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Gueast column

Look past race to narrow the gap

By LIAM JULIAN
Published November 13, 2005

It's easy to dismiss as ridiculous the class-action lawsuit that charges Pinellas County schools with neglecting black students.

First, the suit's most vocal support comes from Dwight "Chimurenga" Waller, president of the St. Petersburg Uhuru movement. Second, the lawsuit's essential premise - that Pinellas County schools have ignored and abandoned black students - is far-fetched. And recent claims of a systemic unfairness in the treatment of African-American pupils, and public demonstrations that arbitrarily rail against the school system, only encourage people to dismiss the suit as frivolous.

It's too bad, really. Beneath the din of demagogues, the lawsuit has at least one redeeming quality: It could stimulate real action to combat a definite problem.

Here's a fact that shouldn't be overshadowed: Pinellas County has an untenable achievement gap. The numbers are stark. According to 2003 figures, 61 percent of the county's white public school students achieved adequate yearly progress in reading, and 64 percent achieved it in math. In contrast, only 26 percent of black public school students in Pinellas County made adequate yearly progress for reading, and only 24 percent hit the mark for math.

Although they claim to be outraged by the numbers, neither William Crowley, the lead plaintiff in the case, his lawyers, nor Waller have offered any positive suggestions for how the district might close the achievement gap.

County administrators, too, have thrown up their hands. John Bowen, the School Board attorney, told the Tampa Tribune in 2004, "We don't deny the problem exists. And if they've (the plaintiffs) got a magic bullet, we'd love to hear about it."

There is no magic bullet. But right now may be a magic time for some much-needed reform.

Pinellas County schools are about to completely abandon the racial quotas that for so long defined the district's education policy. After 30 years of controversial busing and strict caps on the percentages of black students allowed in each school, the district will be free to build a new system.

But what do zoning and school demographics have to do with student achievement? Not much. That's exactly the point. While school systems like Pinellas County have been busy with social engineering, they've largely neglected their real responsibility - ensuring that students in their schools are learning.

Racial diversity does not yield higher student achievement. In fact, some of the highest performing schools in any given district are sometimes completely segregated. This is usually the case with charter schools that take large portions of their student body from underprivileged areas. The KIPP: KEY Academy in Washington, D.C., for example, is 99 percent black, and it consistently posts the highest achievement scores in the city.

Pinellas County has already started refashioning its school choice plan. A school choice task force has been charged with creating a new pupil assignment system for the 2007-08 year when racial quotas will be lifted. This task force must forget old notions about creating integrated schools. Rather, they should adopt the mantra "First, do no harm" and leave the well-intentioned social engineering behind.

What Pinellas County needs isn't forcibly integrated schools; it's better schools. And school choice without variety (choice that merely allows students to switch from one underperforming school to another) isn't worth the trouble. The districts that have succeeded in reducing their own achievement gaps haven't done it by relying on social tinkering: They've done it by developing schools with strong standards and expectations.

It's proven. Teachers and schools that push their students and refuse to let race or social class function as excuses for low performance will yield better results in the classroom. Administrators who aren't afraid of being tough, who demand excellence from their pupils and don't concern themselves with demographic charts and graphs are far more likely to generate academic gains.

So, perhaps Crowley and his Uhuru backers will end up doing some good after all. But the onus is on the Pinellas County School Board. Urban school districts and superintendents around the nation, faced with similarly daunting achievement gaps, have dug deep to find exciting and inventive methods to revitalize their schools. Some have worked to pull innovative charter schools into neglected neighborhoods; others have reworked curricula to emphasize back-to-basics learning, and certain districts have scrapped entire failing schools and started from scratch.

Now, with a class-action suit from 21,000 black students on its hands, the question is: Will Pinellas County follow the lead of innovators, fess up to its shortcomings and accept the reform tasks ahead?

Liam Julian is a St. Petersburg native and product of Pinellas County public schools. He works at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation in Washington, D.C.

[Last modified November 13, 2005, 03:00:43]