Debra Goldman Interviewed by Rick Martinez

I listened to this interview and thought it was interesting. For those lacking the patience, here's a summary:

Goldman said she is for “community-based schools.” She says she is for “proximity,” “stability,” “a real calendar option,” “some program choice through our magnets,” “no mandatory year round,” and—most importantly—a base assignment, such that when you choose where you live, you know where your neighborhood goes to school. She also wants a plan that has a positive impact on the achievement of ALL students (she capitalized ALL herself).

As for the process of developing a reassignment plan, she said the process should involve gathering input, gathering feedback, and being transparent. She didn’t like the process that was being used because it wasn’t fair. There weren’t enough voices.

She didn’t like the zone plan itself because it lacked the base assignments called for by revised Policy 6200 and was dividing communities when it was supposed to be about community-based schools. It was going to be a lottery, and "rings of proximity" didn’t address her concern because elementary schools are clustered and some would be in ring for multiple schools while others would not be in the ring for any.

Asked whether she’s gone over to the other side, she said something to the effect of, “That’s not entirely correct—my view is my view, and it’s the same as it ever was.”

She did not indulge several of Martinez’s efforts to engage her along party lines on issues like who really suffers funding inequities and the wisdom of sending poor kids away from Title I schools.

September 28, 2010 Student Assignment Committee Meeting

Today's Student Assignment Committee meeting provided much data but few answers.

There was a brief detour into achievement in which it was proposed that another committee of the Board (the Policy Committee, whose operation has been suspended by the Board) design a "policy" to promote student achievement by holding schools accountable and replacing personnel or programs that fail. There was a more sustained effort to extract data from staff the would show magnet schools and busing are a bad idea. This data is on the WCPSS website if you would like to review it. There was a significant amount of prearranged node flipping to address concerns raised by constituents of John Tedesco and Debra Goldman. Among the key questions neither addressed nor answered:

• Given significant evidence from multiple studies that concentrating poverty and isolating African-Americans impairs the academic performance of poor and minority students in the resulting environments, why should the Board adopt a reassignment plan that does those things before it determines the steps that might be taken to promote achievement in spite of them?
• Do the base students who attend socioeconomically diverse magnet schools perform better than they would perform if their school were a racially isolated, high poverty school?
• How will it be possible to preserve the existing magnet system in anything like its current form, given the proposed reassignments?

More on each of these topics later.