A new report from the Annenberg Institute for School Reform asks the question: Is Demography Destiny?
Here is the answer: Yes.
The “portfolio” approach did not change the outcomes for poor kids.
Nonetheless, many districts around the nation are following NYC’s example, based on the hype and spin promoting it.
Another absurd reform that doesn’t help kids.
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Norm Fruchter, Report co-author and AISR Senior Scholar
212-328-9252 , norm_fruchter@brown.edu
or
Phil Gloudemans, AISR’s Communications Director
401/863-3552, 617/257-2958, philip_gloudemans@brown.edu
High School “Choice” Fails to Address Achievement Gap
NEW YORK — High school “choice” – the opportunity for students to select the school they prefer regardless of location – has been promoted as the most effective way to reduce a school system’s racial achievement gap and improve the quality of education. However, a new study of the New York City school system released today revealed that this approach has not disrupted the frustratingly enduring link between students’ demographics and their educational fates across the city’s disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Entitled Is Demography Still Destiny,? researchers at Brown University’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform (AISR) noted that “…in spite of the NYCDOE’s efforts to enhance both the extent of selectivity and the equity of high school choice, demography is still – and quite relentlessly – destiny in terms of the relationship between neighborhood race/ethnicity and college readiness across the city’s public school system. Universal high school choice seems not to have provided equity of outcomes for the city’s high school students.“
High school choice, adopted by the Bloomberg administration, which restructured the public schools over the past decade into a “portfolio” district focused on this model, and replicated by school districts nationwide, was instituted to ensure that students living in disadvantaged neighborhoods are not automatically assigned to disadvantaged schools. According to this approach, student demographics are “no excuse” for poor performance: teacher quality is the single most important determinant of student success.
The study indicates, however, that the college readiness of New York City high school graduates is still very highly correlated with their respective neighborhood. In particular, the racial composition and average income of a student’s home neighborhood are very strong predictors of a student’s chance of graduating from high school ready for college. The study shows that gaps between neighborhoods are significantly wide, including:
- Only eight percent of students from Mott Haven graduate ready for college, while nearly 80 percent of students from Tribeca do.
- In the city’s neighborhoods with 100 percent Black and Latino residents, no more than 10 percent of high school students graduate ready for college
- In the Manhattan neighborhoods with the highest college-readiness rates, fewer than 10 percent of the residents are Black or Latino
- 18 of the 20 neighborhoods with the lowest college-readiness rates are in the Bronx; the other two are located in Brooklyn
- 13 of the 16 neighborhoods with the highest college-readiness rates are in Manhattan; the other three are located in Queens
In spite of the city’s efforts to increase equity by expanding high school choice and creating five hundred new small schools and one hundred charter schools, college readiness rates are still largely predicted by the demographics of a student’s home neighborhood. The study indicates that the strategies of school choice and school creation are insufficient to create the equity that the Bloomberg administration had envisioned.
The researchers suggest a number of policies that would begin to address these gaps, including:
- A more equitable distribution of in-school guidance and counseling resources to help families successfully navigate the school choice maze
- A significant increase in the number of educational-option seats, to ensure that students of all academic levels and all neighborhoods have a fair shot at seats in the high schools that are most likely to prepare them for college
- Heavy investment in school improvement strategies, rather than just school creation and choice, to increase the capacity of existing schools to prepare students for college.
“Without such comprehensive efforts, the vast disparity in opportunity that separates the city’s neighborhoods will persist,” states the report.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane,
This is a case in which the format of the question determines the answer. The answer to the question, “Is poverty destiny?” is neither yes nor no. Saying yes, leaves educators open to the charge that they want to throw up thier hands and accept fate. A more productive question would be, “Is it possible to mediate the negative effects of poverty on student learning at scale through improvements in instruction alone?” Educators can and should make every effort to continuosuly improve practice. Howewer, if that is the beginning and end of government policy it is doomed to failure.
Arthur
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Agreed. No one should throw up their hands and accept fate as destiny. Every educator I know is working 11-12 hours a day to defeat poverty. But schools can’t do it alone. And the “portfolio” policy doesn’t have any effect. It is truly akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic and calling it reform.
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Oh how sad. The CRPE (Center for Reinventing Public Education – fondly known by many WA teachers as CRAP) here in Washington thinks that the portfolio district idea is the cats meow. Now we know that it, too, is CRAP.
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Do you think Bloomberg would even read this and if so, what would he do now?
Pay for another study that says his reforms are fine and dandy?
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