Today the
Vergara trial began but an ultimate
outcome may be years away after the appeals process. The case is an important milestone in the quest to
reform the teaching profession and to develop teacher quality equity between schools, something that would have an outsize and positive impact on
the least successful students.
While we
await and hope for an outcome in favor of a long-overdue change to the way we evaluate, hire and fire teachers, we should take a look at the general policy initiatives of this school district because statutory employment reform is not a cure-all for what ails public education here or anywhere.SFUSD has defined itself by promoting three goals - diversity, access and equity. In fact, the SFUSD policy literature always begins with a rededication to these goals. But these three policy goals remain unfulfilled and few ever ask the question as to why success has eluded the District, especially given the widespread support of the Board and the community.
There's little doubt that SFUSD remains largely undiversified relative to the
demographic diversity of the individual neighborhoods. This disconnect
is widely acknowledged by SFUSD itself and, therefore, is not a matter of debate. As for the other two goals, access and equity, they remain alarmingly elusive due to SFUSD's own policies which promote lowered access and inequity.
Every school will have a unique character reflecting not only the community served but the culture of the staff and the district. But there should be uniformity as well if access and equity are goals. If Central Office policies intend to promote access and equity, differences in the school programs and services
should be minimized such that families can reasonably expect to get the same or
very similar opportunities both in quantity and quality from one school to another. But we know that
isn't the case. SFUSD has spent years creating a school district with widely disparate
offerings - schools with honors or music or foreign language programs and schools without them.
Schools from K to 8. Schools from K to 5. Schools with after school sports and schools without them. Schools with a range of co-curricular activities and clubs and schools with few. Alternative
schools, bilingual schools, small schools, magnet schools, academic merit
schools, art schools, schools with counselors, schools with parent liaisons, school with computer labs... And now they complain about equity?
For some,
particularly those who attend their preferred schools, these differences are
considered a strength of SFUSD, but from an equity point of view it is hard to
make a case that such fundamental differences between schools are consistent with that goal. The prevalence of school options increases choice, to be sure, but
choice is only partially defined by the number of offerings. More importantly, it is defined by the ability to access those offerings, for what good is choice if you can't get any?
SFUSD has a long standing problem of applicant oversubscription and that inability for families to receive school placement choices has fueled the long-term exodus from San Francisco and/or its public schools. (By the way, few applicants are really satisfied with their third or fourth choice let alone their tenth, making suspect SFUSD's optimistic measure of placement success.)
SFUSD has a long standing problem of applicant oversubscription and that inability for families to receive school placement choices has fueled the long-term exodus from San Francisco and/or its public schools. (By the way, few applicants are really satisfied with their third or fourth choice let alone their tenth, making suspect SFUSD's optimistic measure of placement success.)
All this
constitutes the backdrop by which to analyze and evaluate this district in its ability to
"make diversity, access and equity a reality" (their words, not mine). Just as schools must evaluate teacher effectiveness for the betterment of student achievement so the public must evaluate district effectiveness for the sake of the same.
But any way you cut it, SFUSD fails dismally to achieve the three goals, and that is so because its policies
are contradictory to those very same goals. You can't
create diversity through the artifices of lottery-based student assignment, a
point which I believe has been demonstrated repeatedly with one failed SAS
followed by another. We've seen years of diversity-inspired assignment systems and SFUSD remains undiversified in relative terms.
And equity and access will never see the light of day as long as resourced families are allowed leave their neighborhoods for higher demand schools. If the District wants access and equity it has to provide it at each and every school. It has to make the offerings universal, not a hodge-podge with widely varying opportunities. The model of moving the pieces around the chess board has not resulted in higher overall student achievement. It has resulted in the opposite - greater disparity in student achievement. Modern day public schools need the resources of the communities and that means moving to a neighborhood-centric model where people come together in public-private partnerships.
And equity and access will never see the light of day as long as resourced families are allowed leave their neighborhoods for higher demand schools. If the District wants access and equity it has to provide it at each and every school. It has to make the offerings universal, not a hodge-podge with widely varying opportunities. The model of moving the pieces around the chess board has not resulted in higher overall student achievement. It has resulted in the opposite - greater disparity in student achievement. Modern day public schools need the resources of the communities and that means moving to a neighborhood-centric model where people come together in public-private partnerships.
SFUSD has failed to realize diversity, access and equity for one simple reason: it has strayed from the practical and historical mission of public education which is to raise student achievement. This is achieved through universal school attributes - quality teaching and instructional practices, relevant, engaging curriculum, as well as a full range of enrichment classes and other programmatic offerings and services. That is to say, it shouldn't matter where one attends school in order to receive a high quality education.
It isn't lost on me that the elected Board members and their administrators rarely speak of achievement but speak incessantly of diversity, access and equity - platitudes that are little more than political props short of clear policies to promote them. To this day the stated goal of the SAS is to promote diversity even though it is doing just the opposite. The leadership tells us lack of educational opportunity is the greatest civil rights issue of our time. If it is why do they make every school different from one another and then proclaim lack of access and equity? Why do they keep blaming the middle class for lack of diversity when they can't get low income applicants to use the CTIP preference? Why one failed assignment system after another?
Our elected representatives on the Board and their administration have not come out publicly in favor of Vergara V. California , despite having done the right thing in imposing some restrictions on lay-offs at-hard-to- staff schools. As the largest inequity of all - the lack of effective teachers at underperforming schools, a true civil rights issue, the Board needs to go much further to fundamentality change seniority and LIFO to bring about the changes implicit in access and equity. The mighty axe of the union stands high in the air and ready to strike down the tenure of any Board members who take any union opposition too far.
It isn't lost on me that the elected Board members and their administrators rarely speak of achievement but speak incessantly of diversity, access and equity - platitudes that are little more than political props short of clear policies to promote them. To this day the stated goal of the SAS is to promote diversity even though it is doing just the opposite. The leadership tells us lack of educational opportunity is the greatest civil rights issue of our time. If it is why do they make every school different from one another and then proclaim lack of access and equity? Why do they keep blaming the middle class for lack of diversity when they can't get low income applicants to use the CTIP preference? Why one failed assignment system after another?
Our elected representatives on the Board and their administration have not come out publicly in favor of Vergara V. California , despite having done the right thing in imposing some restrictions on lay-offs at-hard-to- staff schools. As the largest inequity of all - the lack of effective teachers at underperforming schools, a true civil rights issue, the Board needs to go much further to fundamentality change seniority and LIFO to bring about the changes implicit in access and equity. The mighty axe of the union stands high in the air and ready to strike down the tenure of any Board members who take any union opposition too far.