This situation in Fairfax County, VA has some relevance to recent discussions about socioeconomic desegregation plans (see also here and here).
In Fairfax, kids aren't being transported away from their neighborhood school for integration, but the school board did decide to change attendance boundaries to balance enrollments among schools, and took socioeconomic integration into account in its decision. Many of the parents whose children were assigned to South Lakes High School were not happy. South Lakes is under-enrolled by 700 students and has a newly remodeled facility, but it also has a higher percent of low-income students.
Parents filed a lawsuit to stop the school board, arguing, among other things, that the school board overstepped its bounds in trying to balance socioeconomics among the schools. After losing the lawsuit, parents have been requesting transfers to get their kids into their old assigned schools. Many parents are citing the lack of AP classes at South Lakes as a reason for their transfer requests.
As this situation makes clear, changing attendance boundaries is politically difficult, particularly when it increases socioeconomic integration. But this situation also illustrates why socioeconomic integration may be important - if these parents can raise $125,000 to sue the school board, they probably also have the clout to get more AP classes into South Lakes High School, and that's the kind of parental involvement that improves the quality of education for all students.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
There's always a timing problem with parental involvement, though. From the school's perspective, if it takes three, four years to grow substantial improvements, that's just awesome. But from a parent's perspective, that's your kid's entire high school career. It takes an unusual, and quite possibly misguided, person to sacrifice their kid's education to the time scale of school improvement. Schools that are trying to attract and retain involved parents have to do a decent job answering the question of what they can offer right now -- unfortunately, the more the school needs the parents, the harder this question is to answer.
I see my community trying to answer it with the K-8 schools; there's a school choice system and some innovative (and distinct) programs. The school system doesn't have a great reputation but people who look into them are starting to find these programs worth a try. The hope for the town, then, I guess, is that the parents have invested themselves enough in the local schools that they're willing to stay invested in the high school (which has much less going for it, from what I hear). It might even work long-term, but this strategy is obviously incompatible with abruptly moving district boundaries.
With my own education, there were a lot of ways my middle and high schools fell short, and my parents were extremely involved (both on my behalf and for the system in general, even after I graduated). I am certain the system is better for our involvement, but personally my education never really rose to the level of tolerable, and I'm sure it would have been much cheaper for my parents (in money and especially in their time) to just chip in for the lawsuit.
You're assuming, in the last paragraph, parental good faith about what the issue is about. They may not be interested in having more AP courses at South Lakes, if the school still has lots of poor kids: the poor kids themselves may well be the issue, and the lack of AP courses the excuse.
Post a Comment