Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times ran a story on Superintendent Carole Smith’s plan to revamp Portland Public Schools’ high school, focusing on the specter of segregation that is still present in the city.
From the opening paragraphs:
For years, urban schools have struggled with segregation. When busing failed, many lured students out of racially isolated neighborhoods with irresistible programs in theater, technology and advanced academics at schools across town.
Here in Portland, as in many other cities, the plan backfired: White, middle-class parents adept at school bureaucracy got their children into the best schools. Poor families got left behind in ever-shrinking, underfunded and poorly performing neighborhood schools.
Some of them, like Jefferson High School in northeast Portland, grew so emaciated that African American and white families alike were running for the exits.
Now, in a move that in another era and another city might have been seen as segregationist, Portland is preparing to abandon its liberal cross-town transfer policy and go back to the once-discredited model of neighborhood schools.
It’s worth noting that Smith touts her proposal as a force that will bring more diversity to each school by requiring students to attend their neighborhood schools, which says a lot about how much the city has changed in recent decades.
The article ends with a quote that might encapsulate what is at stake with the changes that could be in store for PPS:
The timing is crucial, said Glenn Singleton, president of the San Francisco-based Pacific Educational Group, which administers the race conversation program, because Portland is a city with a relatively small adult minority population, while the schools, a window into the future, have a population that is only 54% white.
“It’s important to recognize that the struggle over what to do with Jefferson mirrors a larger struggle over Portland,” Singleton said. “What is the city going to become?”
The high school redesign plan has cost millions and does little to address the stated goals of the high school redesign. What most people believed to be a plan to address underutilization of facilities in order to save money turns out to be a very costly plan ($13-15 million). Let’s be honest…the plan was never about closing the achievement gap or promoting equity.
The district is proposing to redraw boundaries and close schools which which in the end will actually increase concentrations of poverty and wealth. The plan was developed based on 2000 Census data. I’ve worked in the Jefferson neighborhood for 3 years and I can tell you it’s changed a lot in that short period of time. What happens when the 2010 Census comes out? Is the district going to be serious about improving Jefferson now that the neighborhood is predominately white?
The high school redesign plan has inequities built into it. For example, Jefferson and Roosevelt enrollments are not projected to come close to the enrollments at Grant, Lincoln, Wilson or Franklin. Jefferson is neither a comprehensive nor a focus school. Once again a stand alone.
PPS promised AP/IB classes in the core program but immediately replaced Jefferson’s proposed AP/IB classes with dual college credits which do not have the same transferability as AP/IB. The district only backtracked to AP/IB when they got caught.
The entire redesign is based on risky assumptions. First, and probably most important is adequate funding. When’s the last time PPS had enough money to do what they claim they need to do? PPS has ALWAYS used funding as an excuse for not providing services to poor children.
Second, the redesign plan has so many escape routes for families that want to play the system. Changes at the Young Women’s Academy will be considered later (after board member children are high school age). Also, families can enter non-neighborhood schools through the immersion program. There’s also the possibility of a hardship petition.
Given that the company hired to run data and present different closure/boundary scenarios came up with billions of possibilities; how is it that the plan the superintendent recommended manages to avoid negatively affecting board member and senior staff own children?
There are only two parts of the plan worthy of saving. The Academic Priority Zone concept and restrictions on transfers. The Academic Priority Zones should be expanded to include a broader group of high poverty schools including more school in SE Portland.
The high school redesign plan is nothing more than a very expensive continuation of the status quo.
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