Debunking more myths, starting with *why not make all the schools good?*

November 9, 8:34 PMSF Education ExaminerCaroline Grannan

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Myth No. 7: The school district could fix all this by just making all the schools good!

It’s a shame that that idea has to be classified as a myth, but unfortunately… well, the reality is that no high-poverty school district anywhere in the world has achieved “making all the schools good.” Educating disadvantaged, at-risk, high-need students poses significant challenges, and a critical mass of disadvantaged, at-risk, high-need students overwhelms a school. This is the issue looming over all of public education.

Yes, we hear sometimes about supposed “miracle” schools working wonders with low-income students. Of course there are many low-income students who transcend the difficulties and barriers that come with poverty, injustice and related social ills. But so far, no “miracle” has figured out how to make that happen for all disadvantaged students -- not without some form of aggressive selectivity, high attrition or other sorting process.

In other words, making all the schools good is in the same category as ending war and curing cancer – a dream, a vision, a goal to strive for, but not within our grasp at present.

Myth No. 8: There’s one right school for your child, and you’ll know it when you see it.

Parents who have had to move a child from one school to another, for reasons other than dissatisfaction with the first school, generally know this isn’t a valid view. Most children will thrive in a variety of settings. And I know lots of families who didn’t like a school at first glance but changed their minds on a later visit, or cautiously accepted the school when other options didn’t pan out, and had it work out fine.

This myth also ignores the fact that most kids have two parents involved in making the decision, and there’s often disagreement. One of the adults in my family, who will go unnamed, was not very comfortable with the chosen middle school at first sight (largely due to having been firmly, though wrongly, told by a trusted friend that it wasn’t very good). In our situation, our son was clear about which middle school he wanted, the one parent was dubious and the other was fine with it. The short story is that it was a great success (SFUSD's Aptos Middle School, for the record). But if we had been insisting on applying only to a middle school that we all (our son and both parents) knew on sight was “the school,” we’d still be looking -- and he’s a college freshman now.

Anyway, again, your child will most likely thrive in a variety of settings, in which case there are many schools that would be right for him or her. And it may take you a while to warm up to them and realize that.

Myth No. 9: Test scores are an easy way to judge whether a school is good or not.

I think most parents realize on their own that this is a myth once they start getting informed, so many people reading this alerady know that. But for those who aren’t clear, here’s the touchy and difficult reality. Test scores are closely linked with demographics.

Students who tend (overall, on average) to score higher include those in high-income families, those with highly educated parents, native English speakers, and Asians and whites. Groups that tend (overall, on average) to struggle with lower achievement include low-income children, children whose parents have less education, English-language learners, and African-American and Latino children.

Also, while there are many high-achieving special-education students – many disabilities don’t affect cognitive skills, and some tend to correlate with high cognitive skills – overall, on average, special-education students tend to be lower academic achievers.

So, the overall achievement of a school is closely linked with that school’s demographics. Demographics aren’t destiny, but overall, on average, those correlations are clear. This is why insiders wryly refer to California’s API – the rating system officially called the Academic Performance Index – as the “Affluent Parent Index.” All kinds of efforts to rethink, transform and reform education are aimed at disrupting those correlations.

The shorter story is: If you picked up the entire population of, say, Park School in Mill Valley (my elementary alma mater, which today is ultra-wealthy and high-achieving) and plunked it down in SFUSD’s struggling Malcolm X Academy, and vice versa – the student achievement wouldn’t budge for either the privileged suburban kids or the low-income inner-city minority kids.

That doesn’t mean that disadvantaged kids make a school “bad.” As I said above, a school becomes overwhelmed when it has a critical mass of high-need, at-risk, disadvantaged students. This is one reason diversity is viewed as desirable.

Continued on next post.