Wednesday, July 17, 2013

SFUSD: ONLY CALIFORNIA SCHOOL DISTRICT WITHOUT NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS


San Francisco stands alone among the 25 largest as the only major school district that does not assign on the basis of neighborhood residency. What makes us so unfortunate? We are much like most of the major school districts with  ethnically diverse  populations  and  some wealthier and some poorer neighborhoods. All these districts operate under the same state education code and other laws of the state and federal governments. So what gives? Why is it that only here in San Francisco where you live does not guarantee a spot in your nearby school?

It's SF's extremist political character. So what do we have to show for it?

The largest achievement gap in the state. 

Note that the ascending number in the far right column is  the cumulative percentage of students as each district is added on to the ones above them. The top 25 districts have 30% of the public school population.

 

 1
Los Angeles Unified
662,140
662,140
10.64%
2
San Diego Unified
131,016
793,156
12.75%
3
Long Beach Unified
83,691
876,847
14.10%
4
Fresno Unified
74,235
951,082
15.29%
5
Elk Grove Unified
62,123
1,013,205
16.29%
6
Santa Ana Unified
57,250
1,070,455
17.21%
7
San Francisco Unified
56,222
1,126,677
18.11%
8
San Bernardino City Unified
54,378
1,181,055
18.99%
9
Corona-Norco Unified
53,467
1,234,522
19.84%
10
Capistrano Unified
53,170
1,287,692
20.70%
11
Garden Grove Unified
47,999
1,335,691
21.47%
12
Sacramento City Unified
47,939
1,383,630
22.24%
13
San Juan Unified
47,245
1,430,875
23.00%
14
Oakland Unified
46,472
1,477,347
23.75%
15
Riverside Unified
42,403
1,519,750
24.43%
16
Sweetwater Union High
40,619
1,560,369
25.08%
17
Fontana Unified
40,592
1,600,961
25.74%
18
Clovis Unified
39,040
1,640,001
26.36%
19
Stockton Unified
38,810
1,678,811
26.99%
20
Kern Union High
37,505
1,716,316
27.59%
21
Moreno Valley Unified
35,690
1,752,006
28.16%
22
Poway Unified
34,569
1,786,575
28.72%
23
Mt. Diablo Unified
33,987
1,820,562
29.26%
24
San Jose Unified
33,306
1,853,868
29.80%
25
Fremont Unified

Friday, July 12, 2013

THE STUDENT ASSIGNMENT GAME OF SPITBALL



I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but I've often wondered if SFUSD's preoccupation with student assignment isn't just a game of spitball intended to distract parents from the real education issues, ones the District doesn't want you to think about - like how we spend our district dollars, if or how we evaluate teacher performance and, last but not least, how we make each classroom the best place for student achievement. 
Of course I don't really think it is a conspiracy in the true sense. It's more a game of subterfuge with some ideological bullheadedness thrown in. In years past we did have to comply with the consent decree court orders and certain seminal court decisions as they applied to student assignment and desegregation.  In 2013, SFUSD is years past mandated diversification through forced student assignment. All attempts here and elsewhere failed during those many decades to have much influence over diversity, which has been proven over time to have had little influence over the primary goal of academic achievement. But that hasn't stopped our District from going headlong again down the same diversity-above-all path in the name of an ideologically driven idea of social justice.  Other similar urban districts have refocused on the prize, academic achievement , while SFUSD spends much of its time and energy on its complicated and arcane student assignment system and the fourteen schools in the Superintendent Zones to the exclusion of the other ninety. In the name of social justice SFUSD has ignored the needs of students in those ninety other schools of our district. In the name of social justice SFUSD allocates district funds away from the coffers of some schools into the coffers of others. But when it comes to what's really important, student achievement, no one says a thing, especially the members of the Board of Education, unless they are talking about the fourteen.

This happens in part because the San Francisco public school community lacks clout. No one is fighting for the interests of the ninety school majority. There's a dearth of reform-minded advocacy organizations here, which is not the case in LA and San Diego. The Board has a single-minded ultra-liberal agenda and there are no detractors because they've  up and left SFUSD  for greener more moderate education pastures.  Whereas the disenfranchised are usually the ones who gravitate to rebellion and reform, they're long gone and what's left are parents who are singularly preoccupied with the assignment lottery. And on that assignment battlefront we expend most of our educational  steam. Figuring out how to get into the right school is not only time-consuming, it's emotionally draining. It's a preoccupation that exposes us both politically and personally.

Two years ago Prop H, the neighborhood schools measure, divided the city in half. As witnessed on another blog, SF K Files, student assignment raises deep political divides within the parent community, adding to what I like to think of as "education fatigue". In this milieu, centered around the misguided policies of diversity over achievement, the most important education issues go by the wayside. Parents, concerned with getting a boarding pass, forget to notice whether the ship is seaworthy. They have a refugee mentality. They're just glad to have passed go with the lottery while the assignment game losers beat it out of town or head to the private schools. 

Everyone knows getting accepted into college and getting a degree are two different things. Enrollment in a good school and a good education are also different. We spend far too much time doing the first.  Meanwhile school budget deficiencies are being exacerbated by SFUSD's spending policies. Satisfied with any school over an API of 800, district leaders move funding to schools under 800 . Talk to any principal outside the Superintendent Zones and they'll tell you what they have to deal with.  SFUSD doesn't want to talk about its  policies - its lop-sided funding of schools, its complacency over failing teachers or its lack of any larger plan to make all classrooms successful, not just those in 14 schools.

Tired and worn out trying to raise a family in a family-unfriendly city,  parents must undergo yet another rigor having to compete with each other over student assignment and spending time commuting to schools far from home. It's SFUSD's Hunger Games. This is happening because SFUSD tells us that it is more important to have the opportunity to attend any school than it is to be able to attend one in their own neighborhood. They say we are just one big community. Have they noticed? The communities in San Francisco couldn't be more different.

With the  time-consuming distraction of our assignment system the District has tamed the alternative voices in our community, resurrecting a failed period of forced student assignment policies. Busy competing for entrance to affordable public education, parents aren't thinking about how those schools will survive SFUSD's school funding paradigm.

The lottery might not be a conspiracy, but it's a spitball - or perhaps "screwball" would be the more apt term.

Monday, July 8, 2013

MONSTERS HIGH SCHOOL, THE SEQUEL


There's a  line in Monsters University by the character Abigail Hardscrabble (voice of Helen Mirren), Dean of the Scarer School, which goes, "my job is to make great students greater, not making mediocre students less mediocre".  Putting the faulty parallels aside, it's too bad for the fans that Disney/Pixar didn't apply the same guiding principle to the first hour and fifteen minutes of this lackluster sequel, a pretty decent ending withstanding.  Talking with my eleven year old son after the show, that line came back to me and later I  realized why: it summed up how I feel about SFUSD's education policies.  Monsters  U.  may not be the success of Inc. , but, as disasters go, a disappointing movie pales in comparison to the educational damage inflicted on students when SFUSD focuses its energies on mediocrity, failing  to understand the societal imperative of nurturing great students from among the ranks.  Such is the state of modern public education in San Francisco. I don't think it is exaggeration to say  the day  our colleges and universities reflect only the mediocrity of public education is the day that education and innovation in America dies.

THE PERILS OF PROGRESS

To measure our progress much is made of the all-important Academic Performance Index or API. Reaching the hallowed 800 mark will get the leaders of SFUSD the attentions of the Secretary of Education and  congratulatory media coverage, but 800 API level students are middling students who barely reached proficiency and are likely to have a tough time getting admitted to decent colleges and universities. We've all heard that schools of  higher education are working overtime to remediate students who can't read or write at freshman level.  SFUSD may throw  a party downtown and continue to claim incorrectly that it is the highest performing district (see previous post), but its modest increase in lower level achievement comes at the expense of  higher performing schools outside the Superintendent  Zones where program cuts and increased class sizes are the result of rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul funding decisions. 
No Child Left Behind, currently referred to as the former ESEA,  is a policy designed around high stakes testing and meeting the magical and arbitrary 800 API mark.  It is a policy of little qualitative analysis  and one that is supposed to be achieved by next year under threat of school closure.  It has school districts spinning numbers. For example, SFUSD had a district-wide API  growth of 11 points from 2011 to 2012, going from failure below 800 to success above 800, making the district mark as far as ESEA goes, though little had actually changed.  On closer inspection, the growth of the outsized Asian population was only 4 points during this same  period and focused on the lower achievers within that group, while white growth was effectively flat. These numbers considerably dragged down the district average. From an achievement gap/NCLB perspective, this numerical improvement, (greater improvement at the lower end than the upper end), helps to ameliorate the gap, statistically. The problem is that these numbers reflect precious little if any improvement at the upper end of the achievement range. This is consistent with the idea that NCLB/ESEA is about reducing failure, not about promoting excellence.

PROGRESS AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHERS

In itself, it is a positive development to see academic growth in student populations that have a long record of low achievement.   But should the increase in lower end performance at a few schools come at the expense of educational services for everyone else? Is it OK to overcrowd classes across most of the schools so the district can  concentrate resources at a few?

As  former Superintendent  Garcia said at a Board meeting on reform efforts in the Superintendent Zones, "we don't do large scale (district-wide) reform well ".  Hence  we have the smaller, but more cash-rich Superintendent Zones at the expense of the rest of the district, literally. Beside the fact that Superintendents are  charged with overseeing the ENTIRE district, not just  certain schools, this small scale reform begs the question: is it ethical to defund to one student and give that money to another? We expect to spend more on lower achieving students and we should. But SFUSD's funding scheme allows for significantly greater than the standard compensatory funding generally applied to remediation.  Most people outside CTIP1 are in favor of extra funding for CTIP1 students, that is, until they find out the negative consequences for their own children. SFUSD is understandably coy about how they provide these extra services.

This lop-sided funding policy has benefits for some students, for sure. And District leaders look good to the NCLB number watchers  because the achievement gap can shrink as the top contracts and the bottom expands.  While we have redundant services  in SZ schools, tutors of every kind, teachers whose only job is to oversee other teachers and free laptops for parents, elsewhere  in SFUSD   basic services like reasonable class sizes are hard to find. 

Don't get me wrong. Improvement among lower performers is a worthy intention and policy goal. But  you know the  old saying - the road to hell is paved with good intentions. While SFUSD focuses on a few schools, not only are the higher performing schools overlooked, but thousands of underperforming students, (the supposed target students in the District strategic plan), at these schools are overlooked as well.  "Access and equity for all" is a nice axiom for the district's PR machine, but SFUSD's funding policies are far from the goal of access and equity for all. The District's so-called laser-like focus on underachievement is all about 14 schools, not 104.

ALL KIDS HAVE NEEDS

We need an equitable district policy that meets the  needs of every student whether they are high, middle and  low  achieving. What is needed is a per pupil minimum funding guarantee to ensure  that school district leaders cannot shortchange some students in order to fulfill their own policy agendas. Helping underperformers to up their game is a necessary and laudable educational goal. To do so at the expense of the educational goals of others is a travesty. In the Monsters Inc. movies scaring children generates  scream power - the louder the scream the more the power. In SFUSD, we are scaring away parents and they are not screaming loud enough.