of $20,000 or $30,000 a year for elementary school if you can get close to the same quality of education by donating $5,000 or $10,000 to your child's elementary school — and get a tax deduction? Instead of allowing direct contributions to one school, these types of donations should be pooled and distributed among all schools in the district.
I never did get an answer to my last e-mail. I suppose the District has no answer. So here in Denver, NCLB, school choice, and middle schools are slated to remain an epic FAIL.