Jobs, poverty, education, housing:
There’s been a lot of focus on these issues recently, thanks in part to the Rochester-Monroe
Anti-Poverty Initiative.
But clearly, one of those issues is the key to success in
all of the others. If this community doesn’t deal adequately with education, we
can forget about everything else. And I worry that what the Initiative
recommends on education won’t have any more impact than all the other education
efforts we’ve tried over the past 50 years. Because we still don’t seem to have
the will to tackle the causes of our education crisis.
Numerous studies have documented those causes. Too many
children are born into poor families, often headed by very young, poor, single
women who have a limited education themselves. Too many children live in
neighborhoods where employment is low and violence is high. And at the core of
it all: high concentrations of poverty and generations of racial and economic
segregation.
Charter schools are trying to prove that teachers can
overcome those challenges. A few of those schools seem to be doing pretty well,
but as a whole, charters’ record isn’t better than that of public schools in
similar situations. And charters continue to face accusations that they skim
off the most highly motivated children and families and that they screen out or
ease out children with the most challenges.
Meantime, the evidence mounts that letting children from
high-poverty neighborhoods attend low-poverty schools makes a big, positive
difference, not only in their achievement in school but also in their
achievement over their lifetime.
Other than the Urban-Suburban Inter-District Transfer
Program – in which 587 city students attended schools this year in seven
suburban districts – the Rochester area has done nothing to attack the
concentration of poverty in the city’s schools. It is treated as if it were
simply a city problem – and a city school district problem.
The result is that generation after generation of poor
children enter school unprepared, do poorly while they’re there, and leave
poorly prepared for a job and for child-raising themselves.
The longer we postpone breaking that cycle, the more lives
we destroy. And it’s simply a fact that we can’t solve the education problem if
we don’t address the concentration of poverty in our schools and our
neighborhoods.
Obviously, that won’t happen overnight. Among other things,
it will require changes in development practices, low-income housing policies,
and zoning laws. That won’t be easy, popular, or quick.
There are other things we can do, though. One is to create
new magnet elementary schools that draw from both the city and the suburbs. I
am absolutely convinced that many suburban families believe in the value – to
their own children – of integrated schools. And I think that if several area
colleges and universities partnered with the Rochester school district and a
few suburban districts, they could put together several highly attractive
schools.
The University of Rochester is already partnering with the
Rochester school district in a reform effort at East High School, and the UR
deserves enormous praise for that leadership. The East turn-around plan is an
important and noble experiment, and we’ll learn a lot, regardless of the
outcome. But the possibility for substantial achievement gain seems limited,
because we’re starting so late. Too many of East’s students are already far
behind, and disengaged, when they start freshman year. And the new East will
still be a segregated, high-poverty school. A cooperative effort at the
elementary-school level, with an integrated student body, has a much better
chance of success – for the children, and for the community.
A second avenue is to encourage more city families to stay
in the city and send their children to city schools. Two ways to do that, I
think, are to recreate neighborhood schools, and to create several test-based,
selective-enrollment high schools.
More on those two controversial topics
next week.
This article appears in Jul 8-14, 2015.
Hmmm… Kind of like the Regional Academy worked on by over 100 members of the community a while back. The planning is done, but the project sits dormant. I’m sure Bill Cala or Tom Frey can speak to why.
You think a magnet elementary school would attract suburban parents to the project? I doubt it, but one way to get an idea whether you or I is correct is to interview parents in the suburbs, on an anonymous basis, and see what they think. I think you will find that they might consider such an option once it has proven to be successful but will not put their own children at risk to try an experiment. I did notice that you offered no ideas how to reduce the number of children born into low income, single parent families. Why not? Payments to teens to use IUDs or other long term contraceptives might be a workable idea.
“Too many children live in neighborhoods where employment is low and violence is high. And at the core of it all: high concentrations of poverty and generations of racial and economic segregation.”
“Meantime, the evidence mounts that letting children from high-poverty neighborhoods attend low-poverty schools makes a big, positive difference, not only in their achievement in school but also in their achievement over their lifetime.”
When you look at what is REALLY being said by these 2 statements, it’s pretty sick, coming from a newspaper that says it’s against racism. Both statements say that to improve black lives, blacks need to rub elbows with more white people. Why? Are you saying white people set a better example?
@johnny – what Towler is saying is pretty simple – separate is not equal.
It seems a few years ago the city was almost ALL low poverty. Then the low poverty people got forced out. The city is still not a welcoming place for low poverty people, I’d love to move to the city. There’s beautiful architecture, convenience, lower taxes. What’s not to love? Oh yeah, my current neighbors respect me and my property for one.
But back to my original question. You had about 90% low poverty population at one time and it didn’t work. Why would increasing the low poverty rate to say, 40% work now?
The author says education is the key to success for the other three, jobs, poverty, and housing. Yet she keeps bringing up poverty throughout much of the article. I say the reduction of poverty is the key to the other three’s success. The U.S,. is constantly being compared in education to other countries that have poverty of less than 5% through socialist programs, while the U.S. has over 20% poverty, which is the highest among the top industrialized countries. Poverty will always be the issue, and any improvement to education, housing and jobs will be miniscule until poverty is addressed and drastically reduced.
“And the new East will still be a segregated, high-poverty school.”
Segregated? Didn’t that end in 1954? How is East segregated?
There are no neighborhood kids at Francis Parker anymore. They are all bused in, from other neighborhoods. When I grew up here, there was no busing kids here and there. When my kids were going to school at 46, the RSCD told us that my daughter had a 60% chance of walking to school with her brothers. I don’t live in that neighborhood anymore. Busing kids around is a great way to ruin neighborhoods, and burn gas.
For Glenn Long;
Poverty is addressed with EDUCATION, period. Relevant education. Education that addresses the particular needs of the urban setting. There is NO level playing filed when it comes to urban vs. suburban. Until our “experts” realize this, come to grips with this, address this and on and on,….nothing will change and poverty will be repeated generation to generation. A never ending cycle. They bore the urban kids to the point of dropping out. It is, in fact, the current academics that ‘encourage” kids to drop out. THAT causes poverty. No education, no skill, no job. This is so dam simple and made to be so complex. But they are not going to listen, they keep on trucking with the same academic boredom expecting different results. It is mind numbing!
Level playing field that is,….not filed.
“A second avenue is to encourage more city families to stay in the city and send their children to city schools. Two ways to do that, I think, are to recreate neighborhood schools, and to create several test-based, selective-enrollment high schools.”
This is part of the solution. Additionally, to attract families currently choosing suburban life, enforce quality of life issues that run rampant in the city. Issues such as loud music, trash on lawns, illegal parking on front lawns, the list goes in. A big one is Stop blaming the landlords for bad tenant behaviors by fining them and not the tenants for misdeeds. If people don’t have money to pay fines, community service will do…like picking litter up in their neighborhood! As it stands now, parental rudeness towards neighbors teaches children to disrespect others and this translates into the classrooms. Our city fabric of life is being torn apart by government policies actually encouraging bad behaviors because there is no enforcement or consequence for them. Once city dwellers who think they can behave with no thought to their neighbors, get an attitude adjustment, you would be surprised how popular city living would be.