by Dish Staff
Former New Schools For New Orleans chief executive Neerav Kingsland applauds DC’s proposal to move away from traditional school zoning:
Historically, having neighborhood schools kept black students from learning alongside white students; poor students from attending school with wealthy students; immigrant students from studying with native-born students – and the list goes on. A city of neighborhood schools is a city that says where you live determines which schools you can attend. The implications are clear: Poor families will not have access to the schools of the wealthy. In this sense, predictability is code for “I want school choice based on my ability to buy a house rather than school choice based on an equitable process.”
Adam Ozimek seconds him:
As Kingsland argues, neighborhood schools are “bastions of exclusion, not inclusion.” This is ironic, given that the motivation of universal and free K-12 is that it should be a force for equalizing educational opportunity.
There is no other institution in the country where equality of access is more broadly supported, even if this agreement is limited to the abstract. While liberals want to turn more institutions and markets into forces for equality, we are currently failing to do so in K-12 education despite the near total government control and significant amount of agreement on the principle of equality. It’s surprising then that there isn’t more movement to make public schools truly public, and not just another housing amenity sold to the highest bidder.
Meanwhile, Linda Lutton notes that Chicago’s neighborhood schools are struggling with declining enrollment:
In 2000, 74 percent of Chicago’s elementary kids went to their assigned neighborhood grammar school. Today, just 62 percent do– and that number is falling. The figures show how much the system shifted over the decade that included Renaissance 2010, a program that gained national attention by opening dozens of new grammar schools and closing dozens of neighborhood schools deemed low-performing or under-enrolled. …
“Neighborhood schools in the traditional and historical sense are under pressure, and more in some places than others,” says Jeffrey Henig, who studies the politics of education reform at Teachers College in New York City. While the neighborhood school is still a strong concept in suburban America, it’s taken a “body blow” in cities like Chicago that are trying to improve their school systems through school choice, Henig says.
The Dish 