Wake schools diversity rollback: Bad for kids maybe, but perversely, a boon for Durham/RTP?

A few months ago I bought a copy of Gerald Grant's book Hope and Despair in the American City: Why There Are No Bad Schools in Raleigh. But I haven't cracked the cover.

As the Wake County school board election spiraled in favor of a change to its historic, and largely successful, diversity policy, I didn't have the heart to start reading it.

The arguments for and against Wake County's likely-soon-to-be-former diversity policy -- which bused kids from inner-cities to suburbs and, through magnet schools, vice versa, to try to keep no school from having an overwhelming level of poverty/free-and-reduced lunch students in its zone -- have been hashed over countless times in our eastern neighbor's borders.

I have two reasons for feeling strongly and positively about Wake's policy. The first comes from the personal history of being a tenth-generation or so Southerner, a white man with 18th century immigrants to the Mid-Atlantic, Civil War soldiers in the family tree, an ancestor's cotton gin in the Smithsonian's collection. (I'll describe that more in the comments, perhaps.)

The second comes from witnessing how schools -- and neighborhoods -- worked in metro Boston during my decade there. For all its self-appointed praise as the putative "Hub of the Universe," the growth of the Route 128 and Route 495 tech-belts mirrored the rise of suburbs with restrictive land-use policies that artificially inflated home values and created racially and economically segregated schools.

Ironically, Raleigh's progressive school integration plan, put together by a bunch of Southerners in the 1970s, will be overturned with a new voting bloc: suburban Wake'rs who moved in from places like suburban Boston, and Long Island, and the Virginia/Maryland suburbs of D.C.

More ironically still: while I think this direction represents a major setback for a nationally-acclaimed Wake County school system, from a selfishly Durham-first perspective...

...it's a good thing. Damn shame that it is.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

What, precisely, does Wake County's school tumult have to do with Durham's growth and development? Some might argue it's a negative, making Wake more attractive to in-migrating families from those suburban hinterlands of northern cities, a distinct number of whom in recent years flocked to Clayton, Orange County, even places like Mebane -- and sometimes Durham -- to avoid Wake's growth- and diversity-fueled redistricting.

But I'm taking a longer view on the issue.

And there's no one who can explain what I'm getting at better than Russell Killen, current mayor (and a former city councilman) of Knightdale, an oddly-named suburb on the eastern side of Wake County.

Let's start with Exhibit A, from 2007, duly pilloried here at BCR at the time:

Eager to shed its reputation as one of the Triangle's lowest-cost towns, Knightdale is capping its supply of subsidized housing.

Knightdale's Town Council has unanimously enacted an "affordable housing policy" that limits its inventory of subsidized low- and moderate-income homes to 120 -- a dozen more than it has now.

The policy prohibits any more than that until the town's proportion of affordable housing drops below Wake County's average, almost two-thirds less...

"You can have too much of anything," said Knightdale Councilman Russell Killen, a lawyer who works in Raleigh. "We don't want to be another Morrisville. We want affordable housing. But we don't want so much that we become the place for affordable housing in Wake County."

Killen said Knightdale's council will review the policy each year and could make exceptions. For example, he said, the town might accept more subsidized housing for the elderly, which it wants.

Killen joined with a City Council in Knightdale that argued the town had too much affordable housing -- even though that rate was just about 3% of the housing stock.

Doesn't sound like a position that's welcoming of socioeconomic diversity. You might expect, then, that Killen would have been at the forefront of those welcoming change on the Wake County school board.

You'd be wrong. Exhibit B (emphasis added), from a pre-election press conference:

Jim Goodmon, president and chief executive officer of Raleigh's Capitol Broadcasting Co., which owns the television station WRAL, was among several who said that, without busing to maintain diversity, the county's schools would resegregate and poor children would cluster in failing schools....

[Knightdale mayor Russell] Killen called diversity the "bedrock" of Wake's successful school system, which he credits with attracting economic growth to the region. He said neighborhood schools would create "have and have-not schools" and hurt eastern Wake's ability to prosper.

"I don't want to see us be divided at a time like this," Killen said. "I don't want to see us build walls around neighborhoods."

Killen sees the writing on the wall. The just-voted reshuffling of the deck on Wake County school diversity will hurt a budding town like his, and its neighbor Zebulon.

Both are yearning for economic growth, to become tomorrow's desirable bedroom communities around Raleigh. No joke: at the City-Data forum, one of the most popular threads a while back was whether Knightdale was poised to become the next Cary now, or whether it would take a decade to achieve.

But look at who all was lined up at that press conference. Goodmon's no raging liberal -- he is, though, a major Raleigh booster, and big fan of regional growth was there. Raleigh's Mayor Meeker was there. So too: Smedes York, dean of real estate and development in the City of Oaks. The Chamber of Commerce in Raleigh has historically lined up behind the practice of busing, too.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Odd bedfellows? You betcha. But it all makes sense if you think about the history of the booming region -- a boom started by RTP, and the presence of two out of the three research universities central to it on the non-Raleigh western end of the Triangle.

When IBM and other companies started setting up shop, Durham missed the chance to create neighborhoods and housing for the park. (In fact, Woodcroft was seen as a joke, a looming disaster by real estate pros regionally in the 1980s -- no previous attempts to "suburbanize" Durham had worked.)

Instead, the growth came in North Raleigh and Cary. When you look at where more recent growth has come in the greatest numbers, it's been in places like Morrisville, Wake Forest, Brier Creek, Holly Springs, and Apex.

All in Wake County, yes.

But all on the western side of Wake.

Mind you, Wake County is tremendously advantaged geographically. The county is huge, and fairly flat, and easily developed. Plus: it's downstream from its water supplies. (You better damn well believe Raleigh dumps way more pollution into the Neuse and Haw Rivers than Durham does. But that pollution has miles and miles to swim before it reaches downstream towns' water supplies -- unlike Durham, which practically pees straight into Raleigh's reservoirs.)

But that growth has come unevenly, geographically. Western Wake has prospered along the current and future 540 corridor -- all an easy commute to the airport and RTP.

Eastern Wake? Not so much. Housing values are lower; neighborhoods are poorer, relatively speaking.

There's another factor, too. It's a longer commute.

If Wake County is going to reach its growth potential, I'm sure Meeker, York and company realize they want to do three things:

• Encourage companies to base their HQs in downtown Raleigh -- not RTP -- and grow the city center as a place for commerce, retail and recreation.
• Attract more Class A office space and other creative-style job sites on the eastern side of Wake County, to provide balanced outlets for growth of companies and more residential around it.
• Start the Triangle's future rail transit system as a north Raleigh to downtown Raleigh corridor, creating density, jobs and growth that's centered around Raleigh, not RTP. (Expect a battle as transit moves forward between the Raleigh/Meeker/development crowd and Cary, Durham and Orange County on that one.

In short, Wake is a million-person county that, if you put it on a balance, would fall over towards its western side. And much of Wake's leadership has been bent on public policy that would, by accident or deliberately, fix that.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But make no mistake. Last week's school vote will do nothing to help Wake County grow its eastern side in the next twenty years as it has its western one in the last twenty.

Many will argue that the Wake policy didn't really help free-and-reduced lunch kids, the most at-risk population for educational success. Others point out that the balancing of students brought parental PTA time and donations and community interest throughout the schools, rather than simply having it focused in the wealthiest (money, time, social capital) districts.

But one thing's undeniable. Wake County's growth comes from in-migration. Most of that in-migration is suburban in nature. And suburban migrants scrutinize the schools.

Wake's policy created reality out of perception. It made every school look at least somewhat successful, by minimizing the number of poor students in each one. In the process, that encouraged in-migrants to live in neighborhoods off of US 1, or in the pioneering new subdivisions in south and southeast Raleigh, or in Knightdale and Zebulon.

Sure, Cary and Apex saw way more growth. But eastern Wake saw more than it would have otherwise.

As soon as Wake's schools fall back to the concept of "neighborhood schools" -- not very neighborly, I think, except as a way of saying the rich neighborhoods have rich schools, the poor neighborhoods have poor ones -- you'll see two things happen.

First, Western Wake property values will, over a decade, grow disproportionately to the rest of the county. It's the lesson of places like suburban Boston: make communities less-affordable and exclusive, and they'll appear, and become, more attractive.

(A group in Morrisville called Morrisville Action just swept its slate of candidates in, on an anti-density, no-apartments, halt-growth trend. It's ridiculous to think you wouldn't build density and mixed use next to the largest job center in the state. But residents there, and those with Cary's Davis and High House group, are only copying the suburban life they knew elsewhere, I think.)

Second, eastern Wake will deteriorate. The schools will spike in F&R rates. EOG scores will fall.

And people moving to the area will identify eastern Wake as the "bad" part of the county, and move elsewhere. Johnston County is the likely big winner there.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Mind you, while I'm a big Durham booster, Durham's growth is inevitably constrained by geography; Chapel Hill's and Orange's by policy. Like it or not, what Wake County decides on growth directly impacts our much smaller community.

And in that light, the Wake school vote perversely helps Durham, quite simply, because it will keep the wealthiest residents of Wake nearest Durham's borders.

That means companies relocating to the area will still see RTP as a great base of operations from its prospective employees' perspective, since the commute from Western Wake to RTP is a breeze -- even better with the soon-to-be-finished Triangle Expressway/540. 

Downtown Raleigh will grow, sure. But it won't grow to the extent that it would if Meeker and other Wake leaders could make Knightdale, Zebulon and the like a credible alternative to Cary.

The result would have been, as we've long argued here, an increasingly monocentric region, with Raleigh surrounded by the greatest number of people and thus most attractive to businesses.

Wake's school vote means that polycentricity wins again.

RTP gets a major boost to its relevance.

And Durham can be a relocation destination of interest, close to world-class universities, hospitals, and jobs.

Of course, I think Wake's kids will be the real losers in all this. All of which means I won't take any pleasure in Durham's gains coming at their likely pains.

Comments

[Reyn]

Incredible blog Kevin.

[GreenLantern]

One of the best attempts at summarizing the situation with schools and how they impact other factors in the region that I've ever read!

Interesting how you predict this new tack in the Wake County school board will increase the attractiveness of western Wake/southern Durham/RTP over eastern Wake, thus moving the center of the triangle away from downtown Raleigh. Western Wake is becoming more wealthy as suburban newcomers study the population and determine that the area west of Cary is furthest away from southeast Raleigh, thus ensuring they will get a "neighborhood school" made up of the most successful students.

Yes, Durham county is small by comparison to Wake, but if plans succeed to create a wealthy high school district on our western border with Orange, other school districts will suffer imbalance, which in turn will cause schools and real estate markets in other areas of Durham to suffer as well. People can live where they choose, but when an arm of government decides to assist certain exclusive attendance zones that benefit mostly wealthy local markets and make problems worse for the rest, it's time to question the concept of "neighborhood" schools".

[TH]

Kevin, you really should crack open the book. Gerald has some interesting points about Durham in there too. He talks about Durham having the same opportunities as Wake in the 70s but Durham choose a different path because of pressure to maintain who had the political power within Durham.

Also, I see many parallels between the "Northern School Districts" and CH/Car schools and Orange County. And if you look at who is moving into Ch/Car it's mostly people who lived in Northern towns with good schools. That is playing out in the town's politics too.... recent elections were very close.... not the landslide liberals any more.

[Tar Heelz]

Nice blog, Kevin.

Couple of other factors to add to your equation:

1) Garner, long the redheaded stepchild of Raleigh suburb towns, is also likely to benefit from a "neighborhood school" policy. Why? Because under the existing power structure for assignments, Garner area schools have been used as a primary dumping ground for the largely poor population of SE Raleigh. Garner has cried out for years about this treatment. (e.g. Aversboro Elementary currently has 54% of students on free/reduced lunch despite an indigenous population that might predict a 13% assistance rate.)

A little fairer treatment (i.e. fairly distributing poorer students such that the ITB schools truly got their fair share), might have prevented this political backlash.

2) Killian and Meeker are partners at the same law firm, the old-Raleigh powerhouse, Parker Poe. In most cases, they sing from the same hymnal.

[Lee L]

I definitely do not have the answers, but I do think there is some merit in the possiblity that the current system of busing for diversity might just mask the problem rather than actually impriving the outcomes for any of the disadvantaged kids.

If all the kids went to a few schools near where they lived, it would suddenly be obvious as the schools would have poor EOG and all teh other test results that educatrion is so in love with right now. At the same time, there would be some real standout schools of course.

Spread those same children around the county to all the schools with higher performers and suddenly, the percentage that meets the EOG standards is a touch lower across all the schools, but far fewer schools are downright failing, at least by the numbers. The only question is if just being in the same school with smarter kids with more advantages actually does anythign to help those kids learn.

Kind of harks back to your bit about the fact that Durham is so close to Wake Co water supplies while Wake has plenty of distance. A funny quip said in some College Engineering courses is "the solution to polution is dilution". It works for contaminants in water and maybe for schools as well.

I live in Morrisville and did not vote for most of the people running from Morrisville Action. Personally, I think they are short sighted and pretty uninformed. Just look at some of their views. They claim to support fewer taxes, like they are fiscal conservatives, yet at the same time pledge to "fix" the traffic woes around the area, which would require many tens of millions (and any improvement sto the area roads are no even on the minds of CAMPO) as well as have the town start various arts groups that will cost money, while limiting more dense growth which can add to the tax base.

Personally, I have no real issue with local governments spending money on roads and arts programs, but understand that it takes money to be able to spend it. The closer to me the government resides, the more willing I am to let them tax and spend.

[jonn]

While I really like the outcome of the diversity policy in Wake County the reality of it is difficult to swallow. The faraway busing and the constant reassignment of schools year after year. There has to be a better way.

Can there not be pay incentive for underperforming or disadvantaged schools? Those schools who are underperforming could be allotted more money for salaries to turn things around. I think this is done in New York State.

[Michael Bacon]

I had a notion of a much more direct effect for Durham.

DPS has a reputation of being "bad," largely because of the problems at Hillside and Southern. The label ignores the other four high schools in the county, which consistently rank as high performing, but ignores the fact that Hillside and Southern disproportionately take on kids from tougher demographics. In Wake, all those kids are currently balanced out into all the schools. Consequently, Wake has plenty of poor performing students, but no "bad" schools.

The result of the new policy, I have to believe, will be the emergence of some "bad" schools in Wake. This will, of course, cause the same sort of political gyrations it causes here.

My guess is we'll hear a lot less about Durham's "bad" schools when Raleigh starts having similar messes of its own.

[Dan]

Fascinating perspective, thanks Kevin. Of course, the best way to balance schools in the long run is to make neighborhoods socioeconomically diverse. This means getting serious about inclusionary zoning to require new developments build in affordability, creating housing/land trusts that preserve affordability in the long run, building subsidized rental housing wealthier parts of town, working to attract mixed income housing in economically distressed areas, etc. Unfortunately, housing segregation is resilient--it takes a long time to change neighborhoods. I hope the Triangle's leaders start taking these issues seriously, so that in another 30 years we aren't still having the "treating symptoms" type discussion while largely ignoring the root causes.

[Rob]

Again, Kevin, thanks. Looks like the second law has been violated on this post :)

I'm wondering what the impact has been on other cities/towns that have stopped their busing programs. One that comes to mind is Jacksonville, FL, which ended their busing program in 1997-98 (if memory serves correct). Although Jacksonville is technically one city of ~850k (the city-county government are merged), it is laid out like Wake in that their are a lot of bedroom communities--which makes Jacksonville the "biggest city" in the US. Have Duval County schools had success over the past decade? How has performance of individual schools, particularly high schools, changed? Raw data is available at http://fcat.fldoe.org/fcinfopg.asp , but I don't know how to tell if any trends are significant. For what it is worth, the data looks relatively stagnant from 2003 to 2009, but I did not look at any pre-busing data. So, it opens a whole different line of questioning, but certainly other communities can provide insight into what occurs when you stop your busing for diversity programs.

In terms of impact on surrounding communities, I know that Jacksonville can not be used as a benchmark, probably due to the fact that there is not an adjacent employment center. Employment is either downtown, or right on the Southside of Jacksonville. I know that some urban neigbhorhoods, like Murray Hill and Springfield, have seen a renaissance in recent years in Jax, but we definitely can't compare Jax to the triangle.

Also, I agree with Dan when it comes to the best solution. When neighborhoods are diverse, then neighborhood schools are diverse.

[Freddie]

Great insight K-dog! Def worth the read!

[Steve Nicewarner]

Great insight, Kevin. I think the ultimate irony here is that, IMO, the Wake School Board turnover had less to do with neighborhood schools than the overwhelming arrogance of the Board.

The attempted conversion to year-round schools a few years back was the spark that ignited a long simmering issue. The Board basically said "we know this is best for your kids so sit down and shut up." Parents naturally reacted to that. There is a very direct line from that incident to the election results earlier this month.

[Bull City Rising]

Thanks, all, for the comments (and yes, Rob, huzzah for the fall of the Second Law!) To address some of the comments:

@TH: Good point about CH/Carrboro/Orange. I think you're spot on on the changing politics as well. Lots of new residents there seem drawn by "good" (i.e., wealthy) schools, and then get to town and don't seem thrilled by the taxes or progressive nature. OTOH, there are also intrinsic factors as to the recent election, I suspect, relative to economic development, Franklin St., and town-gown.

@Tar Heelz: Excellent point on Garner, which I did leave out of this analysis. Garner's outspoken mayor will be pleased with his improved F&R, I suspect -- but I think the harm this will do to SE Raleigh will eventually lead to spillover and harm to Garner as well. BTW: Am I the only one who thinks "Parker Posey" whenever I hear Parker Poe? Didn't know that linkage.

@Lee: From what I understand, the impact on individual students is incremental, not transformational. OTOH, the stigma and lack of opportunity associated with going to nearly 100% F&R schools like Glenn or Eastway in Durham is hard to overcome. My fear is that the non-bused students will be hit disproportionately once volunteer time, money, PTA efforts, etc. fall away from the Wake schools that are resegmented.

Morrisville is, frankly, a mess. Look, if you want big acreage and all SFH's with no apartments, move the hell away from RTP and RDU. You build density in the heart of the Triangle if you build it anywhere, and Morrisville is too connected (with roads now, with future transit a possibility) to turn its back on density. Interesting perspectives on what's happening there. And I agree, those goals sound real nice, until you see how they conflict.

@jonn: I'm skeptical more money solves it. When I (again, on City-Data) see teachers talk about relo to the area, too many flock to Wake and other districts, and Durham seems a fall-back. When you have high poverty concentrations, can you really incent teachers to teach there? It's one of the reasons I'm more open to charter and reform efforts than many of the Reading St. parents, FWIW.

Rob/Dan: Great point on building inclusive neighborhoods. Personally, I see economically integrated schools as a way of removing barriers to inclusivity. Inclusionary zoning is complementary and provides more of an incentive to do that. We talked about IZ last year as part of the Two Durhams series: http://www.bullcityrising.com/2008/03/two-durhams-cou.html, for those who missed it first time 'round.

[Erik M.]

"Ironically, Raleigh's progressive school integration plan, put together by a bunch of Southerners in the 1970s, will be overturned with a new voting bloc: suburban Wake'rs who moved in from places like suburban Boston, and Long Island, and the Virginia/Maryland suburbs of D.C."

Is there any polling data showing that migrants from the North back the "neighborhood schools" movement more than native-born white Southerners? It would be a striking contrast to the data about which white North Carolinians voted for Obama and which for McCain.

It's true that separate urban and suburban school districts in the North are often more segregated than combined city/county districts in the South, but this doesn't prove anything about the voting behavior of Wake County residents.

The Wake suburbs aren't populated exclusively by ex-Long Islanders any more than central Durham is by tenth-generation Southerners.

[Allison]

I am mostly a product of the Wake Count School system (moved here in 5th grade) and granted I graduated HS 15 years ago my experience was that busing didn't work. By the time I reached HS and kids were separated by academic levels, there were no "bussed" kids in my AP or advanced classes. I was essentially going to school with kids in the same socio-economic class as I was, as were the kids being bussed in. This wasn't creating diversity for anyone, it created 2 separate schools in one.

I believe education starts at home and all the busing in the world cannot overcome parents who don't emphasize education.

[Bull City Rising]

@Erik: The reporting Ive red on Charlottes backing-away from its own integration policy suggested that the opposition there came heavily from Northern families that moved into Char-Meck and were angry at their busing actions. My sense of that same influence dominating in Wake stems from the fact that the suburbs (which have been heavily populated with in-migration) led the charge, coupled again with the anecdotal complaints Ive heard on other Internet forums, which have been filled with outrage that the schools do things differently (as the hackneyed saying goes) than were done back home.

Its an oversimplification and a heuristic, yes, but Im 100% convinced theres a grain of truth to it.

[Erik M.]

Thanks for the response. I think what we're seeing is that your background and my background - as you probably guessed, I'm from the North - cause us to find different anecdotal evidence believable. For example, I saw an anti-health-reform protest at Sen. Hagan's Raleigh office, and while I didn't conduct a poll or check birth certificates, I thought I could tell from their accents and from what they said that they a) were mostly native-born white Southerners and b) would have been completely opposed to any form of "busing" for school integration. It's possible they were, like me, from outside Wake County, or from central Raleigh, but it seems likely that some of them were politically engaged Wake suburbanites, angry enough to vote in school board runoffs. There's my oversimplified heuristic.

I recognize that it's hard to extrapolate from national politics to North Carolina, much less Wake County, but I think recent Supreme Court appointments have shown that any politician whose political base is among white Southerners has to make opposition to affirmative action of any kind the very first litmus test, ahead even of abortion and religion in public life.

In the end it's an empirical question, and I'll be curious to see if actual polling, rather than anecdotal reporting, can tell us one way or the other. Thanks for an interesting post and for your blog!

[rivlax]

Good post, Kevin. But I have a question: If Wake simply spread out lower socio-economic kids to mask the system's failure to serve them, how are these kids any worse off, individually, by going to a neighborhood school that has a higher proportion of low-socio-economic level kids?

[GreenLantern]

Busing students from poorer, minority neighborhoods to wealthier school districts does little to improve the educational perfomance of individual minority or lower socioeconomic students. These kids will still self-segregate in the classroom and lunchroom. They're not going to sit with the wealthier, white kids or those kids with srong parental involvement, and somehow have their behavior and academic proficiency rub off on them. School funding and whether they remain open and independent of takeover or not depends on test scores. There's very little emphasis on how individual students progress, or on specialized and novel teaching techniques to deal with kids from different backgrounds and needs.

The real issue has more to do with newcomers trying to maintain their suburban economic lifestyle by moving into neighborhoods with schools that show high average test scores, which in turn leads to higher and sustained real estate markets. These are areas that also tend to have the lowest crime rates and lowest concentration of poor and minorities. Having a high average test score at a school doesn't mean that students from lower socioeconomic households perform any better than they did at high minority enrollment schools. It's just that the statistics mask the problem of educating youth without strong parental and social influence to do well academically.

Busing and redistricting work only to keep all schools performing to the mean, rather than a set of "good" schools and "bad" schools that develop when people move into areas and self-segregate. Wake County will see more of this in the coming years now that the self-serving economic interests of newcomers takes precedence in suburban areas. The "bad" schools in SE Raleigh will start to show declines in average scores, simply because there will be less dilution from busing and redistricting. The "good" schools in the western part of the county will continue to go up for the opposite reason, and the area will become more attractive to newcomers who research the data on real estate websites and from realtors trying to maximize their commissions.

In the absence of busing, schools will have to offer the best teachers a much higher salary and bonus to teach at the "bad" schools, and reach out to parents to become more involved in their child's education. Children will have to be lucky enough to get raised in a household that values education over material things and instant gratification. Somehow I don't think this will change overnight. As a result of the Wake county school board election, the problems are likely to get much worse before they start to improve. As long as people choose to move to new places based on statistical data and real estate values, they will continue to self-segregate, demand far more services for the taxes they pay, and seek to maintain and build on their financial gains at the expense of poorer neighborhoods and school districts.

Our society will continue to become more divided economically, politically, and socially as a result of lower diversity in housing and affordability. Our schools will continue to become farther apart academically as long as test scores and statistics determine where people choose to live and invest. The only benefit of reduced busing and neighborhood schools will be less fuel and time consumed.

[Jennifer Mansfield]

I don't agree with you that Eastern Wake will suffer under a neighborhood schools policy. They already have neighborhood schools--very little busing is done for diversity in that area of the county. WCPSS has stated that there's nowhere to bus Eastern Wake's low income population and they know that middle class Raleigh parents will never stand for their kids getting bused out to Knightdale or Zebulon.

All Eastern Wake schools are already over the magical 40% F&R and most are over 50%. The two solutions offered by the current BOE and WCPSS administration so far? Wait for 540 to bring higher income residents to the area and to further reduce the percentage of magnet seats available for children attending higher poverty schools. Currently only 10% of magnet seats are available in a true lottery and it has been proposed to reduce that to 5%. Entrance to magnet schools is based mostly on where a student's family can afford to live and how much money the other families at their base schools have.

Knightdale and East Wake High Schools continue to offer fewer electives and AP courses than other schools in the county. The reason, according to WCPSS is that there aren't enough kids at those higher poverty schools who want to take advanced classes. Could that be because WCPSS has systematically kept low income kids on a lower track even when they have high test scores? See the SAS report for evidence of that.

I predict that things will get better for places like Eastern Wake under the new BOE. Low income children will not be expected to achieve less than their higher income peers as they are now under the Effective Index. We will quit using F&R status as an excuse for why we aren't educating these children to their fullest potential.

[Bull City Rising]

@rivlax, Jennifer: I think GreenLantern's comment summed up my conclusion perfectly, though I do suspect the policies do more than just mask SES differences, even if it were marginal in overall impact.

Quite apart from the indefatigable data that pro-neighborhood-schoolers trot out as to how poor kids won't be worse off under the new system, there's the very real fact that towns like Cary, Apex and Holly Springs are not as economically-exclusive as (all else equal) they might have been, while there have been economic signs of life and strength in Eastern Wake.

As Western Wake sees its schools become "elite" as opposed to simply excellent -- the natural outcome when kids advantaged with money and parental achievement are segregated together -- it will become an even more desirable place to move.

Even if there were no nominal change in eastern Wake performance, by comparison the disparity will be inevitable.

I would invite you to visit a place like Glenn or Eastway and see what an all-poor school looks like... even when, in a school like Eastway, there is a herculean effort to provide food and academic nurturing to students.

Better still, Jennifer, answer me this:

Durham students and Wake students perform equally well, generally, speaking, on standardized tests within their own race and SES cohorts.

Tell me, then, why people moving to the Triangle are routinely steered by real estate agents and future co-workers away from Durham and towards Wake and CH-Carrboro, being told "their schools are better?"

Tell me: if the SES composition of a school doesn't matter, why the hell are so many people afraid to live on the "wrong" side of the Wake/Durham line? Or if they're here, to send their kids to the "wrong" school district?

Put differently: with the exception of occasional obsessions over the Harlem Children's Zone or KIPP, can you point out an urban school district with high levels of SES/racial segregation that has in fact managed to create a model in which "low income children will not be expected to achieve less than their higher income peers?"

[TH]

Kevin, I not sure Jennifer is saying the SES composition at a school doesn't matter. It's funny, I see her point somewhat and yours/Greenlatern's point. I do think WCPSS has given East Wake County the brush off for many years. If you look at those schools in Knightdale, Zebulon, Garner you will find they have had well over 40% F&R kids for a long time. And WHY is it okay to bus kids from SE Raleigh to "better schools" but the kids at Knightdale High who are largely F&R and represent many minorities are made to stay at KH where there are not nearly as many AP classes and the middle schools that feed into Knightdale do not all have foreign language. (They have lower expectations of those kids already!) I think the mistake that WCPSS made is that some areas got diversified and they just ignored outlying areas like Knightdale and Garner. I don't think WCPSS took their own policies far enough. They applied them to some schools but not others. And why in the world would you offer foreign language at only some of the middle schools in Wake and not all of them? Their current system benefits some kids of a lower SES (again if they are lucky enough to live in the right part of town). The current system also benefits those that live ITB and in West Raleigh. But the current system does not benefit kids of a lower SES that live in places like Knightdale or Zebulon. Now, I don't think the solution is to completely do away with Wake's diversity policy all together. They are throwing the baby out with the baby water. But I see why parents in East Raleigh are angry and want some sort of change. Again, I don't think getting rid of busing is the solution. And in fact, Knightdale Schools will probably just stagnate now. WCPSS messed up because they did not take their diversity model far enough AND not all schools (middle & high) have the same class offerings on basics like foreign language. Parents got fed up that ITB, Cary, & Leesville kids were given preferential treatment and East Wake County (especially NW Wake County) continually got ignored. Given the number of immigrants moving into East Wake County and thus the increase in F&R and ESL students it's morally repugnant that WCPSS Board tells people in Knightdale they have to wait until more rich people move it, just as it would be morally repugnant to tell SE Raleigh you have to wait until your neighborhood is gentrified.

Yes, I realize that WCPSS might have been worried to take their policies further than what they did and that with all or nothing you sometimes end up with nothing. But I see how WCPSS got themselves into this mess. And unfortunately, the biggest losers are going to be ALL of the kids from a lower SES not just some of them like before.

[Jennifer Mansfield]

Kevin,
In regards to my statement that you quoted, "low income children will not be expected to achieve less than their higher income peers?":

The Effectiveness Index that WCPSS uses automatically lowers expectations for low income students and then lowers it again if those children are in high poverty schools. This means that if there are two children, one F&R and one not, and those two kids score exactly the same on their tests & EOGs, WCPSS predicts different outcomes for them. The low income kid is predicted to do worse the following year than the 'wealthier' kid.

I am not saying that there aren't challenges in high poverty schools. I'm saying that we have to stop automatically expecting less from low income and minority students just because they are low income and/or minority. The recent SAS report and WCPSS's own Effective Index report show that's what happening now.

I do not believe for a minute that the diversity policy is in place to help low income or minority students. Nor do I believe that it is there to make sure that schools are integrated. The diversity policy exists to make sure that central Raleigh schools look good in order to attract business and economic development. It is also in place to make sure that wealthier white families don't leave ITB. The overriding argument in this past election was that the diversity policy was good for economic development.

When confronted with the long distances that some children are bused (18 miles one way from downtown to Green Hope Elementary in Western Cary), Chuck Dulaney (head of Growth Management) and Horace Tart have said that it doesn't matter how far you bus low income kids because their parents won't participate anyway. This policy has never been about helping low income kids achieve.

The current board is happy to bus struggling kids around to make overall schools look good. They have been unwilling to even evaluate the effects, good and bad, of the diversity policy. The new board will actually look for ways to improve educational opportunities and academic achievement for high poverty schools instead of just sticking their heads in the sand & ignoring them.

[An interested Bull City resident]

You nailed it Jennifer! Well said.

However the proof is in the pudding. Will the new school board actually be able to improve student performance in those high poverty schools? Or will simply mean resegregation of the schools, a la Hillside, Southern, etc.

[Elaine]

As someone who migrated from the endless suburbs of Western Wake County (just off exit 7 on 540, as close as you can get to Durham and RTP while still being in Raleigh) to downtown Durham by choice a year ago, I can say that my commute to RTP is much shorter and more pleasant here than it was there. The traffic and backups and bizarre traffic patterns caused by the overpopulation, poor planning, and exclusive subdivisions in that area made what was geographically a short commute quite long (especially after the opening of 540 to Knightdale). Now I breeze from my downtown Durham home down 147 to RTP with no hangups.

I'll also note that the schools were the reason my husband and I originally chose to buy in Raleigh rather than Durham when we were relocating from the NE. We originally looked at Durham, but after reading the school report cards, changed our minds. Little did we know what we were missing (although I still consider the poor schools here the one main downside of our move to Durham). We never felt a part of Raleigh, in part because of the disconnection between the North Raleigh suburbs and downtown, and in part because there is nothing goin on there but suburbs.

[An interested Bull City resident]

so Elaine, where do you children attend school, now?

[Bull City Rising]

@Jennifer: I appreciate your response, but I think it is fairly obvious what will happen over a long (10+ year) time horizon with schools that revert to high-poverty and low-poverty schools:

- The "best" teachers will choose to leave urban, inner-city, poorer schools and move to suburban schools. Urban schools will attract newer, less-experienced teachers and experience higher rates of turnover.

- School supplies and spending will not be even; in high-poverty schools, you will see spending diverted to catch-up programs and remedial education away from programs to help students grow. (I can show you a school in Durham that has only $2,000 a year for new books in its media center -- ESL spending has sucked away the rest.)

- The public will criticize "failing" schools as the government's responsibility and error. (I think we would agree that it is parents and not schools responsible for the education of children. If parents are absent or non-performing, though, I feel the state has a compelling interest in ensuring education to all to create a base of law-abiding, tax-paying citizens.) In turn, support and funding for public schools declines, exacerbating the haves (private schools, charters) and hurting the have-nots (public schools, children at risk.)

Your blog describes you as a North Raleigh married mother of two.

Tell me: would you send your kids to Durham schools? After all, we have the "neighborhood schools" program that Wake diversity opponents have asked for.

You say you moved to the area a decade ago. Why did you pick Wake schools over Durham?

I know for a lot of relocators it ties in to the very issues of reputation and perceived success that I predict are going to become very pernicious in Durham. Just curious if your experience was the same, or different?

[Jennifer Mansfield]

Kevin,

We moved to Raleigh because that's where my husband's job was. At the time his office was located ITB, then moved to the Cary Crossroads area. We didn't choose Raleigh or even Wake County for the schools. Our youngest was 10 months old when we moved here so that was not on our radar. We originally desired to live in an older home and were shocked to find that we couldn't afford anything in Raleigh's older areas ITB. That was completely opposite of where we moved from. We looked at a few older homes in Wake Forest but that was too far from my husband's job and never considered Durham or Chapel Hill for the same reason. We also didn't consider Cary because it was too bland (sorry Cary-ites). We ended up in North Raleigh because it was the only place at the time that had an affordable 'neo-traditional' neighborhood where I could have sidewalks and a usable front porch. Couldn't afford the 'real' thing ITB so made due in the suburbs. ;-)

Would I send my kids to Durham schools? I don't know that much about individual Durham schools but I'm sure there are some that I would send my kids to and some I would not feel comfortable sending them to. It is the same in Wake County. I would not move to Eastern Wake county or Garner because of the schools and their lack of academic opportunities. There are also schools in North Raleigh that I wouldn't be thrilled about either. For the record, my kids are at schools with slightly above average poverty rates and higher than average minority populations. Our elem is a non-magnet that is already what I would consider a 'neighborhood school' and the middle school is a magnet school that much of the middle class base population avoids like the plague. We're thrilled to have gotten in and feel lucky to be there.

Many of the problems of neighborhood schools that you mention are already happening under our system. We have vastly different schools already, in terms of funding and most importantly, in terms of academic opportunity. The academic opportunity disparities are fueled largely by WCPSS's own policies and it doesn't seem to bother them that they create vastly different opportunities for students depending on where they live. We have kids who don't receive the help they need because they are shipped out to low poverty suburban schools that don't have the staff or the resources to provide the help they need. We already have schools where ESL and remedial needs have siphoned off resources for challenging kids. I do understand your points and agree that those issues could very well arise in different areas/schools under new leadership. When or if that happens, we must find solutions. But WCPSS cannot continue going down the same road pretending that everything is great. We can shuffle kids around all we want to make our schools 'even' in terms of poverty levels or even race. But if the kids who need help still aren't getting it and the ones who need challenged still aren't getting it then what have we accomplished?

[Belinda B]

I don't know why no one is thinking of the kids who are being victimized by all of this. The F&R lunch kids need more than a long bus ride to a suburban school or a chance to get into "better" classes if they luck out and are in the base for a magnet school. What the F&R Lunch Bunch needs is more personal attention - lower student-teacher ratios, extremely good after school programs to keep them engaged when the school day ends rather than bussing them to an empty house. Let's take the magnet money and use it toward that - don't ship the programs out to the suburban schools - that's not going to solve anyone's problem.

[Hope M]

Fabulous article. Someting really struck me here. "The solution to pollution is dillution?" Is it just me, or does the notion that poor/minority children are "contaminants" make anyone else angry?

This sends the mesage that students from lower socioeconomic rungs really aren't worth investing in. That we would rather bus them around and "dillute" the success of better performing students who might have a more stable homelife, etc.

How about approaching each student as an individual with different learning needs. How about investing in their lives and actually teach them and help to ensure their INDIVIDUAL success. That is the way to lift a community. Oh, wait a minute. That would be way too expensive. We'd have to have smaller class sizes and compensate excellent teachers at a higer rate.

Oh, forget it. Let's just bus them out to the suburbs.