“We have a bad way of looking at things, that what gets tested is what gets taught,” Gary Highsmith, said at an education forum on Thursday. Highsmith is the Principal of Hamden High School, where he said students are taught things that are not tested, such as arts and music.
At a forum about inclusive housing policy and its impact on education, it seemed both incongruous and inevitable that the conversation would include the buzzwords of reform and accountability.
The forum — “Connecticut’s Achievement Gap: How Housing Can Help Close It” — held at the Lyceum explored the philosophy of housing policy as school policy, focusing on “Montgomery County,” a single example.
An inclusionary zoning policy — mixing housing affordable to those at different income levels — was adopted in Maryland’s Montgomery County (suburb of Washington, D.C.) in 1974. Heather Schwartz, a policy researcher with the RAND Corporation, conducted a longitudinal study from 2001-2007 of students in public housing who attended schools with very low-to-moderate poverty rates and those who attended schools with a moderate-rate of students living in poverty. Additionally, the moderate-level poverty schools received more resources, enabling smaller classes and more academic supports. The study found that while students in public housing at both types of schools scored about evenly for the first few years, students attending the schools with a low-to-moderate poverty level outscored their peers eventually. Students were placed randomly in these schools, taking out the option for more involved parents to steer their children into the “better” schools.
This study — and the speakers at the forum — failed to address some variables. For one, the study did not follow students throughout their entire k-12 experience.
Additionally, high-poverty schools, such as those with more than 85% of the students qualifying for free lunch, were not included in the study. Even with the botched numbers — some Hartford schools report 100% of students as being in the impoverished category, despite some children in those schools being from households that are firmly middle class — we know that Hartford’s concentration of poverty is not in the low or moderate categories.
Other items not addressed in the Montgomery County study: impact of transiency and the experiences of students who are English Language Learners (ELL) or who qualify for special education.
At the forum, the issue of transiency — students moving in and out of a school mid-year — was discussed in terms of pushing for consistent and shared curricula, at least in schools across the district. No questions were specifically raised about how the “school choice” system, with its multitude of academies, impacts the ability for children to adjust when they move during the school year. Orlando Rodriguez, a Senior Policy Fellow at Connecticut Voices for Children, said there should be a syncing of curriculum so that students who move have a chance of success.
When most of these mid-year moves are due to financial and housing needs, advising a family to stay put for the sake of the student is out of touch with reality. Housing vouchers could have an impact, but not for those who are currently on the waiting list to receive Section 8. Having stable housing helps, yet it does not address the economic problems of those with limited education attempting to find and maintain jobs in areas where employment options are also limited.
Richard Rothstein, a researcher with the Economic Policy Institute, attributes much of the achievement gap to high mobility of students. According to Phillip Lovell and Julia Isaacs, “students who transferred schools at least twice were half as likely to be proficient in reading as their stable peers.” As students fall further behind peers, it is less likely they will graduate.
If transiency and high concentrations of poverty so clearly have a negative impact on student achievement, why are these issues not being addressed as avidly as items like “tenure reform”?
Miguel Cardona, Principal of Hanover Elementary School in Meriden, said, “we have to have the will to say we do not want pockets of poverty. […] Do we have the will to call [the segregated housing situation] what it is?”
Previously at the forum, Susan Eaton provided a background on the social engineering (including redlining) and “indifference” responsible for racially and economically segregated neighborhoods. Eaton suggested that because these problems were created by “laws and human beings,” then they can be undone by the same.
Principal Highsmith, who lives in an integrated neighborhood, argued, “if we’re serious” about enacting change, then we “have to put race back on the table.”
“Don’t be nice to me,” he said. “Keep it real.”
But as soon as he offered up the need for frank talk on race, the conversation moved swiftly into the general perception problem that Hartford and other cities suffer from. Earlier, a member of the audience had asked panelists if there were any examples of initiatives to revitalize cities in order to attract a middle class. The answer, in short, was “no.”
While Allan Taylor, Chair of the Connecticut State Board of Education, said “there’s a perception problem that needs to be overcome,” Highsmith pushed for action.
“Policymakers,” Highsmith said, are good at “substituting wishbone for a background.”
“You have to change what people are doing before you change the way they think,” Highsmith said.
“Education reform alone,” Cardona said, “is not the answer.”
Fionnuala Darby-Hudgens
You address three important quotes made by educators at the end of your piece.
1.“Policymakers,” Highsmith said, are good at “substituting wishbone for a background.”
2.“You have to change what people are doing before you change the way they think,” Highsmith said.
3.”Education reform alone,” Cardona said, “is not the answer.”
This quotes emphasis a call to action from those responsible for educating Connecticut’s youth. Yet, you seem to discredit Schwartz’s study of Montgomery county, MD that I believe does exactly what these educators are calling for. While certainly not perfect, Shcwartz’s study does explain how one possibility of housing reform may improve the achievement gap between low and non-low income students. She even called it “back door Education reform”.
Additionally, you note Schwartz’s study did not include the impact of transiency on students, but perhaps I am wrong in thinking that the point of the Montgomery case and fair housing in general is to eradicate frequent moving in students, in order to provide stable housing to facilitate long term academic success?
As you can probably guess, I am learning all this, and making sense of unfolding the most important part of a story. In the importance of full disclosure as Jack Dougherty always reminds us about; I am one of his students.
Thank you so much for your words of advice and encouragement, your blog is one I read daily, and your expertise, experience, and passion for Hartford, CT resonate in your work. What I am learning, and find so interesting is that everyone who has reported about this conference at Lyceum has a different story to tell.
Although, not my best student work, here is the piece I wrote with another student about the conference. I struggled greatly with the quick deadline requirement of journalism.
http://commons.trincoll.edu/edreform/2012/02/quietly-announcing-a-crisis/.
We made no friends with our view of what happened at the conference, but I believe we shared what we saw, and what we saw we disagreed with.
Kerri Provost
Thanks for your comment!
I wouldn’t say I was discrediting the Montgomery County report entirely, but I did not find it to be as comprehensive of a study as it could have been.
I know what you mean about the transiency angle. The affordable housing is supposed to deal with that to an extent. It seemed to me that the focus was less on ending the economic conditions that lead to poverty, than it was on a bandage measure. A bandage is better than nothing, but in the meantime, it’s only looking at securing housing…not on securing a way for families to pay for food, pay other bills, or be able to actually join the middle class by having enough income that they can have savings. I think they did a nice job of explaining how children would benefit from being in an economically integrated school. I would be more interested in knowing how the race and economic issues would be tackled on a deeper level.