Joanne Jacobs writes…
(pasadenastarnews.com) The magnet school scheme was tried from 1985 to 1997 in Kansas City, Mo., at a cost of $2billion. To lure suburban white students, Kansas City’s inner-city schools were equipped with lavish facilities: Indoor pools, gymnasia, high-tech science labs, computers, etc. But programs designed for the needs and interests of middle-class white suburbanites did not serve inner-city blacks. And few suburban students were willing to commute to city schools for a luxury athletic complex or a classics magnet. Test scores remained dreadful. By 1997, the district actually had a smaller percentage of white students than when the plan started.
Well, what about moving poor kids to better schools?
That’s been tried too with no effect on academic achievement. The journal Education Next reports on a study of families who moved out of public housing projects and into better neighborhoods in Boston, Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York: “A randomized evaluation of the `Moving to Opportunity’ program – a federal housing program piloted in five major U.S. cities that sought to relocate poor families by providing housing vouchers – shows that, contrary to expectations, moving families out of high-poverty neighborhoods has no overall positive impact on children’s learning.”
The new neighborhoods were significantly less poor and their residents were better educated. But researchers found no difference in children’s reading or math scores or in behavior or attitudes toward school when comparing families that won the housing lottery with those who didn’t. There also was no effect on retentions in grade or suspensions.
Researchers thought the youngest children might gain more than older students who’d spent years in schools with low expectations. Nope. Children who moved in the early grades did no better, compared to the control group, than older children.
You can take the poor out of the ghetto or barrio – and they’re usually delighted to move to safer areas. But they take with them the same habits and attitudes that undercut school success. (more…)
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