Beating Up Schools With The College Remediation Club

Count on the NY Times Editorial Board to credulously accept any piece of education policy propaganda shoved into their hands:

The idea that schools in privileged communities are failing to prepare significant numbers of students is borne out in a striking new study showing that nearly half of the students who begin their college careers taking remedial courses come from middle- and upper-income families. Not only do remedial courses add more than $1 billion each year to students’ bills for tuition, but students who start out in these classes take longer to graduate and are far more likely to drop out. 

The study, by Education Reform Now, a nonprofit think tank...

OK, stop right there.

As Diane Ravitch correctly points out, ERN is in no way, shape or form a "think tank":

The editorial referred to Education Reform Now as a “nonprofit think tank.” ERN is nonprofit but it is certainly not a think tank. ERN is the nonprofit (c3) arm of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), the organization of hedge fund managers that loves charter schools, high-stakes testing, and Common Core. It has a vested interest in saying that American public schools are failing, failing, failing so as to spur its campaign to privatize public education.

ERN sponsors “Camp Philos,” an annual affair where important political figures meet in the woods with hedge fund managers to figure out how to reform public schools that none of them ever sent their own children to. In 2014, its star education reformer was Governor Cuomo. At its 2015 meeting on Martha’s Vineyard, Mayor Rahm Emanuel was a keynote speaker, sharing his knowledge of how to reform public education by closing public schools en masse.

The staff director of ERN is Shavar Jeffries, who ran for mayor of Newark and lost to Ras Baraka. Jeffries was supported by DFER, which hired him after his loss.

Consider the board of directors. Every one of them is from Wall Street.

The authors of the report are staff members at ERN who come from public policy backgrounds.

Curiously, the editorial has a link to the words “Education Department,” but no link to the ERN policy brief.

Now, I'm not one to discount a piece of research solely on the basis of who funds it. But if this were a report funded by, say, a teachers union, there is absolutely no way the Times would simply say it came from a "think tank." It's absurd for the Times to pretend this report was not prepared in the service of a particular agenda.

But, again, I'm not prepared to discount it solely on the basis of who put up the scratch. So what does the report itself say?

Hundreds of thousands of American families across all income levels are spending billions each year in extra college costs because our high schools are graduating too many students unprepared for college.  That’s a fact most may not realize, because current discussions around postsecondary remedial education – prerequisite courses that carry zero credit toward a college degree and represent content and skills students should have learned in high school already – are often segregated to low-income students and community colleges. But in truth, many middle-class and upper-income families bear the brunt of extra costs that come with required remedial classes in all college sectors for students from all income levels. In fact, at private nonprofit four-year colleges and universities, the children of upper-income families are taking more remedial classes than students from low-income families.

I must say that the graphic arts department at ERN is quite good: they've decorated the cover with a winsome young undergrad, mouth slightly agape, staring straight at the camera as if to say: "I can't believe my high school failed me so badly!"

These days, college remediation is the reformster 5 iron: the club they seem to want to pull out of the bag first. Except this club is being used to beat up America's K-12 school system -- particularly suburban schools. Read the thing yourself, then see if you wind up thinking the same things I did:

- When did we decide that the K-12 system was solely responsible for our current college remediation rates? Don't the colleges themselves have some culpability here? Why are they accepting so many students if those students aren't up to their standards?

From the report (p.6):

There is a stark difference, however, at private nonprofit four-year colleges: there, remedial students from the top 20 percent of national family incomes report taking nearly three remedial courses, one more class than students from the bottom 20 percent of national family incomes: 2.7 vs. 1.6 classes. In other words, in the most expensive colleges and universities, the wealthiest students need more remedial education than the poorest ones.

Well, OK -- what's the point? Is ERN arguing that students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds get a better high school education than students at wealthier schools? Somehow, I doubt it.

Perhaps something else is going on that is a bit embarrassing for private colleges: maybe they aren't basing their admissions decisions entirely on merit. Maybe they're allowing more affluent students to trade in on social and cultural capital to gain access to their colleges. Maybe they're using things like SAT scores, which are highly correlated to income, as ways to convert class advantages into a phony notion of "talent." Maybe they're more in the business of credentialing than educating.

Maybe...

In any case: how is any of this the fault of the K-12 public school system? Are affluent suburban schools supposed to be preparing all of their students for admission into elite private colleges? Doesn't that directly contradict the notion of a true meritocracy? Or is everyone supposed to be above average?

In addition: don't students themselves have some degree of responsibility for whether or not they are prepared for college?



Are we ever going to allow for the possibility that students themselves should have to own their academic records?

- When did we decide that "ready for college work" was some sort of objective standard? Is it not possible that MIT has different standards for mathematics facility than some less well-known liberal arts colleges? Is it not possible some schools set the bar differently for writing than others?

There is no single, objective standard that constitutes "ready for college work." It's ridiculous to pretend otherwise -- and yet that's exactly what this report does.

- Does an analysis based on a dataset with student-reported survey responses and low response rates really justify the sweeping conclusions found here? The dataset used for the report comes from the National Center for Education Statistics' National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS). Which is fine... so long as you acknowledge the limits of the data (p. 57):

4.4.2 Interview Response Rates

Some 85,000 students, approximately 69 percent of the eligible sample of 123,600, completed the NPSAS: 12 interview (table 21). Across institution level and control, response rates ranged from 55 percent for private for-profit less-than 2-year institutions to 82 percent for private nonprofit 4-year doctorate-granting institutions. Potential FTBs [first time beginners] were significantly less likely to respond than other undergraduates (60 percent compared with 73 percent) (χ2 (1, N = 105,931) = 2075.23, p < .0001). Graduate and professional students (83 percent) completed at a higher rate than undergraduate students (66 percent) (χ2 (1, N = 123,601) = 2013.63, p < .0001). [emphasis mine]

In other words: the first time beginners that this study relies on had a response rate of only 60 percent.  That alone ought to merit a few cautionary words in the report, don't you think?

- How many of the students enrolled in "remedial" courses are actually taking them for credit? From the data file documentation (p. G-34):

N12REMEVER (ABBREV)
Taken any remedial courses since high school
Since you completed high school [{if TB4JULY = 0} and through June 30, 2012, did you take {else} have you taken] any remedial or developmental courses to improve your basic skills in English, math, reading, or writing? (Remedial or developmental courses are used to strengthen your skills before you take your first college- level course in math, reading, or other subjects. Students are usually assigned to these courses on the basis of a placement test taken before the school year begins. Often, these courses do not count for credit toward graduation.) [emphasis mine]

In other words: maybe your remedial courses didn't count for credit... but maybe they did. The fact is that we just don't know, given the way this survey is worded. Is it really the worst thing in the world for an undergrad to take a "developmental" course and get credit for it?

- How many of the students enrolled in remedial courses speak English as a second language? This was actually one of my first thoughts as I started the report... and yet, nothing about English language learners is ever mentioned.

Here's a quick table I made at the NCES PowerStats website:

Of the students who speak English at home, 21.3 percent took at least one remedial course. 28.1 percent of Spanish speakers, however, took a remedial course; in other words, there is a significant percentage of students taking college remedial courses who are likely taking them because English isn't their first language. 

English language learners can take 4 to 7 years to achieve academic English proficiency. Did the authors of this report even consider this?

- If we're going to add up the cost of remedial courses (with a highly dubious method), shouldn't we also add up the savings of all the AP and IB courses for which colleges give students credit? Courses paid for by the taxpayers?

In 2014, 2.3 million students sat for 4.2 million AP exams; many more were in the International Baccalaureate program. I can't find (yet) statistics on how this translates into college credits, but it clearly must count for something.

I think it's ridiculous to count room and board toward the cost of remedial education -- people gotta eat, right? But if we're going to go all in, we'd also have to go in the other direction. According to the College Board, taking AP courses increases the chances of getting a degree on time. So how much money has the American K-12 public school system saved undergrads because they got credit for their AP and IB courses, which were paid for by the taxpayers?

Again: did the authors of this report even consider this?

 - Where is any evidence that the Common Core or its aligned tests will better prepare students for college? This part of the report is utterly laughable:

In fact, little noticed is that the price of opposition – and perhaps willful ignorance by some – to Common Core implementation includes how much more students and families across all socioeconomic backgrounds must pay for college due to inadequate high school preparation. At least among those students going directly to college, we find that rising college freshmen and their families are paying extremely high out-of-pocket expenses for prerequisite, zero-credit, remedial coursework that covers content and skills that students should have already learned in high school. [emphasis mine]

Oh, please. How do we know that implementing the Common Core leads to better college preparation? Show me any empirical evidence this is the case. Anything. I dare you.

You can't. As I've shown before, "high standards," by themselves, are not at all predictors of a state's academic outcomes. The so-called "honesty gap" is a fiction. Further: show me any evidence that a state's academic outcomes improve when they use standards-aligned, statewide end-of-course tests. Tennessee has had them for years, yet their college attainment rate is dwarfed by states like New Jersey.

Even if we accept the notion that college remediation rates are too high, the idea that simply implementing the Common Core and administering aligned standardized tests will solve the "problem" is not supported by the slightest shred of evidence.


There's one other thing that comes to my mind when I read a report like this: just how much money is currently being spent to find new and exciting ways to convince the American public our school systems suck -- especially in the suburbs? This report sports the Education Post logo, and we all know Peter Cunningham was given millions and millions of dollars to promote the notion that America's schools stink. How much of that money flowed to this report?

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm getting sick and tired of this. Those of us who actually show up every day and do the job are being blamed for problems we didn't create and can't be expected to solve on our own. Then we're beat over the head with "research" that is regurgitated to the public via media outlets like the NY Times, which seems to have no interest whatsoever in thinking critically about what its reprints.

ERN's report implies that if we simply "raise" standards and make all students take more standardized tests, our college remediation "problem" will be solved. That argument is so stupid on its face I can't believe anyone would make it. Would you tell a pole vaulter he'll get better if we just raise the bar another few feet? Don't you have to come up with a plan to train him to improve?

Our schools are underfunded and segregated. We all agree that teachers are important, but those who choose to enter the profession pay a compensation penalty. We refuse to seriously address the consequences of our nation's economic inequity on the lives of our children outside of school. We allow the nation's conversation about education to be dominated by those who push for more "choice," when the evidence suggests "choice" creates, at best, extremely small positive effects and, at worst, causes real damage.

Maybe ERN can get their Wall Street patrons to pay for a report about that.

Yeah, that's not really our thing...

School Vouchers Are Not a Cure For Segregation: Part V, Washington DC

Here are links to all five parts of the series:

Part I

Part II

Part III : New Orleans

Part IV: Milwaukee

PartV: Washington DC and Conclusion

* * *

What do we know about the effectiveness of the Washington DC school voucher program? In June of 2010, the USDOE's Institute of Education Sciences released its evaluation:

• The study found no conclusive evidence that the OSP [Opportunity Scholarship Program] affected student achievement overall, or for the high priority group of students who applied from “Schools in Need of Improvement.” On average, after at least 4 years, students who were offered scholarships had reading and math test scores that were statistically similar to those who were not offered scholarships (figure 1). The same pattern of results holds for students who applied from Schools in Need of Improvement (SINI), the group Congress designated as the highest priority for the program. Although some other subgroups of students (female and higher achieving students) appeared to have higher levels of reading achievement if they were offered a scholarship, those findings could be due to chance. (p.3)

The study did find a positive effect on graduation rates; however, the data was self-reported by parents, and the response rate was quite low.

As we've seen throughout this series, the case for school vouchers based on academic outcomes is very, very weak. Much as those who vouch for vouchers try, they simply can't pump up the small effect sizes enough to make the case that putting more public funds into private schools is worth the money.

In addition, and contrary to the implications of reformsters like Kevin Chavous, it appears that vouchers are anything but "color blind." The segregative patterns I've shown in Milwaukee, home of the nation's largest and oldest voucher system, suggest that vouchers are not ameliorating school segregation; to the contrary, they actually appear to be making it worse.

Now that we know DC's voucher program isn't doing much for test scores, lets see how it might be affecting school segregation. The OSP started in 2004, was suspended in 2009, but then was reinstated in 2011. Its current status is up in the air; The DC Trust, the group in charge of administering the OSP, is currently bankrupt due to mismanagement and apparent self-dealing (it's all about the kids...).

The OSP, however, was still going strong in the 2011-12 school year -- the year of the data I use from the NCES's Private School Universe Survey. I merged that data with this list of OSP schools from the same year to create the following graphs.

Let's start by looking at how segregated DC's other publicly-funded schools are:

Again, what I've done here is create 10 "bins" along the horizontal axis. Each bar is a "bin" representing schools, weighted by student population, that serve different percentages of black students. The bar at the far left, for example, represents all of the students who attend a publicly-funded (district school or charter) DC school whose student population is between 0 and 10 percent black. The next bar represents students who are in a school that is between 10 and 20 percent black, and so on.

The red line is the percentage of black children (under 18) in the entire city according to the American Community Survey of the Census Bureau: about 62 percent. The segregation of DC's publicly-funded schools (charter and district) is striking: 55 percent of DC's students attend a school whose student population is at least 90 percent black.

How do the private schools compare?

80 percent of Washington DC's private school students attend a school that has a student population that is under 30 percent black. That is a strikingly high figure for a city with such a large population of black children.

But hold on -- look at the far right bar. 13 percent of DC's private school students attend a school that has a student population that is over 90 percent black. In other words: there are a substantial number of private schools in DC that are just as segregated as the majority of the District's public schools.

Are they voucher schools? Well...

Compare the OSP schools to all of the private schools in DC, and one clear truth emerges: the voucher schools are just as segregated as all of the private schools in the city. Washington DC's voucher schools are doing little to nothing to help the city address its pronounced school segregation.

Considering how weak these schools' effects are on test scores, we're back to the question I've asked repeatedly in this series: How can anyone justify continuing to fund school vouchers when they do little, if anything, to improve either student outcomes or school segregation?

* * *

In the landmark school voucher case, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, Justice David Souter writes a stinging dissent, calling the majority's decision "doctrinal bankruptcy" (we do well to remember that the decision was only 5-4; it easily could have gone the other way). For Souter (and, for that matter, me), giving public monies to a religious school is a clear violation of the First Amendment.

But the majority convinced itself that, so long as there were a few school choices that were not religious, and so long as the parents of students made a "true private choice," the establishment clause wasn't germane. As you read the decision, it becomes apparent that the majority's justification for ignoring the First Amendment was based on their perception that the Cleveland schools were in "crisis":

"For more than a generation, however, Cleveland's public schools have been among the worst performing public schools in the Nation. In 1995, a Federal District Court declared a "crisis of magnitude" and placed the entire Cleveland school district under state control. See Reed v. Rhodes, No. 1:73 CV 1300 (ND Ohio, Mar. 3, 1995). Shortly thereafter, the state auditor found that Cleveland's public schools were in the midst of a "crisis that is perhaps unprecedented in the history of American education." Cleveland City School District Performance Audit 2-1 (Mar. 1996). The district had failed to meet any of the 18 state standards for minimal acceptable performance. Only 1 in 10 ninth graders could pass a basic proficiency examination, and students at all levels performed at a dismal rate compared with students in other Ohio public schools. More than two-thirds of high school students either dropped or failed out before graduation. Of those students who managed to reach their senior year, one of every four still failed to graduate. Of those students who did graduate, few could read, write, or compute at levels comparable to their counterparts in other cities."

I'd be the last to argue that this was acceptable; however, the Court never bothered to ask why Cleveland's students might be underperforming.

Data from 2002, the year of the decision in Zelman. Cleveland's schools were full of students in economic disadvantage. And yet, despite their great need, the district had less revenue per pupil than most of the surrounding area's more affluent districts.

School vouchers, then, were just another way to pretend to address the real problems that lead to inequitable educational outcomes: economic inequality, poverty, segregation, and inadequate school funding.

Installing a program of school vouchers -- like charter school proliferation, or standards obsession, or high-stakes testing, or merit pay -- allows policy makers to pretend they are actually doing something meaningful to help the most needy and the most deserving children in our country when, in reality, they are doing nothing.

The problem for the folks who push these "reforms" while ignoring reality is that their own data inevitably comes around to bite them in the ass. The evidence makes clear that vouchers are, at best, a weak response to a serious problem. What's worse, there's good reason to believe vouchers are actually contributing to segregation -- one of the reasons that we're in our current, inequitable education mess.

Look, I understand that not all schools work for all kids. I'm actually sympathetic to the idea of having some sort of "choice" as part of our school system, especially in larger districts that can support a choice system without having redundancies that lead to inefficiency.

But it is getting harder and harder for anyone to make a case for private school vouchers: they don't have strong positive effects, the legal argument that supports them is very weak, and now it appears they actually perpetuate school segregation.

Why in the world, then, would anyone support school vouchers? Is some vague notion of "choice" really worth it?

Sorry The 74 -- vouchers are not "color blind."

School Vouchers Are Not a Cure For Segregation: Part IV, Milwaukee

Here are links to all five parts of the series:

Part I

Part II

Part III : New Orleans

Part IV: Milwaukee

PartV: Washington DC and Conclusion

* * *

Are America's private schools -- particularly the ones enrolling students using school vouchers -- "color blind"? Those who vouch for vouchers, like Kevin Chavous, seem to think so. But as I've shown in this series, America's private schools are highly segregated; that likely means school vouchers are expanding segregation, rather than ameliorating it.

To determine whether vouchers are "color blind," let's take a look at the oldest large-scale voucher program in the county: Milwaukee's Parental Choice Program (MPCP), now 25 years old. Just how big is MPCP?

It was the fall of 1990 when the national precedent-setting Milwaukee Parental Choice Program came to life, with participation of seven nonreligious private schools and 337 low-income students. There were a lot of limitations on who could take part. Total public spending in the first year: $733,800. 

It's a vastly different picture now. 

Many of the limitations are gone; an estimated 26,900 students who live in the city of Milwaukee are using vouchers to attend 117 private schools, the vast majority of them religious. Public spending for the current school year will exceed $190 million.[emphasis mine]

And what has that meant for educational achievement?

The overall success of vouchers has been far from what backers hoped for in 1990. Milwaukee's experiment was touted as a big breakthrough in urban education.

In reality, the outcomes for voucher schools overall are about the same as those for Milwaukee Public Schools, which is to say, they're not so good.

Building up quality doesn't seem to link to building up one sector over another.

Even the University of Arkansas' Department of Education Reform -- as reformy and choicy an outfit as you will ever find -- could only come up with the weakest of evidence in support of the MPCP:

When similar MPCP and MPS students are matched and tracked over four years, the achievement growth of MPCP students compared to MPS students is higher in reading but similar in math. The MPCP achievement advantage in reading is only conclusive in 2010-11, the year a high-stakes testing policy was added to the MPCP (Report #29).

When a snapshot of all MPCP students who took the state accountability test is compared to a snapshot of the performance of MPS students with similar income disadvantages, the MPCP students are performing at higher levels in the upper grades in reading and science but at lower levels in math at all grade levels examined and in reading and science in 4th grade (Report #32).

Ouch. And as I noted before, the National Education Policy Center has pointed out even this weak endorsement doesn't really hold up to the results of U-Ark's analysis. For example, attrition out of the MPCP is substantial:

Regarding the study comparing graduation and post-secondary enrollment and persistence rates of MPS and MPCP students (No. 30), Cobb raised methodological concerns.

By 12^th grade, he notes, roughly three out of four of the original 801 MPCP 9^th graders were no longer enrolled in a participating private school. The sample attrition “severely clouded” the inferences that could be legitimately drawn about MPCP’s real impact on graduation rates.

Additionally, only one of the findings in the study’s most carefully controlled analytic models was statistically significant by conventional measures. Both limitations, Cobb writes, prevent broad conclusions about whether MPCP really improves graduation and higher education continuation rates over MPS. [emphasis mine]

These weak results are supported by other research. In a much older study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, there was no effect on reading scores, and the effect on math is, at best, a few percentage points.*

So it's very difficult to make a case, based on the data, that MPCP is doing much of anything to improve academic outcomes. Which may be why voucher supporters are turning their arguments away from academic outcomes and toward things like segregation. The question, however, is whether school vouchers are as ineffective at desegregating schools as they are at raising test scores.

Let's do some simple descriptive statistics to explore this question. We'll start with the public schools: what is the racial profile of Milwaukee County's publicly-funded schools, both charter and district but not private?

Again, what I've done here is create 10 "bins" across the horizontal axis; the height of each bin represents a percentage of the total student population. Each bin represents the percentage of a school's students who are black. In this histogram, for example, about 34 percent of Milwaukee County's students, enrolled in a publicly-funded school, attend a school whose student population is between 0 and 10 percent black. 19 percent attend a school that is 10-20 percent black, and so on.

The red line represents the percentage of children in the county under age 18 who are black: 34.7 percent (data from the Census Bureau's American Fact Finder, 2014 American Community Survey, 5-year estimate). Clearly, very few schools represent the racial profile of the entire county. Most Milwaukee County schools have far fewer black students, proportionally, than the entire area.

There are, however, many schools that enroll a student population that is almost entirely black (90 percent or higher, the bin furthest to the right). What we've got, then, is what we have throughout America: a highly segregated school system, reflecting highly segregated housing patterns throughout the region.

Now, one might argue that private schools could buck this trend, because they are not bound to enroll their students according to where those students live. In other words, a private school could, theoretically, draw students from both majority-white and majority-black neighborhoods to create a more integrated student population. So let's look at the NCES Private School Survey data and see whether the private schools are any less segregated.

In the public districts and charters, very few schools enrolled an integrated student population. But the trend toward segregation is even more pronounced in Milwaukee's private schools, even though they do not have to enroll students according to housing patterns.

If you compare the two histograms, you'll notice the bins furthest out -- representing schools with 1-10 percent black and 90-100 percent blacks student populations -- are even higher for the private schools than for the public schools. As bad as the segregation is in the public schools, it's arguably even worse in the private schools.

But hold on -- not all private schools are necessarily MPCP schools. Maybe the voucher schools are reversing the trend compared to the non-voucher schools. How can we check?

I've used this list of MPCP schools to create a database from the NCES data of just the vouchers schools. How do they compare to the public schools, and the total number of private schools?

Be careful reading this: Stata (my statistical program) changes the y-axis scale on each histogram. About 45 percent of the private schools in Milwaukee County have student populations that are less than 10 percent black. In the voucher schools, almost 30 percent are less than 10 percent black.

But in all the private schools, about 22 percent of the students attend schools that are 90 percent or more black; in the voucher schools only, about 28 percent of students are in similarly segregated schools.

In other words: In Milwaukee County, voucher students are more likely to be in a nearly all-black school than either public school students or the entire population of private school students.

There is very little evidence that Milwaukee's voucher program is helping to desegregate the area's schools. Why, then, should public money be used to help perpetuate a system that is anything but "color blind"?

I'll finish this up by looking at Washington, DC next.

Color blind?

* A running pet peeve of mine is how econometric research on the effects of education policy, such as  this study, will casually throw out the word "large" to describe an effect size without putting it into an actual educational context. Since when is a 5 to 6 percent change in a test score "large"? Especially when there is a high likelihood of unobserved variable bias in your model?

I get into this idea more here.

School Vouchers Are Not a Cure For Segregation: Part III, New Orleans

Here are links to all five parts of the series:

Part I

Part II

Part III : New Orleans

Part IV: Milwaukee

PartV: Washington DC and Conclusion

* * *

Those who vouch for school vouchers, like Kevin Chavous, badly want to sell the myth that the "system is color blind and largely benefits minority families."

The problem is that we've now had school voucher programs in various places for a good long while, and the results range from weak to downright ugly:

• None of the independent studies performed of the most lauded and long standing voucher programs extant in the U.S.—Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Cleveland, Ohio; and Washington, D.C.— found any statistical evidence that children who utilized vouchers performed better than children who did not and remained in public schools.

Even though they tried as hard as they could, researchers in Milwaukee could only find, at best, small effect sizes for voucher schools. Same in Washington, DC: no effect in math, and 0.11 SD in reading, equivalent to moving from the 50th to the 54th percentile.

Weak as these results are, however, at least they aren't as bad as what has been happening in New Orleans:

These are not just mediocre schools; many are church schools that offer different varieties of religious instruction subsidized with public funds. Some teach junk science ("creationism") and apparently discriminate against students based on their sexual orientation and religion.

[...]

Last December, the Massachusetts-based National Bureau of Economic Researchissued a report after an extensive examination of the program's results. The conclusions by the report's authors were disturbing, if not surprising. "Attendance at an LSP-eligible private school lowers math scores by 0.4 standard deviations and increases the likelihood of a failing score by 50 percent," the three economists who compiled the report concluded. "Voucher effects for reading, science and social studies are also negative and large."

A February 2016 report by the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans found much the same. And last year, Danielle Dreilinger of NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune reported, "One third of Louisiana's voucher students are enrolled at private schools doing such a poor job of educating them that the schools have been barred from taking new voucher students, according to [state] Education Department data." [emphasis mine]

Given this awful track record, it's no wonder supporters of vouchers have been looking for something -- anything -- positive they can say about Louisiana's voucher program. And so this report, from the same folks at the Education Research Alliance, has been held up as evidence that the voucher schools, even if they are educationally lousy, at least have the benefit of helping desegregation.

Unfortunately, when you dig into the report, you find it's got some serious limitations. Transfers out of public schools that "reduce segregation" are defined as: "...when a student of a given race leaves a school that is disproportionally composed of students of his same race relative to the greater CBSA. Conversely, outcomes that increase racial segregation occur when a student leaves a school in which the proportion of his race is less than the proportion of individuals of that race in the greater CBSA." 

See the limitation? A student need only transfer to a school that has a slightly different racial profile for that transfer to be credited with "reducing segregation." In addition, the overall transfers into private schools are increasing, not decreasing, segregation (p. 23).

Again, this is the overall state of Orleans Parish private schools:

The vast majority of Orleans Parish private schools enroll student populations that are less than 20 percent, even though the parish's overall child population is 71.7 percent black.

Note also that there is a substantial number of private school students who attend highly segregated -- greater than 90 percent black -- schools. Yet very few Orleans Parish private school students attend schools that match the overall racial profile of the area.

Let's look at this from the perspective of the proportion of white students in the private schools:

Again: there are very few private schools in Orleans Parish that match the overall racial profile of the area. Most of NOLA's private schools have populations where white students constitute the vast majority of students.

I don't see how anyone could describe this as "color blind."

Now, one problem with using New Orleans as an example of the relationship between vouchers and school segregation is that school vouchers are limited and still relatively new: they've only been in NOLA since 2008, and only expanded across the state in 2012. Given the vast turmoil post-Katrina Louisiana has seen, we'd probably be better off looking at the effects of vouchers on segregation in other regions.

So let's head to Milwaukee next.

Color blind?

School Vouchers Are Not a Cure For Segregation: Part II

Here are links to all five parts of the series:

Part I

Part II

Part III : New Orleans

Part IV: Milwaukee

PartV: Washington DC and Conclusion

* * *

In Part I of this series, I point out that -- contrary to the implications of those who vouch for school vouchers -- America's private schools are highly segregated. Which means that using public monies to pay for private school tuition isn't likely to help desegregate America's already segregated public schools. To the contrary, vouchers will likely make segregation worse.

The analysis I did in Part I parallels a report by Steve Suitts for the Southern Education Foundation that shows America's private schools, particularly in the South, are overwhelmingly white. It's a good report, but somewhat limited, because the frame of reference is an entire state. That's a very wide area that likely contains multiple regions with their own demographic differences. 

If, for example, a state has one region with a large concentration of private schools but few black children, it would hardly be fair to say that those schools were segregating compared to their neighbors. But if we aggregate the data at the state level so we included distant regions with many black students, we might conclude these schools were, in fact, segregating. What can we do?

One solution is to bring our analysis down to a more local level -- but it can't be too local. If it is, we won't see the phenomenon of segregated communities of different races that are still geographically close to each other -- something that happens in America more than many would like to admit.

For our purposes, I suggest counties are a decent choice: larger than towns or small cities, but smaller than states or (in many cases) core-based statistical areas. Let's take a look at a few counties in the South that contain relatively large cities and see what their private school populations look like.

We'll start with the counties containing Atlanta, GA:

Again: the red lines represent the percentage of black children (under 18) in each county. Each "bin" -- the gold bars that run across the horizontal axis -- represents the proportion of private school students in area attending a school that is 0-10% black, 10-20% black, and so on. The highest bar in both counties is 0-10%, meaning the majority of private school students attend a school that has between 0 and 10 percent black students. In sum:

The vast majority of Atlanta area private schools look nothing like the racial profile of the entire area. 

Again, I won't pretend that Atlanta's public schools are desegregated -- they aren't. But the notion that  expanding a system of school vouchers would somehow lead to less segregation flies in the face of this data.

Notice how -- particularly in DeKalb -- there are a significant number of private school students enrolled in schools that are 90 percent or more black. Does it help to desegregate schools if the black students who use vouchers wind up going to schools like these?

I don't mean to imply these are "bad" schools; honestly, I have no idea. In the absence of other evidence, I am happy to assume, as I always do, that these schools are full of hard-working educators doing their best for their students (of course, I can be rather naive about these things...).

But isn't it clear that "choice" advocates like Kevin Chavous are just wrong when they say things like this?

There is no denying history and the motives of some parents and politicians 50 years ago, who feared desegregation and were racially motivated to send their children to private schools. However, the history of 50 years ago doesn’t align with the reality of today. Private school choice programs now exist in 25 states and Washington, D.C. Through vouchers, tax credit scholarships, and Education Savings Account programs, nearly 400,000 children are accessing a private school of their parents' choice. Today’s system is color blind and largely benefits minority families. [emphasis mine]

"Color blind"? Really? Here's the histogram for Duval County in Florida, the greater Jacksonville area:

Again: a significant majority of the private schools have student populations that are less than 10 percent black, even though 36.6 percent of all of Duval's under-18 population is black. Here's Richland County, South Carolina, home of the state capital:

Again: the vast majority of private schools have a black population well below that of the entire region. Mecklenburg County, NC, the Charlotte area:

Wake County, NC, the Raleigh area:

Getting the picture? Southern private schools have far fewer black students proportionally than the regions where they are located.

Let's look at one more area in the South: New Orleans, LA.

Not only do we have many private schools with small proportions of black students; as in DeKalb, GA, there are also a significant number of schools that enroll a black population of more than 90 percent. But very few Orleans Parish* private schools could ever be called integrated.

I saved this one for last because of a report that has made the rounds claiming that school vouchers have helped desegregate NOLA's schools. Hmm... does this look "color blind" to you?

More on that report in the next part -- and we journey to Milwaukee, the mecca of school vouchers, to ask if their long-standing voucher system has actually led to desegregation.

Stand by...

Color blind?

* Yes, I know it's a parish, not a county. I tried to explain that to the computer, but it's stubborn...

StudentsFirstNY: Supporting School Funding Equity, Except When They Don't!

We take a quick break from our look at school vouchers and segregation to present a study in hypocrisy by one of the Northeast's most reformy outfits: StudentsFirstNY. Here, in a "sponsored post" at Politico New York*, SFNY joins NYCAN, the Buffalo Urban League (who are having some troubles of their own), and others to make the case for standardized testing as a necessary tool for achieving educational equity:

Parents of African American and Latino children have always recognized the value of the assessments. That’s why New York’s “Big 5” cities opt in to the tests in such overwhelming numbers, this year included.

I'm not going to say there isn't some truth to the argument that the opt-out movement has many of its roots in the white suburbs... but it's not the whole truth. In New Jersey, according to SOSNJ, black students, who make up 15.3% of all Grade 3 through 11 students, are 17.0% of all students who didn't test -- not a big difference (also see Bruce Baker's post about socio-economic status and opting-out).

But let's set that aside and get to the meat of the sandwich:

However, the campaign driven by a small group urging parents to opt their children out of statewide tests threatens to do great damage to our mission of ensuring an equal education for every child no matter where he or she is growing up. This movement is essentially rejecting all objective measures of educational achievement and, subsequently, lets children, including a disproportionate number of minority children, fall through the cracks. This year’s tests were shorter, sharper, essentially untimed, and only used for diagnostic purposes. They were stronger and less stressful for children. There is always more work to be done to further improve the assessments, but it’s time for opponents to understand the incredible value these exams provide for helping us reach equality in education. [emphasis mine]

Really? The tests are "helping us reach equality in education"? Please, tell us more:

Nearly one hundred years after emancipation, the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown vs. the Board of Education found what communities of color had known for generations: the system of “separate but equal” was not only unconstitutional, but fundamentally unfair. And yet, here in New York, it took until the Campaign for Fiscal Equity’s victory just nine years ago to provide equal education funding for New York City and minority students.

That lawsuit relied on standardized test scores to make the case against separate and unequal funding, with the chief litigator arguing, "From our point of view, testing has been very helpful in pinpointing the problem and showing exactly which kids are not making the grade."

First of all, Michael Rebell, who led the CFE lawsuits, did indeed say that tests were helpful in making the case for adequate funding. That makes sense; you need some sort of academic measure if you're going to show that districts need a base level of funding if they are to achieve a certain level of educational achievement. But here's the thing:

New York State continues to have "separate and unequal funding" years after the courts, partially on the basis of test scores, demanded otherwise -- but StudentsFirstNY and NYCAN apparently haven't noticed!

Let's have Bruce Baker tell the tale:

The 2007 foundation aid formula was adopted by the state specifically to achieve compliance with the high court’s order in Campaign for Fiscal Equity. The state argued that this new formula was built on sound empirical analysis of the spending behavior of districts that achieved adequate outcomes on state assessments. The state argued that the foundation formula applied this evidence, coupled with additional evidence-based adjustments to address student needs and regional cost variation, in order to identify a specific target level of per pupil spending for each district statewide, which would provide comparable opportunities to achieve adequate educational outcomes. The state determined the share of that target funding to be raised through local tax revenues and estimated the amount to be paid by the state toward achieving each districts’ sound basic funding target. 

Then, they simply failed to fund it.

It's true. The New York foundation aid formula -- which admittedly has plenty of problems (if you want to get into the weeds, read this by Baker -- it's quite eye-opening) -- is still the law of the land. It is what the state itself says schools need to provide adequate educational opportunity. It was set to be phased in over four years. And yet it has never been fully funded, as the Alliance for Quality Education notes when commenting on this year's budget:

The total aid increase of $1.35 billion is $400 million less than the 2008 record increase of $1.7 billion. The struggle for educational equity is focused on ensuring that high needs schools get enough funding which means Foundation Aid. AQE called for $1.47 billion in Foundation Aid, the Board of Regents called for $1.3 billion and the Assembly’s budget proposal was for $1.1 billion. But the enacted budget included only $627 million in Foundation Aid. To the credit of the Assembly Majority, of the Foundation Aid delivered a higher proportion than usual to high need districts.

Unfortunately the enacted budget included no multi-year phase-in of the full $4.4 billion in Foundation Aid that is owed to schools. The Assembly budget proposed a four-year phase in of full foundation aid, but both the Senate the Governor rejected such a plan. Now we must demand that the remaining $3.9 billion is paid over the next three years. [emphasis mine]

And so it goes in New York State: Angry Andy Cuomo refuses to even consider the idea of raising taxes on the wealthy (he wouldn't even if they begged him -- oh, wait...) while simultaneously denying schools the money the state itself says they need to educate their students.

Now, keep in mind that StudentsFirstNY lauds the "incredible value these exams provide for helping us reach equality in education." Surely, they must be furious with Cuomo for denying the funding the state itself says is needed for the schools that serve New York's neediest children!

Surely, they must have felt betrayed by Cuomo when he, once again, slighted schools in favor of low taxes for the one percenters!

Surely, after explicitly citing the use of test scores in the CFE lawsuits, SFNY must be pounding the table, demanding that Cuomo come through with adequate and equitable funding for the Empire State's schools!

Surely...not:

 

 

 

StudentsFirstNY's Statement on Budget Deal Supporting Parent Choice

POSTED [...] ON APRIL 01, 2016 

"Governor Cuomo, Senate Majority Leader Flanagan and Speaker Heastie should be congratulated for reaching a budget agreement that supports parental choice. Public charter schools are doing phenomenal work in the state's most underserved communities and the increased aid and rental assistance will help them continue to deliver for kids," said StudentsFirstNY's Executive Director Jenny Sedlis.

And there it is: so long as there's "choice," screwing over New York's neediest students is just fine with StudentsFirstNY.

I have to wonder: does StudentsFirstNY even know that New York's schools have been chronically underfunded according to the law the state itself passed? Does NYCAN understand that New York, despite spending an overall high amount per student, does a lousy job distributing more of those funds to districts with high needs?

Do they even care?

It's fine to talk about using tests as a tool to bring equity to school funding. Of course, we could have all the data we need for that purpose with far less intrusion and far less cost... but these fine reformy folks aren't ready to hear about that, are they? So I'll save that argument for another day and merely conclude by pointing out this:

It is utterly cynical to complain about opting-out under the guise of caring about school fiscal equity while simultaneously praising a highly inequitable state budget.

I know SFNY is funded by the wealthiest of the wealthy, and will pretty much defend any horrible policy so as long charter schools get a little more scratch. But even I thought there was a limit to their hypocrisy.

Fool me once...

Angry Andy says: "Thanks, StudentFirstNY!

I couldn't screw over NY's neediest schools without you!"

* Why does Politico New York even have "sponsored posts"? I mean, I can understand why newspapers or magazines have "sponsored content," even if it's a little ethically shady: the buyers are paying to have their message distributed. 

But why do that on an internet platform? I mean, anyone can host a website, right? Why not just buy ads on PNY and have them link to your own servers? Why does the content have to be on Politico's server, wrapped in Politico's branding, accompanied by Politico's graphics and links to more Politico content?

Unless the point is to make a reader think the content had gone through Politico's editorial process. But no, that couldn't possibly be the reason...

Could it?

School Vouchers Are Not a Cure For Segregation: Part I

Here are links to all five parts of the series:

Part I

Part II

Part III : New Orleans

Part IV: Milwaukee

PartV: Washington DC and Conclusion

* * *

How white are America's private schools? Really white:

Students in the nation’s private schools are disproportionately — and in some states overwhelmingly — white.

While that’s not entirely surprising, a new analysis from the Southern Education Foundation quantifies the continued segregation of white students in private schools, particularly in the South, where private-school enrollment jumped in the 1950s and 1960s as white families sought to avoid attending integrated public schools.

Should public tax dollars, through the funding of private school vouchers, but used to subsidize such a segregated system? The author of this report doesn't think so:

The author of the analysis also puts forth a provocative argument: Because of this historical pattern, private schools that take public money (via vouchers and voucher-like programs) should not be able to select the students they admit. Instead, those schools should have to admit anyone who applies, just like public schools do, said Steve Suitts, who wrote the study as a senior fellow at the Southern Education Foundation.

“The public-school system is built on the bedrock notion that we want each child to have a chance for a good education,” said Suitts, now an adjunct professor at Emory University. “And if private schools do not wish to advance that national purpose, then they ought not receive public funding.”

Let's make something clear before we continue: the notion that all public schools "admit anyone who applies" is awfully strained when we consider that our country's public, district schools are highly segregated themselves. Schools segregation is largely a result of residential segregation, which is a result of years of both official and unofficial policies.

So no one should point a finger at segregated private schools and simultaneously pretend there aren't public schools that engage in the same de facto practices. But at least we can all agree that segregation in the public and private school sectors is something we need to address. I mean, no one serious would ever claim that expanding private school enrollments would actually help ameliorate school segregation...

Would they?

There is no denying history and the motives of some parents and politicians 50 years ago, who feared desegregation and were racially motivated to send their children to private schools. However, the history of 50 years ago doesn’t align with the reality of today. Private school choice programs now exist in 25 states and Washington, D.C. Through vouchers, tax credit scholarships, and Education Savings Account programs, nearly 400,000 children are accessing a private school of their parents' choice. Today’s system is color blind and largely benefits minority families. [emphasis mine]

That is Pitbull's good buddy Kevin Chavous -- always reliably reformy, and always ready to champion market-style "choice" in education. Of course, Chavous is coming to us via The 74, an outlet that never met a charter school expansion or school voucher system it couldn't love.

How does Chavous rebut Suitt's claim that private schools are largely segregated -- that the system is, instead, "color blind"? After lauding voucher programs in Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana, Chavous (as all reformy types apparently must) states outright that Suitt just doesn't care about children as much as folks who support vouchers:

These are just three examples of where Suitts gets it wrong. These are also three examples of programs designed to help low-income families – most of whom are minority. This isn’t an anomaly, this is the reality of the opportunity provided to minority students through private school choice. If Suitts had his way, poor black families would be left in Birmingham, AL to attend underperforming schools in a school district that’s 95 percent African American and reports a graduation rate 20 percent lower than the statewide average. The same would be the case in Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, but private school choice offers these families hope and the children an opportunity to attend a quality private school that would have otherwise been out of reach.

Like so many of the writers who appear in The 74 (and, for that matter, Education Post), Chavous has the uncanny ability to fling indignation towards a guy who is pointing out the facts while simultaneously ignoring the main thrust of his argument. Suitt is saying private schools, particularly in the South, are highly segregated, and supporting them with taxpayer dollars is against the interests of society if we want to move toward desegregation.

No one would argue with Chavous that it is acceptable to continue to cluster African American children in segregated, underperforming (and under-resourced) schools. The question is whether, given what we know currently about American's private schools, expanding a system of "choice" through vouchers would lead to more segregation or less.

Let's dig through the data and see if we can shed some light on this.

One reason Chavous doesn't dispute any of the data in Suitt's report is that it's quite straightforward: basic descriptive statistics about average racial compositions of schools from the NCES Private School Survey. You really can't argue with Suitt's facts -- but I do think they are well worth reexamining.

Rather than replicate Suitt's work, let me show it in a different light. We'll start with Alabama as an example (click on any graph to expand).

This histogram divides the total number of students enrolled in Alabama's private schools into ten "bins" that run across the horizontal axis. The first bin, which is the first gold column all the way to the left, represents schools where between 0 and 10 percent of the students are black. Two-thirds of all Alabama private schools students attend a school where less than 10 percent of the students are black.

I've added a red line to this and all of the graphs that follow: it represents the proportion of the total state population of children (under age 18) of the race represented by the graph (data from the American Community Survey, 5-Year Estimates (2010-2014) of the US Census Bureau). In other words, 30 percent of the children in Alabama are black. Notice how few students are found at the line? If Alabama's private schools were representative of the state as a whole, we'd see the most students enrolled in schools that were 30 percent black; instead, we see very few students are in such schools.

Here's how the same histogram looks for Alabama's white* students:

59 percent of Alabama's children are white, yet only a tiny fraction of the state's private schools students attend schools with a percentage of white students anywhere close to this average. Notice also that there are a number of private schools that enroll a very small proportion of white students (less than 10 percent). Which begs a question: what if all the black students using Chavous's vaunted vouchers are going to private schools just as segregated as the public schools they are leaving?

I've posted histograms for the other states Chavous mentions below. But let me stop here and point out that this analysis still may not be adequate for our discussion. A state is a large geographic area, full of many different regions with their own demographic characteristics and patterns. Averaging these descriptives across an entire state might give us a distorted view of the segregative trends that may or may not take place within a specific region.

We'll get to that in Part II. Until then, the other statewide histograms are below. Note the trend: very few southern private schools have student populations that mirror their state's overall racial profiles.

More to come; stand by...

Florida: 21.2 % black, 44.4% white.**

Georgia: 34% black, 46.2% white.**

Louisiana: 37.6% black, 52.1% white.**

North Carolina: 23.6% black, 54.2% white.**

South Carolina: 31.5% black, 55.1% white.**

* Throughout this series, "white" when referring to US Census data means white, non-Hispanic. NCES data reports race differently than the US Census; these are the most comparable measures. 

** Again: all percentages from the US Census American Community Survey 5-year Estimates (2010-2014), children under 18 years in households.