GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Noguera rightfully points out Brooks’ blunder in raising up Promise Academy as an example of a school alone closing the achievement gap. It’s part of the Harlem Children’s Zone, which is explicitly designed to support the non-academic needs of children in poverty. However, in suggesting that many other schools get similar results for students with the same demographics through high academic expectations and a clear, coherent approach to educating children, he under-cuts his own argument. While he does not name specific schools, he references charter schools in Harlem and other parts of the city where students achieve at high levels, most of which do not have the type of wrap-around social programs advocated by the Bigger Bolder Approach. What they do have is longer school days and/or years, distinctive school cultures, and a strong sense of community among students, teachers, leaders and parents. So indeed it is the schools that are closing the achievement gap, but they are doing it by focusing on scholarly culture, not social services. David Whitman recently described this as the new paternalism in his book about effective inner-city schools. “By paternalistic I mean that each of the six schools is a highly prescriptive institution that teaches students not just how to think, but also how to act according to what are commonly termed traditional, middle-class values. These paternalistic schools go beyond just teaching values as abstractions: the schools tell students exactly how they are expected to behave, and their behavior is closely monitored, with real rewards for compliance and penalties for noncompliance. Unlike the often forbidding paternalistic institutions of the past, these schools are prescriptive yet warm; teachers and principals, who sometimes serve in loco parentis, are both authoritative and caring figures.” You can argue whether these are “middle-class” values, but ultimately having high expectations is about creating culture and values. And it not just the “no excuses” schools with rigid discipline systems that are having results. There are very successful charter schools with more progressive education models, but they still focus on building community and culture within the school, not fixing the lives of children outside the school. Perhaps the lesson that can be drawn from Promise Academy is that until it focused on creating a culture of achievement within the school, no amount of social service supports was going to raise achievement.

Here’s more information about one of the schools featured in Whitman’s book, the American Indian Public Charter School in Oakland. By the way, I’ve lived 1/2 mile from this school since before it was created. All figures are from the CDE’s DataQuest.

Here’s the percentage of the school’s enrollment of students who belong in one of the following subgroups: American Indian or Alaska Native, Pacific Islander, Filipino, Hispanic or Latino, or African American in the 13 school years from 1996-97 to 2008-09.

1996-97 = 100.0
1997-98 = 97.0
1998-99 = 93.8
1999-00 = 100.1
2000-01 = 97.0
2001-02 = 100
2002-03 = 98.7
2003-04 = 74.3
2004-05 = 55.4
2005-06 = 65.3
2006-07 = 51.1
2007-08 = 50.5
2008-09 = 42.3

The school’s American Indian or Alaska Native percentage in 1996-97 was 100%. This year it is 1.1%.

This is the changing percentage of the school’s students who are in either Asian or White.

1996-97 = 0.0
1997-98 = 2.9
1998-99 = 6.2
1999-00 = 0.0
2000-01 = 2.9
2001-02 = 0.0
2002-03 = 1.2
2003-04 = 25.7
2004-05 = 44.6
2005-06 = 33.7
2006-07 = 22.4
2007-08 = 38.4
2008-09 = 54.4

In 2006-07, the school had an unusual spike in the number of students reporting “multiple or no response.” The percentage had averaged 0.29 for the previous 10 years. In 2006-07 the percentage jumped to 26.4 percent, the following year it fell to 11.1 in 2007-08, and this year, it is 2.7. The spike appeared about the time Chavis was being called out for his demographic engineering.

Ben Chavis, the director of this Blue Ribbon winning school, has two other schools which he operates on the same model. Their combined enrollment of students w/disabilities was 1.3% in 2007-08. The district average was 10%. Their combined enrollment of English Learners in was 3% in 2007-08. That district average was 30%.

Chavis took over the failing school in 2001-02 and was stuck that year with the student body that had previously existed. It only took him a short time to figure out how to maximize his school’s test scores.

When George Will gushed over Chavis and the AIPCS last year, I sent him the same report but never received a response. Of course, everyone wants to believe in “miracles” and aren’t interested in looking at these types of simple facts.

David,

I’ve read the paper and I continue to be flummoxed by the reporting of what Fryer did and did not apparently conclude, since it’s all there in back and white.

I suppose one has to make editorial decisions about what parts to quote – or in Brooks case, to not quote anything at all – but my read of it is that Fryer was generally cautious about his conclusions.

Others, I know, have questioned the quality of his analysis. This is an issue that Fryer and Levitt faced in their 2004 analysis of ECLS data where they tried to find the cause of the achievement gap. In 2005 they got fairly well skewered by Eric Hanushek for some apparently sloppy math. But I’m taking as a given that Fryer learned something from that experience and hasn’t fudged his numbers. (although a skeptic could note the paper has not yet been accepted for publication).

So let’s look at the paper in question:

Point 1: “We cannot, however, disentangle whether communities coupled with high-quality schools drive our results, or whether the high-quality schools alone are enough to do the trick.” (p. 4)

I can critique his note to Books about how “this paper changed my life,” but even Roland Fryer is entitled to high opinions about his own work. I just would have expected someone who rates a regular slot at the Times to have perhaps read past the Abstract and sent a follow up email to ask Dr. Fryer to reconcile his cover note with the seemingly reasonable hedge on p 4, no?

Point 2: “High-quality schools or community investments coupled with high-quality schools drive these results, but community investments alone cannot.

We hope that our analysis provides a sense of optimism for work on the achievement gap. The HCZ model demonstrates that the right cocktail of investments can be successful. The challenge is to find lower-cost ways to achieve similar results in regular public schools.” (p. 24)

Again, I think Fryer is being cautious. It apparently takes a cocktail. Not a shot of vodka.

And honestly Fryer is not saying community investments don’t matter – the”high quality schools” he describes on page 7 “provide free medical, dental and mental-health services (students are screened upon entry and receive regular check-ups), student incentives for achievement (money, trips to France, e.g.), high-quality, nutritious, cafeteria meals, support for parents in the form of food baskets, meals, bus fare, and so forth, and less tangible benefits such as the support of a committed staff. The schools also make a concerted effort to change the culture of achievement, surrounding students with the importance of hard work in achieving success.”

Now you can call that package a “high quality school” or a “community investment” but it clearly a bundle of services that is not universally available to the average NYC public school student in District 7 or 4. So it seems like one of those overly academic semantic battles that you’d have to engage in to claim that “all you need” are high quality schools and that “community services” have no impact.

Am I missing something here? I’d love to get your take on this.