School choice and segregation

A fascinating report was issued last week by People for Education - an Ontario based non-profit organization that promotes public education. The report looked at demographic data in the Ontario school system and drew some frightening conclusions about the growing inequity in access to educational opportunities.

For example:

* students in high income school are more likely to be identified as gifted
* high income schools fundraise five times more per year, on average, than low income schools
* the top 10% of fundraising schools raise as much as the bottom 81% altogether
* between 2001 and 2013, the average ratio of special education students to special education teachers has risen from 22:1, to 36:1 in elementary schools
* average family income in schools with a high proportion of applied math students is almost half that of the schools with the low proportion of applied math students

The full report is available here: http://www.peopleforeducation.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/annual-report-2013-WEB.pdf

Unfortunately, I am not aware of any similar analysis for schools in British Columbia, but a quick look at a few facts suggest similar trends and other worrisome indicators related to the impact of school and program "choice" on how students become segregated and streamed.

The Ministry of Education provides five year data sets of a variety of statistical measures. Here are a few quick facts from schools in the Greater Victoria district:

* Craigflower elementary has gone from 76% aboriginal students in 2008 to 95% aboriginal students in 2012

*  14% of all non-aboriginal students with a special needs designation are gifted, whereas 2% of all aboriginal students with a special needs designation are gifted

* Central Middle School, a dual track French Immersion/English school, was just about equal in the proportion of female and male students five years ago, but today, the school is 57% female and 43% male
* In contrast, Rockheights Middle School, which does not have a French Immersion program, is 57% male and 43% female...the same trend is occurring in another non-French Immersion Middle School that is in a higher socio-economic area of the city, Monterey, which is now 55% male and 45% female

A raft of research from the United States has documented the impact of segregation and the benefits of inclusion to enhance equality of educational opportunities. For example, a study entitled "Trading in Futures: Why Markets in Education Don't Work", explains the problem:

"Throughout the English-speaking world, and now Western Europe and parts of East Asia, parental choice and educational markets are being seen by politicians and policy advisors as the panacea to problems of low educational standards and social exclusion. This book tests the key assumptions underlying the faith in markets by linking an analysis of parental choice to flows of students between schools and their impact on school effectiveness. The results of this study suggest that the ability to realize choices is dependent on social-class, gender, and ethnicity, and that this can have a negative impact on some schools' performance. Rather than raising standards, the impact of markets is to polarize them, leading to an impoverished education for many students. Contrary to current orthodoxy, markets are likely to lead to a decline in overall educational standards because they have a negative effect on the performance of working-class schools, while leaving middle-class schools untouched. Education markets trade off the opportunities of less-privileged children to those already privileged. Students from professional and managerial middle-class backgrounds are able to exercise greater choice and are more likely to travel greater distances to enter schools with high socioeconomic status mixes. In these terms, markets do not work because they are neither efficient nor equitable." (http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED453584&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED453584)

Rather than the destructive influence of the Fraser Institute school rankings, which exacerbate these inequities, it is time that a BC research institute, or better yet even, our government, took a look at how school choice has impacted racial, gender, and socio-economic stratification here in BC.

The most important "choice" - the neighborhood school

This week two school boards are wrestling with decisions about school closures - Kootenay Columbia, and Port Alberni. In Kootenay Columbia, the decision was made that the Board would no longer support a full K-12 program in the town of Rossland. In Alberni, the Board is considering a school closure and relocation of students to other schools.

Both communities saw an outpouring of public interest and concern. In Rossland, a community group called Vision for Small Schools has been advocating to maintain K-12 services within Rossland.  A survey of parents found that 85 percent wanted to maintain K-12 in Rossland even if that meant having a single K-12 school. The vast majority of parents who responded to the survey were Rossland residents - 487 of 500.

The last decade has seen hundreds of school closures across British Columbia. Always, parents and community members are distraught to lose their neighborhood school. Not only are children displaced out of their community, but the school often serves other functions for local residents. They have playgrounds used in the evenings, rooms booked for community functions, theatres and sports facilities rented to community groups.

Although there has been declining enrollment, as the Rossland group points out, many of these communities will see a rebound in the coming decade. In Rossland, the District has projected enrollment back at 2003 levels by 2026. To close schools now, at the bottom of the enrollment dip, is rather shortsighted. If funding were provided by the province, community schools, with all their benefits to local residents, could be maintained to ensure adequate space for this enrollment rebound.

The irony of school closures is that parents and community members have consistently shown through their actions that this is one of the most important school "choices". It is very important to parents to be able to send their child to a school within the local community, and it is important to communities to have school spaces and facilities to act as neighborhood hubs.

The "choice" movement advocated by the BC Liberals for the past decade has eroded access to community schools and led directly to these hundreds of school closures. Opening of catchments and allowing children (or their parents) to "choose" a school has skewed the enrollments in many Districts. In Vancouver, students have fled east end schools only to fill west end schools with portables. Turf wars have broken out, particularly at the secondary level, to recruit students to "our" school. Schools, districts and teachers are spending scarce resources advertising their schools, hosting open house nights, putting up signs and creating ever more specialized academies and programs in an attempt to have the highest enrollment. Sadly, this only takes children from one school to another, and will end up as a race to nowhere. As the inter-school competition increases, schools are looking even further afield for more children to attract. A recent Board meeting in Victoria claimed the Lacrosse Academy would attract students from "the lower island". A new school proposal for Saanich specializing in earth and ocean science will aim to attract students from all over British Colombia.

But for every school that gets a new student, some other school loses one. And when enough are gone, the effects can be ghetto-izing or closure. The trend is for students (or parents) with enough social capital to be the ones actively picking their schools. When this happens, schools in lower income neighborhoods experience a "flight" of middle class kids. The net effect is a ghetto-ization of schools into "haves" and "have nots". This "choice" is great for the haves...they get a school of their choice, a program of their choice. But it is a disaster for the "have nots" and it is unfair and inequitable. For a particular child, choice may seem attractive, but for society as a whole, choice leads to stratification and inequity.

Families and communities have shown again and again that the neighborhood school is of paramount importance. Chronic underfunding and inter-school competition have led to overcrowded schools combined with under-utilized schools. The end result is school closures of neighborhood schools and a loss of the most important choice for parents - the choice of the neighborhood school.