Jan. 3, 2006: NSA comments on Jeff proposals

According to the Board’s 3/28/05 resolution and Supt. Vicki Phillips, the Jefferson Design Team was created based upon the need to: 1) Increase enrollment, bringing back the many families currently going elsewhere; 2) Increase student achievement by providing a more “robust” curriculum. Unfortunately, apart from a few good ideas—making some elementary schools PreK-8, providing a rigorous IB program, and restoring Boise-Eliot to its rightful home in the Jefferson cluster—the Neighborhood Schools Alliance thinks the current proposals for Jefferson will not meet these goals. Here’s why: • Proposals perpetuate racial segregation/inequity. These proposals are based primarily on a few site visits to “minority” schools in other cities. A plan based on segregated schools, with a 7-12 configuration that does not align with the rest of the district’s K-5/6-8 model, both assumes and perpetuates the isolation of African-American students at Jefferson. These racially-based proposals will worsen the existing segregation at Jeff, and perpetuate the notion that all black students think and learn the same. If the District truly hopes to increase enrollment and raise achievement at Jeff, then improvements should be aimed at attracting all families living in the area. “Reforms” based on misguided attempts to treat black students separately and unequally are not only morally and legally unacceptable, they are unlikely to succeed given the need to attract students of all colors in order to increase Jeff’s enrollment. • Proposals not based on market research—families were never asked what they want. There was discussion during the Design Team process of conducting a survey of families to see what types of programs they are interested in. This research never happened. We do know that last February hundreds of parents testified against the 7-12 configuration. Is there a market demand for same-sex schools? For 7-12 schools? For the specific academies/programs proposed? We simply don’t know. It seems extremely foolish to impose these major changes without finding out if there is sufficient interest to make these programs successful—particularly given the District’s current financial constraints. We can’t afford expensive experiments that are not supported by families. • Design Team process was flawed. We sincerely appreciate the time and effort put in by the volunteers on the Jefferson Design Team. However, a process that is being touted by PPS as based on community consensus and “months of research” was in reality PPS-driven and compressed into a few short weeks The configuration/program proposals were decided by a few individuals on a subcommittee whose members were pre-selected by the district. These proposals were not even presented to the design team until the last meeting, with only 20 minutes remaining. No research was conducted with the actual “customers”—families living in the Jeff cluster. • Uniforms for just one Portland high school? Separate and Unequal. Uniforms should only be considered on a District wide basis. If sagging pants, revealing tops, and expensive sneakers are a problem at Jeff, they are equally a problem at every other high school in town. To suggest that Jefferson students need uniforms to reduce “gang influence” and “distractions” is a racist insult. To impose uniforms at this one Portland high school is not only racist, it will further increase segregation and further drive down Jeff’s enrollment by forcing out Jefferson students/families seeking the same rights and opportunities afforded everyone else in PPS. • How will small “academies” work in terms of principal leadership? There was consensus on the Design Team that to be successful, schools need strong and effective leadership. We agree. But: How will leadership work under these proposals? Will the small schools within Jeff each have their own principal? This will be extremely costly and could lead to major conflict. Or, will one principal be asked to oversee several small schools, each with different curricula and teaching philosophies? This seems unworkable. • Mixed configurations will reduce choice/increase transitions. These proposals eliminate middle schools, making the Jeff cluster the only part of the city without this option. Moreover: If Jeff-area students start at a K-6 school but wish to attend one of the 9-12 “academies,” where would they go for 7th-8th grade? What if they don’t want to spend those two years at a single-sex school? How will switching schools twice in two years help them achieve? Wasn’t part of the justification for 7-12 to avoid “transitions”? Fragmenting the Jeff cluster into many separate programs & configurations will actually reduce choice and increase transitions as students are forced to hop from school to school. The Neighborhood Schools Alliance is a group of parents, teachers, and community members from all areas of Portland working together to support and strengthen our neighborhood schools. NSA CONTACTS: N-Nancy Smith, 503-285-0500; SE-Cindy Young, 503-232-6559; SW-Ruth Adkins, 503-977-2933 For more information on NSA and to sign up for NSA updates & info, visit: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NSANews/

Jonathan Kozol on segregation, uniforms and “polishing the apple of apartheid”

From the National Education Association website: Jonathan Kozol has spent four decades writing about the terrible and wonderful things that happen in low-income, minority schools. He was fired from his first public school teaching job in Boston for using a book by black poet Langston Hughes. Since then he has written 11 books, winning several awards. Kozol spent five years visiting 60 schools in 11 states for his latest book "The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America." Also, Kozol in a recent interview told "NEA Today" that he refused to give another recipe for running "good" segregated schools. On “special approaches” tailored toward black students, which perpetuate segregation: “If the differentness of children of minorities is seen as so extreme as to require an inventory of 'appropriate' approaches built around the proclamation of their absolute uniqueness from the other children of this nation, it begins to seem not only sensible but maybe even ethically acceptable to isolate them as completely as we can, either in segregated schools they now attend or else in wholly separate tracks within those schools in which some mix of economic class and race may now and then prevail... Those who are convinced that educational efficiency is better served by targeting one group of children with one method of instruction, and another with a very different method, may regard the racial separation of our children in their public schools, no matter how distasteful it would be to say this, as a matter of convenience and of simple practicality. Those who have invested their careers in the development of these distinct curricula may reassure us that the data that they have at hand confirm the benefits to be derived from serving wholly different kinds of pedagogic fare to children who, in their belief, have wholly different kinds of psychological and pedagogic needs." (The Shame of the Nation, pp. 272, 273) On the fad for small schools in larger buildings: "There is, however, much unevenness among the small schools now evolving in New York and other cities. When school boards seize upon this concept as a panacea for systemic problems and begin to stamp out small academies without the long preliminary groundwork ... they end up making little more than fashionably smaller versions of the unsuccessful large schools they're replacing ... the designation 'small academy' turned out to be simply a novel-sounding decoration for another inner-city holding tank for students who could not obtain admission to a better and more academic institution." (p. 275) On “polishing the apple of apartheid”: “I’m not going to propose a small segregated school. I’m not going to propose a small segregated school with uniforms and silent lunches. I’m not going to propose a segregated school, even with slightly higher test scores. I’m too old to spend the rest my life helping you to polish the apple of apartheid.” (Source: Interview with NEA, http://www.nea.org/neatoday/0511/kozol.html) On “fixing” schools with uniforms: He is equally harsh toward so-called experts, the "bombastic charlatans" who turn up yearly with quick and easy plans to "fix" what has gone wrong in the nation's schools—"as if this were not a moral travesty we're dealing with, but some kind of mechanical dilemma." One year, he said, "smaller and more intimate segregated and unequal schools [are] trendy. Or separate and unequal schools with tougher discipline and strict accountability. Or separate and unequal schools where black kids march around in uniforms. Or separate and unequal schools with upbeat slogans and lots of self-help incantations on the walls." He told of a school he visited in Seattle, for instance, where the children chanted "I have confidence that I can learn" 30 times each morning. "There's something heartbreaking about it," he said. "They never chant those slogans in schools where it's assumed they can learn." Kozol offered no such panaceas. "We haven't just ripped apart the legacy of Brown," he said. "We haven't even lived up to the tarnished promises of Plessy v. Ferguson: Our schools are separate; that's self-evident. They're nowhere near equal." He called that "the real heartbreaker," and encouraged an enthusiastic standing-room-only audience to join him in refusing to silence their convictions. "I believe apartheid schooling is a cancer on the body of American democracy," he concluded. "It needs to be cut out, and I intend to keep fighting for this struggle until my dying day." (Source: Harvard Graduate School of Education News, http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/2005/1214_kozol.html)