How much catering can a charter school program do

... before it begins to look like resegregation?

Parents are reportedly complaining that Quest Charter School, which is supposedly created to give kids from disadvantaged backgrounds more Math and Science, is not offering enough "truly honors courses."

There is a very small group of families who have a voice that will actually be heard by the Quest Board. Recently two such parents (who have the means to take their students on the annual school trip to Turkey and separate from the others on the trip to spend more time with school administrators and their families) went before the Quest Board seeking "smaller, pull-out classes" (i.e., segregation) for their students within a public charter school.

For years now, critics have questioned whether charter schools, which are supposedly created to serve kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, can also effectively appeal to middle-class parents. Quest Charter Academy is fortunate that it has been able to attract several middle-class families, with students having parents who are employed at Caterpillar and Bradley University (which works out nicely since those are two Quest sponsors).

The Quest Lottery has afforded the school some diversity, as their annual lottery is open to families from all across the City. As a result, on one hand you may have a student whose parent could be an engineer at Cat or a professor at Bradley, in a classroom with a child who never met an engineer. Of course, the child who has a parent who is a professor may be "ready to fly" on certain subject matters, but does that mean they should be separated from other students who may come from a disadvantaged background and working on flying? Shouldn't differentiated instruction work in a school the size of Quest?

The Quest website touts the benefits of their differentiated instruction:

"...teachers differentiate their instruction by content, process, and product in order to meet the needs of accelerated students. Concept Schools (CS) teachers receive training in differentiated instruction at the Summer Institute, Concept Schools’ annual conference, and professional development days. The dean of academics monitors lesson plans and observe in the classroom to ensure that teachers differentiate instruction.

High school students requiring acceleration are enrolled in academically challenging Mathematics and English Language Arts classes. Students have the opportunity to take AP courses, dual-credit courses, and courses offered through the Virtual High School. Accelerated students may have the opportunity for early graduation.

Accelerated students have the opportunity to participate in special interest after-school programs. These programs have a project-based, challenging curriculum and provide students the opportunity to participate in local, national, and international competitions. Examples of programs/activities include Math Counts, Math League, robotics team, science fairs, Olympiads, bridge building, Destination Imagination, and Word Masters. CS also organizes winter and summer programs for accelerated students in order to meet their needs and challenge them to perform to their full potential."

It was reported in November of 2012, that nearly 60% of students at Quest received a 3.0 grade point average or better in the second quarter; the school's average GPA is 2.95.

Nearly 20% percent of students had a failing grade in one or more subjects. To address the remedial concerns, students take part in Saturday pull out classes called "Buckle Down Saturday," which take place from 8 a.m. to noon.

Meanwhile, the exceptional students take pull out classes called "Ivy League" classes, which is a program for advanced instruction:

Click images to enlarge.

The Ivy League is already a "smaller, pull-out class," which can provide a student with intense differentiated instruction, so I'm left wondering, just how much "smaller" these parents really want a pull-out class to be?

When you consider the population that Quest is serving, the school's Math and Science programming is already considered by many to be ambitious.

Quest demographics, 2012

If Quest is already offering students differentiated instruction, Ivy League classes and other special opportunities, what more should they be called upon to do for a select few students? 

How much catering should a charter school program that is geared towards serving disadvantaged children, do for it's middle-class parents?

Perhaps it's time for the two parents at Quest to consider other District 150 Programs, such as Washington Gifted and/or Richwoods IB, for their students that are "ready to fly." Or, there is always Peoria Academy, Notre Dame or Peoria Christian (or any other private school), for those who may be so fortunate to have the means.

Tea Party-influenced school board in Raleigh, NC reverse their district’s segregation policies.

The Wake County School Board in Raleigh, North Carolina reversed several successful school diversity initiatives over the course of a few months -- diversity initiatives that heightened student achievement. This came as a result of the successful placement of Tea Party activists on the school board.

Progressive organizations like The Brave New Foundation have reported that conservative billionaires the Koch brothers have funded campaigns that have led to the dismantling of desegregation policies.

The Wake County elections are an example of how conservative as well as neo-liberal reformers are backing candidates that either seek to eliminate government-sponsored diversity or who have de-prioritized diversity in lieu of their student achievement benchmarks.

Small-government, neighborhood advocacy groups do not see a role for the school board in establishing social policy. New age reformers seek to infuse new human capital with little regard for drawing people from the communities they serve.

Ultimately, the black and brown students who are directly impacted by these policies belong to families who are not represented (physically or politically) within these organizations’ agendas. Consequently, the education diversity goals that were established in Brown v. Board are systematically being abandoned. In other words, the poor are bad enough to be subjected to these agendas and not good enough to implement them.

Wake County seemed to find a solution to an age-old problem. For decades, per-pupil funding driven by property tax contributions led to disparate funding levels between districts. Because of the correlation between race and poverty, urban districts became intensely black, brown and poor. Highlighted in the landmark Brown v. Board decision, we know that socioeconomic diversity and school quality are connected. Wake County Public Schools sought to improve achievement through aggressive economic desegregation.

In the 1970s, Wake County combined the wealthier adjacent districts with the poorer ones. Learning from the many cases that failed to integrate based on race, Wake County took a different approach. In 2000, Wake County established a goal that no school would have more than 40 percent of its students qualify for free and reduced lunch. Officials then created a choice system that maximized diversity. Busing and magnet schools were used to attract wealthy and poor students to underrepresented areas.

There are economic and social costs to choice programs. Transportation is chief among them. Time is certainly another. Busing does rob valuable time from students. In addition, as reported in the Washington Post, diffusing people of color in the overall portfolio of majority white schools should not be rewarded as an end.

Educational achievement must be an essential goal of these initiatives. While the achievement gap has improved in Wake County, no one can rightfully claim victory. However, according to a study conducted by the school board the overwhelming majority of families agreed with the delivery of schooling.

However, newly elected school board members backed by the Koch-funded conservative think tank, Americans for Prosperity, criticized the study claiming that families have grown weary of constant enrollment shifts and busing caused by the diversity goals. Subsequently, the new conservative majority on the board eliminated the former policies in spite of improvements and public approval.

Powerful organizations are planting candidates to influence education policy based on rigid ideology. This is nothing new. In fact, noted education reformer Michelle Rhee’s political rise looked like she stole pages from unions’ playbooks. Teach for America and other market-driven reformers pushed Rhee well beyond the public will, which led to her demise.

I’m not so naïve to think that all school board members in Wake County or elsewhere have all been historically independent thinkers. Nevertheless, political hopefuls who are backed by groups that can’t show the diversity of the people they seek to serve should be vetted and discounted. This is becoming more difficult.

Again, if the organizations that back the candidates can’t display the kind of racial and socioeconomic diversity of the districts they wish to serve, then who exactly are we electing – the agenda of the funding organization or the individual?

Nevertheless, the electorate votes in school board members. Progressives are not pushing candidates who can infuse diversity within their efforts to improve the delivery of educational goods. Cynicism doesn’t improve schools. Hard working people do. Conspiracies don’t vote. Parents and teachers do. Until progressives answer their opponents’ charge to gain school board seats with viable candidates and reform plans, expect reform to be done to you, not by you.

Source

School resegregation

I don't think it is a stretch to assume that the vast majority of parents feel that their children should be allowed to attend close, safe, healthy, successful, neighborhood schools. They don't think about any federally-imposed busing or desegregation orders.

Even if parents don't think about issues of desegregation, school districts must. In most cities, inner city growth patterns and NCLB are forcing school districts to take a careful look at what it will take to bring equality to education.

NAACP Says North Carolina School District Shows Return To Jim Crow
Post by Associated Press in Nation on Dec 3, 2010 at 5:58 pm
RALEIGH, N.C. – The country’s most prominent civil rights group has come to Raleigh to draw attention to what it calls a growing erosion of the gains made since a 1954 Supreme Court decision made segregated schools illegal.

Using Wake County’s ongoing debate over school diversity as a backdrop, the NAACP is holding a national conference on education in Raleigh to argue that schools around the country are, in essence, returning to Jim Crow-era patterns of segregation.

“Resegregation is on the rise,” said the Rev. William Barber, chairman of the state NAACP chapter. “The rates now are worse than in the 1970s.”

Wake County has been the scene of acrimonious dispute since the school board voted to scrap a decade-old policy that used busing to achieve socio-economic balance in public schools. The NAACP and other groups have staged protests and marches and filed a federal civil rights complaint. Barber is among several who have been arrested in demonstrations against the end of the policy.

“School boards across this country are rolling back the clock to the time before Brown vs. Board of Education,” NAACP national president Benjamin Todd Jealous said in a statement. Jealous was scheduled to address to the conference Friday.

But that sentiment is out of touch with both the reality of public education and recent Supreme Court rulings, according to Roger Clegg, president of the Falls Church, Va.-based Center for Equal Opportunity.

A 2007 decision by the court found that school districts can’t pursue integration policies by using students’ race as a basis, which Clegg argues is what busing for diversity amounts to.

“Even if you think there’s something desirable about having a politically correct racial and ethnic mix, it doesn’t justify the enormous costs of engaging in racial discrimination,” he said.

Clegg also challenges the claim that schools are becoming more segregated, arguing that falling percentages of white students matches the declining number of whites in the population overall.

The term “segregation” doesn’t refer to demographic change, but to legal policies explicitly designed to keep people of different races separated from each other, Clegg said.

“If you use that definition, not only is there no resegregation in the United States, there is not a single segregated school in the United States,” he said. Source

Related articles:
Racial Tensions Roil NC School Board; 19 Arrests
New School Board Has N.C. Worried About “Resegregation”