Michael LaForgia, Lisa Gartner, and Cara Fitzpatrick of the Tampa Bay Tribune investigated five of the lowest-performing schools in Florida and got to the bottom of their failure. Their story, “Failure Factories,” described five schools in one of the state’s most affluent district that had been “average” (when judged by test scores) in the recent past and are now among the “worst” in the state.
They write:
In just eight years, Pinellas County School Board members turned five schools in the county’s black neighborhoods into some of the worst in Florida.
First they abandoned integration, leaving the schools overwhelmingly poor and black.
Then they broke promises of more money and resources.
Then — as black children started failing at outrageous rates, as overstressed teachers walked off the job, as middle class families fled en masse — the board stood by and did nothing.
Today thousands of children are paying the price, a Tampa Bay Times investigation has found.
They are trapped at Campbell Park, Fairmount Park, Lakewood, Maximo and Melrose — five neighborhood elementary schools that the board has transformed into failure factories.
Every year, they turn out a staggering number of children who don’t know the basics.
Eight in 10 fail reading, according to state standardized test scores. Nine in 10 fail math.
Ranked by the state Department of Education, Melrose is the worst elementary school in Florida. Fairmount Park is No. 2. Maximo is No. 10. Lakewood is No. 12. Campbell Park is No. 15.
All of the schools operate within six square miles in one of Florida’s most affluent counties.
NPR interviewed Michael LaForgia and Cara Fitzpatrick about their investigation.
MICHAEL LAFORGIA: We spent a year examining what was going on with five elementary schools in our predominantly African-American neighborhoods in Pinellas County. What we found was that 95 percent of black children who were tested at these schools failed reading or math. Teacher turnover in the schools is a chronic problem. Last year, more than half of the teaching staff at these five schools requested transfers out. We found that all of this is a recent phenomenon. By December of 2007, when our school board voted on a plan that effectively re-segregated the district, none of the schools in question was ranked lower than a C. Today, all of them are Fs in the state ranking system.
VIGELAND: Wow. Well, Cara, how would you describe the county where these five schools are located – Pinellas County – because I think that is one of the surprises here.
CARA FITZPATRICK: Well, Pinellas County is one of the most affluent counties in Florida, so that’s part of the surprise, I think, here. And one of the things that’s interesting about this, too, is that these five elementary schools are all in a relatively small area of South St. Petersburg.
VIGELAND: Michael, as you noted, these schools were doing a lot better about a decade ago, and they had a very different demographic at the time because of integration and busing. So what changed?
LAFORGIA: So a decade ago, there still was in effect federal oversight that was mandated by a civil rights lawsuit that dated to the 1960s. The district got out from under that lawsuit in 2007. Rather than stick with the integration efforts that had been working up till that time, the school board opted to go to a neighborhood schools model which effectively re-segregated the school district.
VIGELAND: What did it mean in terms of the student population?
LAFORGIA: Well, it meant that schools that previously had been 60, 50, 40 percent black were now suddenly 80 and 90 percent black. And they were drawing from a high-poverty area. The children who previously had been spread among other more-affluent schools who had had access to 15 or 20 schools’ worth of guidance counselors or behavior specialists suddenly only had access to five schools’ worth.
“So a decade ago, there still was in effect federal oversight that was mandated by a civil rights lawsuit that dated to the 1960s.”
For those who think the federal government has no role to play in education … it’s not that easy.
And, BTW, Diane, it’s the Tampa Bay Times, not the Tribune.
Same effect charters are having, resegregationof public schools.
I guess there is some rationale that in charters integration will be by choice and not by force.
Sadly, a minority friend and former mentor of mine has given up on the idea of public schools, it seems, because she felt minorities were not empowered in ways she wanted to see.
Because I try to see things from all sides and because there are no unions with collective bargaining in my state (and therefore copycat policies really targeted at union busting leave us wondering what just happened and how to make it better)—I have tried to imagine what might have happened in the south if after 1954, states had just been left to integrate at their own volition. It’s like nature is pushing us back to that point, or entropy is or just plain old resistance. Would there have been a few who decided to model integration in a way that would have become note-worthy and worthy of copying or using as a model? (some people think “going back” mental exercises are dumb, but I find them helpful to move the conversation along).
What might have happened? How would it be different from where we are right now?
Also, for those in union states: I feel like most of education reform is simply union busting (as most know). Why not have union reform? Why do we all have to have public schools flushed away on account of the NEA being so big or whatever the laundry list is from unions.
I read this bit on public sector unions and found it interesting.
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-trouble-with-public-sector-unions
I want to hear conversations about unions separate from talk about education. Like, back way up and look at it as simply an entity that may or may not fight for what’s best for children.
I see that in states losing ground on public school support (via our elected officials), like NC, even the ones who are pro-public school are starting to say, “well it is true that teachers really only fight for what’s best for them and not for children.”
What are we to believe?
Integration is what works. I haven’t seen it mentioned here, but This American Life recently had a terrific two-part series on integration in public schools. Readers of this blog should check it out.
Yep, that was great.
Integration does work! I worked in very good integrated, suburban school district for many years with a 70 to 30 per cent middle class to poor student body ratio, and integration worked wonders for my poor ELL students. Many of these poor students went to college, and I doubt that would have happened in a poor, neglected school.
As for Florida, the situation is highly inequitable, and maybe it’s time for the justice department to do its job. The government should not be in the business of promoting segregation.
Did anyone ask Jeb Bush about this at today’s education forum? Does he have an opinion?
By December of 2007, when our school board voted on a plan that effectively re-segregated the district, none of the schools in question was ranked lower than a C.
This gives credibility to those who claim that elected school boards are a problem, but the roll-back of federal oversight is also part of that “freedom to re-segregate.”
St. Petersburg may be an affluent district, but it has also been a preferred location for retired persons from “up north,” That may contribute to some indifference about local schools as long as the kids don’t make trouble.
I live in north Florida near Eglin Air Force Base and NAS Pensacola. This is the most conservative part of Florida. Due to the military bases, the population has retirees as well as many young families. People here seem to value their public schools, and there is no big movement to privatize. There are some from the Christian right that choose to home school their children. In Escambia County the superintendent closed three Newpoint cyber schools because they were misusing funding and cheating on assessments. I can see how areas with large numbers of retirees could ignore privatization.
Black Lives Matter should address education and the segregation of black students and decimation of the black teaching corps in recent years.
White flight and what seems to be a magnet like focus on segregation of races/religions are hard forces to overcome.
This is why choice should not reign supreme because everyone choosing what is best for themselves ends up with a lot of people with few choices and everyone hurts more for it even though people were choosing what they perceived to be best.
It is a bitter irony that increased segregation is going to be a legacy of the education policies of the first African-American President. If he had instead focused on integration and resources for poor children, including more teachers per student, what a different story we would have! Of course, he would have had opposition, but what a different conversation we would be having now.
I went to the NPR site to try and find this Florida article, but found a story from morning instead:
“Teacher Shortage? Or Teacher Pipeline Problem?”
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/08/19/432724094/teacher-shortage-or-teacher-pipeline-problem
Interestingly, while the audio version does briefly mention testing and charters, this written version does not.
Don’t forget the ALEC/FLDOE/Bush strategy of raising proficiency cut scores on the FCAT in 2013; hundreds of formerly satisfactory schools instantly became failing.
How does New Orleans handle the food and transportation situation? I assume these Florida schools are full of the students who need both and that’s why they aren’t in charters? Is that right?
This is a great local piece on the effect of choice on the public school kids in one area:
http://data.postandcourier.com/school-choice/page/1
Good link. It is disgusting that this is happening in a democracy. School choice is often veiled racism. The DOJ should intervene.
The Tampa Bay Times agenda appears to be pushing for segregated black charter schools in St. Petersburg. Failure Factories failed to reveal that their source, Goliath Davis, has a checkered past including his advocacy of two failed charter schools in St. Petersburg: his own Imagine Charter School, and his colleague’s Uhuru Charter School. COQEBS is Goliath Davis’s political steering committee and the recent community meeting on schools was stacked with COQEBS supporters, offering a less than ideal forum for other viewpoints. The same can be said about the Times’ Failure Factories. The Times is deeply in debt to creditors who are keeping the paper afloat, leading some to speculate their reporting is “indebted” to investors as well. Notably, two prominent former Times staffers, Jon East and Ron Matus, are employed by a company which actively promotes charter schools — it’s headed by Goliath Davis’s colleague Doug Tuthill, who is the former political campaign manager for the head of the St. Pete Uhuru organization. The Times’ reporting, in my opinion, is a flash-bang device
to confuse the public, and to grease political wheels in St. Petersburg for charter schools. COQEBS has long been politically involved in getting their way in south St. Petersburg schools, so who’s really to blame?
There is a part 2 to the article, focusing on the violence in those same schools. It’s poverty, folks.