Bad Arguments

WCPSS recently responded to the United States Office of Civil Rights in connection with an ongoing investigation of reassignment decisions from Spring 2010. Some shoddy arguments were made in that response. Because the reassignment process has slowed, I decided to postpone my final post on the Wake School Choice Plan to address this topic.

I will not address every misstatement and bad argument recounted in the response. Because of the way the law works, the response recounts some misstatements and bad arguments by individual board members to show through their public statements that they did not intend to discriminate against black and hispanic students. For this purpose, it is legitimate to recount misstatements and bad arguments. So while I have discussed some of these before, I will not focus on them here. Further, most of the arguments in the response, like the argument that the challenged actions have not disproportionately impacted black and hispanic students, are micro-level arguments against something called “disparate impact” that take advantage of the fact that the complaint has not been amended to include the latest round of 2011 reassignments, which almost certainly had a disparate impact on black and hispanic students. These arguments, right or wrong, fall into an “overtaken by events” category that makes them not so interesting outside the legal arena. 

Beginning on page twenty-four of the response, however, are a series of arguments designed to show that “a majority of the Board has reasonably concluded that the district’s use of SES as a student achievement factor has not resulted in marked educational benefits but has imposed unfair burdens on poor and minority students.” Whatever the Board majority may have concluded, and however reasonable it may or may not have been, the arguments themselves are not very good. It is these arguments that I address below.

1. No studies show that SES diversity has improved academic achievement for poor and minority students in WCPSS.

“No studies show that the absence of a meltdown at Shearon Harris Nuclear Plant has markedly improved public health in Wake County.” I’m not a big fan of sensationalist argument, but sometimes it gets the point across. The case against high poverty schools is not as strong as the case against nuclear meltdowns, but the fallacy of relying on the absence of a local study is the same in each case: there is no good reason to believe that things will turn out differently in Wake County than they have elsewhere. The diversity policy retards the growth of high poverty schools. High poverty schools have been studied extensively, throughout the nation, from a variety of angles and approaches, at different levels of rigor, and the answer is clear: avoiding them is a good idea. Individual high poverty schools succeed, but as a group, they are systematically less likely to produce good results for all demographic groups than their low poverty counterparts. Further, most successful high poverty schools require greater resources than their low poverty counterparts and/or rely on peculiarities of situation that cannot readily be replicated or scaled. 

2. Comparison to other North Carolina School Districts shows that the SES diversity policy has failed.

Some fairly comparable school districts, like Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools and Guilford County, are now outperforming WCPSS in important ways. (NB: The WCPSS response overstates the case by highlighting only systems and metrics for which this is true.)

This does not mean the diversity policy has failed. While the comparison districts achieve better results in certain areas despite the absence of a diversity policy, you can’t use this to demonstrate that the diversity policy has failed. It may just show that whatever benefits the diversity policy has provided have, in the last few years and in certain respects, been eclipsed by some combination of things these other districts are doing right combined with things WCPSS is doing wrong.

To make a decent argument that the diversity policy has failed, you would have to show that some aspect of the diversity policy (or, conversely, the neighborhood schools policies of these other districts) actually caused WCPSS’s results to decline or the other districts’ results to improve. The paper does not do that, and it would be difficult to come up with an argument of this kind that is supported by data.

3. WCPSS student achievement data show that the diversity policy has failed.

WCPSS makes two arguments here. First, it points out that the proficiency of students receiving a free or reduced lunch on standardized tests is not “clearly” and “inexorably” correlated with the poverty level of the school. Second, it notes that minority students who attend magnet schools fare worse than minority students who attend nonmagnets.

The first argument means you cannot prove the diversity policy is working via the correlation between school poverty and the educational results for poor children. The correlations are too low, because many things, not just the poverty level of a school, determine how well it educates poor children. But it does not prove the opposite proposition, that the diversity policy provides no benefit. On that score, there is some suggestive evidence to the contrary. If you plot the reading proficiency of white, black, hispanic, and poor children against the increasing poverty levels of their schools, for example, you will see a consistent downward trend for all groups and a notable drop in the results achieved by the best schools at any given level of poverty.

The second argument, comparing the performance of minority students at magnets to minority students elsewhere, reflects the fact that the minority students in our magnet schools are more likely to be poor students—indeed, particularly poor students—than minority students elsewhere. This arises because most magnet schools are located in neighborhoods that are both poor and majority-minority, while most other schools are not. There could be something here, but unless you extract the Asian students from the “minority” category (because they perform as well as white students in WCPSS), then control for levels of poverty in the minority populations, the argument is worthless.

4. The SES diversity policy unfairly burdens poor and minority students.

Two distinct claims are made here. First, WCPSS points out that poor and minority students are more likely to endure long bus rides than their nonpoor, white counterparts and were more likely to have their magnet applications rejected. Second, it argues that longer bus rides show a “troubling correlation” with weaker academic performance.

The first claim is true. Certain poor and minority students pay a price in lost time and choice so that those same students and others can attend lower poverty, less racially isolated schools than they otherwise would. It is always legitimate to ask whether this is fair. It is hard to find an objectively right answer, but I would weigh most heavily the opinions of the communities most affected.

As for the second claim, there is a “correlation” between distance to base assignment and achievement, but it is not as “troubling” as the WCPSS response hopes you will think. Students who travel farther to their base assignments tend to perform less well because they tend to be poorer, and our poor students—like the poor students in every public school system—tend to perform worse, as a group, than the nonpoor.

There is a misperception here, often shared by both sides, that a long bus ride, by itself, could or should improve academic performance. Busing a child away from a neighborhood magnet school maintained at 40% FRL to another, more distant school at 40% FRL will not do this, because the child’s performance should be similar in both schools. What the bus ride does is permit the existence of a system of schools where poor and minority children do not have to attend a poor, racially isolated school.

5. Eliminating the SES diversity policy is unlikely to harm students because the Board majority has established new programs that will close the achievement gap “in other, more effective, ways.”

The Board—the whole Board, but led in some of its efforts by the “majority” identified in the response—has proposed changes in policies and programs that may help close the achievement gap. Some of them, like using objective and documented criteria for math and other program placements and using effectiveness data to place leadership teams and teachers, are likely to reduce the achievement gap. Others, like merit pay for individual teachers, are likely to be a waste of money (see here and here). Still others may be the right thing to do (e.g. reducing suspensions), but their likely effect on the achievement gap is unclear.

None of them has been shown to be more likely to reduce the “achievement gap” than a policy retarding the growth of high poverty schools. More importantly, however, these ideas are in no way inconsistent with the diversity policy. It is entirely possible to implement them without promoting the growth of high poverty schools, so they are not a valid argument against the policy.

Conclusion

In the WCPSS response to the Office of Civil Rights, crafted by lawyers, the above-mentioned arguments are carefully hedged. They are presented not to show their correctness, but to show that they were plausible enough for Board members to reasonably believe them. As you might expect, this subtlety has been lost on or ignored by some members of the Board and the press, who have presented these suspect arguments as conclusive proof of something they do not show.

I have attacked these arguments because they are bad arguments in support of a worse idea: the elimination of a policy that has retarded the growth of high poverty schools. Those who purport to be data-driven have a duty to use data to inform, not deceive. The response fails to do this, and we should condemn the use of these particular arguments by anyone who claims to be data-driven.

At the same time, WCPSS has lost ground in recent years when compared to fairly comparable systems. If the diversity policy did not fail us, other policies necessarily did. It is no answer to blame “growth” for this failing. Growth is a good thing for schools. Just ask Detroit. More importantly, growth is something that will one day return, whether it is good or not. When it does, we must have have a solid understanding of what we did wrong and how to do it better—despite growth—or we will be left in the dust. Some efforts of the ED Task Force are solid steps in that direction.

The Wake School Choice Plan (Part 3)

This post continues my exploration of the Wake School Choice Plan (WSCP), a student assignment proposal advanced by the Wake Education Partnership. This third post focuses on whether the WSCP would use our schools efficiently. I tackle this question from three angles: facilities use, transportation cost, and “other.”

Facilities Use

The WSCP makes a strong effort to match the population of its three “areas” to the capacities of their schools. Generally speaking, this sort of approach should promote efficient facilities use, though it is not much different than what we try to do now.

The WSCP also assigns kindergarten students and other “choosers” one at a time. This does differ from the node-at-a-time approach we now use. Further, this approach should permit the WSCP to better use capacity limits to ensure that there are few, if any, crowded schools in 2012. Although the plan would allow this, it does not appear to do it. It appears to favor giving people their choices instead, contemplating school crowding of up to 125%. This level of crowding is extreme by today’s standards. This problem could easily be fixed by restricting crowding to lower levels.

In comparison to our current node-based assignment approach, I think the WSCP will have a harder time using middle schools and high schools efficiently. The difficulty arises from the plan’s “feeder patterns.” Students in a given elementary school will automatically be assigned to a particular middle school. Students in a given middle school will automatically be assigned to a particular high school. Feeding one entire school into another—rather than particular nodes, as we do now—does not provide much flexibility to adjust enrollment at the middle and high school levels.

While the plan specifies which schools are in each of its three “areas,” it does not identify the feeder patterns for each area. This makes it hard to demonstrate the problem convincingly, but there will almost certain be one, particularly at the high school level, where our high schools already operate at 112% of their optimum capacity. This must be watched carefully.

Transportation Cost

Despite the many choices it provides, the WSCP posits significantly lower transportation costs than now exist based on a projected annual reduction in student transport distances of approximately 12.2 million miles. It achieves these projected savings in the following ways: (1) it assumes that students in a choice regime will overwhelmingly attend their nearby schools, and that far more of them will be able to walk; and (2) despite indications that the WSCP would preserve the current systemwide magnet program with transportation, the plan seems to ignore the associated transportation costs.

With respect to the first point, the WSCP’s transportation cost estimates claim to assume something called a Reverse Fibonacci distribution of students. (I don’t think it adheres to the assumption for middle and high schools, but this is not discussed and cannot be demonstrated from the limited data provided.) This distribution posits that 38% of elementary students will attend their closest school (lower than the 53% who do so now), but 77% will attend one of the three closest (much higher than current conditions) and only 3% will attend one of the three farthest options.

The WSCP provides no empirical support for the assumption, which is said to be based on experience. I doubt it’s accurate. To me, it seems likely that an even higher number will select their closest school, because it is closest and because the WSCP strongly incentivizes you to choose it by giving you priorities if you do. After that, however, I think the choices of many will focus on the magnets among the choices or on the schools with the fewest low achieving, or poor, or nonwhite students, whether they should focus on these considerations or not.

As to the second point, there is simply no discussion of systemwide magnet transportation, from which I deduce that its cost has not been factored in. Nor is there any discussion of the cost of providing transportation to grandfathered students, which is likely to be substantial in the short run.

On the plus side, the WSCP transportation analysis may underestimate the efficiencies that could be generated through the above-discussed feeder patterns. These might—if students strongly select their neighborhood schools, and if the feeder patterns can actually be implemented—streamline current transportation patterns even further than the plan anticipates.

On the whole, the WSCP’s transportation cost proof posits savings of over 12 million student miles traveled. This sounds like a lot. But students currently travel 223 million miles, so it really isn’t. It’s about 5% of current miles. And this assumes that the plan’s projections are accurate rather than optimistic.

It was politically necessary to try to show that the WSCP could be implemented without increasing transportation costs. It may even be true. But it is important to keep in mind that whatever the difference in cost between the old assignment plan and the new one, it is unlikely to be material if the new plan works better. Total transportation costs are about 5-7% of our overall and local spending, so any difference between two reasonable plans is likely to be small.

Other Costs

This plan has two other potential costs that are not discussed: the cost of “outreach” and the cost of enhancing underchosen schools. I will not take these up here, because I have no way to estimate the cost of “outreach” designed to induce folks to make good choices, and the cost of enhancing underchosen schools is one we will likely bear in some form or fashion regardless of the assignment mechanism.

Conclusion

If the WSCP did not worry too much about whether folks were actually granted their wishes, and if it did not incorporate guaranteed feeder patterns, it would not be difficult for it to ensure near perfect utilization of every school. Because the WSCP does try to grant wishes, and does incorporate guaranteed feeder patterns, there will be some significant inefficiencies, just as there are now.

The WSCP’s transportation cost estimates depends heavily on the assumptions it makes about where children will choose to attend school. While I am not convinced that transportation costs will be lower under the WSCP, I doubt they will be materially higher.

In a nutshell, I would not focus too much on the efficiency and cost factors in considering whether the WSCP is a good idea. I would focus more on whether it will promote achievement and whether it would increase parent satisfaction. 

If you have any thoughts on things I missed in this post, please use the feedback form or email me at nriemann@bellsouth.net. In my next and final post, I will look at whether there are any alternatives to the WSCP that might provide better results.

"Controlled Choice" at the Wake Education Partnership Roundtable in Garner

I attended a Wake Education Partnership Education Roundtable in Garner today. At the Roundtable, Tim Simmons presented information on the "controlled choice" plan now being developed for the Partnership by Michael Alves in the hope that the School Board will consider adopting it, or something like it.

While the plan is still a work in progress, it is an "assignment-area" (i.e. zone) plan that will, if it works as advertised, improve on the zone-based plan developed by the Student Assignment Committee in three key ways:

1. It avoids isolating poor, African-American, Hispanic, and low-performing students by using 2-4 much larger assignment areas and considering achievement in assignments;
2. It preserves the existing magnet system, though who can attend each school might change; and
3. It handles growth better because the larger assignment areas enable better use of capacity. 

The Partnership says the plan has four guiding principles: choice, stability, proximity, and student achievement.

Stability is the easiest to explain. Apparently, stability means that once enrolled in a school, you are not called upon to leave it until you graduate from it. It also means that if you have a sibling currently attending a school, you have a right to attend it when the time comes. (If the plan were adopted, existing assignments would also be grandfathered to avoid controversy.)

Choice means families choose schools, generally from their own assignment area, subject to constraints. At this point, the "controlled choice" plan's constraints are as vague as those from the SAC, though all calendars and some magnets will be available in each Zone. If you do not exercise your right to choose, a choice will be made for you, and likely not one most would have chosen.

Living within walking distance of a school gives you some sort of advantage. There is something called a "base option" which appears to mean that you can request a nearby school designated as your base, and you might have a better chance of getting it than someone for whom it is not so designated. It is not a guaranteed "base assignment." 

The plan would consider the "academic mix" of the school in granting requests so that schools can perform well and can retain teachers. For elementary schools, this will mean considering predictors for likely achievement like free and reduced lunch status, single-parenthood, and mother's education level rather than actual school readiness, unless the system wants to pay to test every entrant.

Other goals: The attendance boundaries will be contiguous. The areas will be designed to grow at similar paces. Transportation costs will resemble those today.

It sounds like a tall order. The plan is due to be presented to the Board in December.

Student Assignment Committee Meeting

Today's student assignment committee meeting was limited to sharing information, since the zone-based plan has been scuttled for the time being and no new option has emerged.

While no decisions were made, John Tedesco did reveal some heretofore hidden aspects of the "zone plan." Apparently Athens Drive HS and Broughton HS were destined to be moved out of the Central Region to the Western and Northern Regions, respectively, and the downtown and Southeast Raleigh magnets would have become something like what they already are, namely countywide magnets. Apparently, however, more seats in these magnets would have become base seats, increasing the poverty and minority isolation in those schools. Since this plan continues to have four votes, it continues to be important to think about it.

Staff shared information about

• assignment changes for 2011-2012 arising from the opening of new schools (Walnut Creek elementary site, Rolesville middle school site, H6 (Rolesville) high school site
• growth projection and the need for new schools in the next decade (33 new schools if 1,000+ student year-round elementary schools are used, more if not)
• school funding methodology
• program distribution and equity (AP, languages, etc.)
• reverse magnets (Here is a report on the one that once existed in Wake County, which was discussed at the meeting. The magnet program is called CBALC in the report. It was not particularly successful.)

I'll link the materials once I have access to them.

Reassignment Resolution

I never posted the reassignment "directive" adopted at the last Board meeting. Since it should govern the Student Assignment Committee proceedings Tuesday, I am posting it now. Click here.

Key points:

1. "The Wake County Board of Education abandons its effort to establish Community Assignment Zones. Any and all efforts to create a zone based assignment model will cease effective immediately."

2. The current reassignment plan, which applies to next year's assignments, will continue in place for the time being, subject to node-based adjustments, calendar conversions, and "school designations." These 2011-2012 adjustments are to be made in conformity with Policy 6200—which no longer includes diversity as a goal—and considerations of stability, proximity, growth, and "other factors that may be relevant."

3. Relevant Board and administrative committees and WCPSS departments are "directed" (i.e. required) to provide recommendations for each school that consider parental choice, proximity, stability, capacity, "equity and equal opportunity for a sound, basic education for all students, as provided in our [State] Constitution."