Durham CAN and DPS: On framing problems and issues

This is Part II of a two-part series. Earlier: a look at the back-and-forth at Sunday's Durham CAN assembly on education. Today: how were these issues chosen; do they matter for education; and what's next for CAN and DPS?

To the extent that there seemed to be a disconnect at times during Sunday's Durham CAN assembly, it was a conflict that had nothing to do with what seemed to be a mutually-shared desire to make the schools better.

Instead, the question that arose, most directly from school board member Kirsten Kainz, was whether the priorities that CAN addressed were the most important ones facing the schools.

Kainz isn't the only one who's focused on other issues with public schools.

Lavonia Allison from the DCABP, for instance, made a discussion of the varying outcomes of education for white and black students in Durham the focus of her comments on the school board budget at Tuesday night's budget meeting, highlighting massive disparities in drop-out rates and suspensions for black students versus white students at schools like Hillside, Jordan, and DSA.

And as we looked at in last year's Two Durham series, a key predictor of what makes a school "successful" or "failing" seems to be to socioeconomic status of the students' families. It appears to be important as a direct factor, as well as an indirect one, linked to correlation with educational attainment (children's academic performance rises as their parents' education level rises), as well as single-parent family status. And, importantly, teacher turnover: teachers from high-poverty schools tend to be less-experienced and turn over faster than those in relatively more "advantaged" schools.

Ironically, Sunday's Durham CAN session was held in Pearsontown Elementary, a school whose gymnasium was decried by a speaker as being hotter than the outside temperatures. Facility quality aside, though, a study last year by Duke student Kristen Manderscheid picked out Pearsontown as an example of a school were students were performing well, seemingly due to income advantages that crossed boundaries of race. As we concluded based on her research:

Pearsontown Elementary provides an interesting example of the impact of wealth and educational factors in school success. Manderscheid finds that white, black and Hispanic students are all performing better than their peers at other Durham public schools, in a school that is 80% black -- which would mean, if one buys into the easy and all-too-common stereotype, that this is a school likely to have high poverty and low educational achievement.

Yet Pearsontown is an example of a school in a neighborhood that reflects Durham's still-vibrant black middle class; a school in a Census tract with a median household income one-sixth higher than the county average, and where residents are 25% more likely than the county average to have a college degree or better. "Piecing the landscape of this region together," Manderscheid writes, "it is apparent that an educated and affluent minority population, composed predominantly of Blacks, inhabits this region.... support[ing] the initial hypothesis posited by this paper that wealth is the primary factor indicative of educational success."

Thus, the question: what led to facility quality and heating/air control being one of five issues of focus for Durham CAN, much less the item that disproportionately occupied Sunday's conversation and the resultant media attention?

We asked assembly co-chair David Harris how these issues were chosen.

"It was the deficiency of our kids being educated, not being able to pass the standardized tests," Harris said. "Deficiency in the facilities can impact learning. So when we visited the schools, what they did was, took a look at all the deficiencies and then prioritized those deficiencies. And those were the top five that came out."

But Harris also noted that CAN didn't look to see whether there was any correlation between schools' facilities quality and schools' academic performance, or with poverty levels. "We didn't want to identify school to school."

Instead, Harris said, the effort was intended to create a minimum level of resources across all schools. "If we get equity, if we get to a benchmark where all the schools are at the same level -- of course, the more affluent schools can go above the benchmark, but at least everybody will be at the same level."

"With the appropiate tools, all kids can probably perform at the same level. But without the assistance, you'll have that deficiency."

For her part, DPS chairwoman Minnie Forte-Brown didn't agree that facilities were a key driver of differences in educational attainment. She picked out student preparation, parental engagement, the quality of classroom instruction and differences in learning styles as important factors -- but not bricks and mortar.

"Of course, we know that [facilities are] what people see. They see the school, they may feel the temperature. And those things are important. But as Dr. Kainz mentioned, we will prioritize, and clearly teaching and learning will be the major policies of the District."

"And I think CAN knows that. And I think they just dealt with one thing that they could all rally around right now," Forte-Brown added.

...

Which brings up the broader point: were issues like school facilities chosen because they're widely identified needs facing the schools -- or because they were issues that CAN and its members "could all rally around," as Forte-Brown suggested?

The answer, it appears, is a bit of both.

Durham CAN interim organizer Ivan Parra -- a fixture of CAN since its inception, and now active on the Triangle-wide stage to take the organizing principles pioneered by Saul Alinsky and his Industrial Areas Foundation to the broader region -- noted that the agenda-setting process is begun through house meetings, gatherings of five to fifteen people who talk about areas of concern in the community.

About 1,600 people participated in the round of house meetings that led to Sunday's CAN assembly, Parra notes. In an email, he described the organizing process thusly:

During those conversations people are invited to elicit their main concerns and agitated to do something constructive about it. By working on concerns that are important to people and engaging them in the solution we build a large collective of volunteer/leaders.
 
Those interested in being leaders are trained on community organizing principles, they learn [how] to do participatory disciplined research and turn those concerns into solutions to problems (that are immediate, specific and possible). Hundreds of diverse people participate on training. They decide together on large groups how to turn their concerns into specific proposals. Those proposals are then introduced publicly to the appropriate decision makers. We often seek to compromise and find win-win agreements that benefit the larger community.
 
This is to us the practice of democracy. What you saw yesterday was the result of the work of at least 200 leaders of institutions acting on their own priorities.

Education was listed as the number three priority during the house meetings, just behind health care and living wages, both of which Parra noted had recently worked on.

"We go through a process of trying to discern from what we call in community organizing a problem versus an issue," Parra says.

A problem is very unspecific, is very large, is very difficult to put your hands around it, to really get some meaningful conversation about it -- education in Durham is a problem, it's so big that it's very hard for a group of committed citizens to really affect any change in something that's as important, as large as education."

"What we did is, we build teams in every member institution that we have. And they went to specific schools within the district. And they visited with parents, they visited with principals, they visited with school teachers, with students. And the priorities we presented at this meeting came from that process of conversation that we had with them."

There appears to be one other key party at play in setting these priorities: the CAN strategy team, which helps to translate the issues identified in house meetings into these direct priorities -- and which seems to help guide actions towards the sort of "immediate, specific, and possible" priorities Parra talks about, in line with Forte-Brown's comment of CAN choosing to focus on "one thing that they could all rally around right now."

David Harris noted this in his interview with BCR; asked who translates the broad goals of education into the priorities we heard at Sunday's CAN meeting, Harris noted that "it was the strategy team" that helpedto make that determination.

Frank Hyman noted in an email to BCR that he was formerly a member of the CAN strategy team, which typically numbers between eight and ten individuals. He describes its work thusly:

If some individuals get together to work on an issue--educaton, living wage, etc. they bring the idea to the Strategy Team to get the okey dokey. Then they can meet, advertise their activity within the organization and do research, meaning interviewing key players in town, etc. When they are ready to engage in an Action, such as investigating the school conditions, or launching a [living] wage campaign, they again need to get approval from the Strategy Team.

Parra noted that the five priorities presented on Sunday came back from the various teams that visited schools, looking for common problems and learnings from across the school visits.

"We started to kind of net together all the different teams and conversations that took place during those visits," he said. Specific school-by-school issues were presented directly to DPS' assistant superintendent Hugh Osteen.

....

All of which is by way of saying that one might expect the five priorities raised on Sunday to be a starting point -- but only a starting point, one that's measurable and specific and achievable -- towards CAN's larger interests in education.

"This is the first step in the campaign related to education. We clearly agree with leaders of the school board that there are other important issues that need to be addressed," Parra said.

"I think we heard the challenge from school board members to work on that, and we already have plans to continue our work, and to get into deeper waters, if you will, in this conversation," he added calling this an initial start on addressing the "more immediate and concrete issues" that were identified in the campaign.

So while these five priorities presented Sunday are the immediate opportunity for CAN engagement and lobbying, in short, don't look for it to be the end of the effort.

Comments

[libby]

really impressed with BCR coverage - actual journalism! the videos are a nice touch, too.

[Doug]

Thank you Kevin. Yes, great reporting. Much more depth than the N&O or Herald-Sun.

[10,000Brainiacs]

I'm a little perplexed over what seems to be a slight obsession with which issues CAN chose as their centerpiece issues. To me, the important thing is that they started a dialogue, they got communities involved and they are now forcing school officials and county commissioners to go on record with their beliefs and intentions. I'd much rather see a process like this started that involves a lot of people than have a group tell the community definitely what the main problems are. We have plenty of people telling us what what the problems are in Durham; we don't have nearly enough going to the people and listening to what ordinary citizens think.

[Get rid of the trailers]

Facilities are just one part of the issue. If nice new facilities were the answer, students at Eastway Elem and Hillside HS would be performing better, and the various schools with multiple trailers (Forest View, Eno Valley, Easley, Riverside) or older facilities like DSA would be doing worse.

To me, parent involvement and household income play a far greater role in overall student success.

Which is not to say that every dang trailer in the county should be replaced - they should be. Just think if it was your kid sitting in one of those trailers during a tornado watch.

[FineSwineWishHeWereMine]

I am glad to see that the attempt to turn this into a black vs. white student issue was pretty much shot down because one thing I am certain of is that nothing will ever get done to improve the schools if the debate gets mired in that particular argument. Not only is it not true, meaning we'd be failing to address the real cause of underperformance, it ignores the issue of low-income Latino student needs and it would only bring out the usual suspects in Durham politics, meaning... nothing would ever get done beyond grandstanding.

[Kevin Davis]

10,000Brainiacs and FineSwineWishHeWereMine: If you're going to change your anonymous posting name between stories, fine -- but please at least be consistent on a single thread so people know you're the same person commenting.

[It'sYourParty]

I look on my signature as a creative P.S. to my post and change it to add one more message to the overall opinion -- I use insane signatures to make it obvious it's me and I think most people get that. But for some reason your cookies pull up old signatures and sometimes I forget to change them. No attempt to mislead people. However, I can see the anonymous nature of it has bothered you a lot lately -- you have made several comments about it in recent weeks. I hate making someone uncomfortable on their own blog, so I think the best solution is probably for me to find a blog that acknowledges the inherently anonymous nature of the Internet and make my comments there as, like many people, my agency job forbids me posting under my real name. There are other good local blogs that could use a boost in traffic anyway. And maybe you need to consider disabling anonymous posting since it seems to bother you more than most blog hosts?

[Frank Hyman]

Couple of thoughts about the post and the comments:

@ the Post--While on the Strategy Team in Durham CAN, we often were mystified as to why the local papers would devote as much or more coverage to meetings, marches or protests that involved maybe 15 or 20 people from one organization and generally composed of one race or religion or party, etc.(and who did not have much to show in terms of accomplishment aside from press coverage) compared to the rather modest and sometimes non-existant coverage of a successful and powerful CAN action that involved numerous elected officials making new policy commitments involving lots of money and staff time, engineered by hundreds of Bull Citizens of all races and a variety of religions, parties and neighborhoods in a meeting open to the public.

(I don't have the most recent tally handy, but membership in CAN generally runs about 20-25 congregations, associations and neighborhoods--hence the C,A,N acronym. In terms of people, these organizations, probably represent about 10-15% of Durham's population.)

BCR's quality and quantity of coverage on the recent Delegate's Assembly of Durham CAN is more in line with what we had expected from the local papers with their larger resources and purported commitment to educating readers so that they could be better informed citizens. Thanks for doing the legwork. (and pardon the run-on sentences--too paraphrase Lincoln, if I'd had more time, I could have made this shorter)

@ Comments:

My theories as to why people post anonymously on blogs (one or more of these may apply):

1) They are 8th grade boys.

2) They are not 8th grade boys, but their emotional and philosophical development may have peaked at that point (I sense lots of female heads nodding knowingly)

3) They belong to an organization that would be really, really mad if their true identities were attached to some comments they made in their off time about public issues.

4) They don't work for such a stern and powerful organization, but they want people to think that they do.

5) They like to visit their vicious snark on thoughtful citizens without suffering the return of same.

6) They are oblivious to the fact that while some citizens have thick enough skins to not be bothered, their viscious snark actually discourages posts by thoughtful citizens who could stand a fair fight, but refrain from participating when they could be subjected to plain old-fashioned anonymous rudeness.

7)They mistakenly believe that it is necessary to allow anonymity on blogs in order to have a wider conversation. To believe this, they ignore the implications of #6 above and ignore the fact that newspapers, who require self-identification, have no lack of signed letters to the editor or op-ed pieces.

8) They are not concerned about their own credibility. As I've noted in the past, it's noticeable that the anonymous posts lack the knowledge and thoughtfulness of the posts where people sign their names.

9) And finally, they lack cojones (or in the interests of gender equality, lets say they lack gonads).

Frank Hyman

[Michael Bacon]

RandomAnnoyingNamePerson: It's not always inherently obvious that you are the same person. I have no problem with pseudonymous commenting (to a point), but I do wish you'd pick a pseudonym and stick with it. All of Frank's good points to the side, I just find the switching really irritating.

[Erik Landfried]

What agencies don't allow their employees to post to blogs using their real name? The CIA? Secret service? Is this true for all blogs or just certain ones? What about sports blogs? Can you post to those or is your employer afraid that your opinion on whether or not Coach K looks like a rodent might compromise national security?

I can sort of understand the reasoning when the particular subject might be a conflict of interest for you but you'd still like to participate in the discussion, but surely not every subject could be off limits, right?

[Ellen Reckhow]

There is one additional consideration relative to the analysis of Pearsontown Elementary School. Pearsontown is a "choice" year-round school requiring an application to enter a lottery. Parents need to make a special effort to apply and thereby show an interest in their child's education. Nearby Southwest which is not a choice school has lower test scores.
I would submit that parental support and involvement is also a key factor in student success.

Ellen Reckhow

[KeepDurhamDifferent!]

I wish y'all would stop picking on FineSwine. Plenty of employers restrict blogging (including mine), but even it's not explicitly prohibited you can't blame him for being careful in this economic climate.

To Frank's point #6 I say: tough cookies. Bring the snark, cuz if I wanted milquetoast platitudes I'd be reading mainstream media. That said, I often prefer Barry's coverage of the same issue because he is more opinionated than Kevin.

[Toby]

@Ellen: you are correct about the importance of parent involvement in educational outcomes. Let's go to the experts (full discloure: my mom was the lead author) on that question:

http://tinyurl.com/rey3c7

Toby

[Kevin Davis]

Just to stake out, once and for all, where I am on this anonymity thing.

FineSwine, I have no problem with you using an anonymous handle, even a mutable one. I ask that you keep it the same _on a thread_ because, actually, you're not the only poster to change anon handles with each comment -- though certainly the most frequent. Keeping it the same on a single thread helps readers know they're responding to the same person when a dialogue happens.

My position on anonymity isn't as cut-and-dried as Frank's. I have significant issues with the level of dialogue that happens in some communities where such comments are allowed -- witness the WRAL and N&O web sites, for instance.

OTOH, the fact that anonymity isn't allowed on the H-S' letters to the editor section doesn't keep that from being, largely, the same 20 people sniping past each other. Seriously, if I see another Mike Mills/Jamie Huff letter followed by the same responders....

I know the backgrounds of many anon posters at BCR and the conversation is generally better for them sharing facts that they wouldn't share if their identities were known. As long as a conversation stays civil -- something that usually happens around here, if slightly less often than when this site didn't draw what's now about 10% of the web traffic that the Herald-Sun gets -- I don't have a problem with what people want to use as their names.

While it certainly impacts the credibility of the comment to a reader, I certainly get that there are legitimate (as well as less legitimate) reasons to avoid using one's own name.