New school plan has promise

By By Liam Julian, Special to the Times
Published June 30, 2007

After 35 years of busing to achieve racially integrated classrooms, Pinellas County's new pupil assignment plan will make its schools much more racially monolithic. And now that the Supreme Court has ruled against Louisville's and Seattle's assignment plans - which take into account race when placing students in classrooms - the racial shift in schools, from St. Petersburg to Tarpon Springs (and across the country), will be cemented.

Such will be a drastic change, and one that has lots of folks pretty anxious. Even those who support removing racial considerations from classroom assignments are unsure about what a return to neighborhood schooling will mean.

And nobody knows how quickly the plan should be implemented: too quickly and many students will be hastily removed from their current schools, too slowly and the district will have to wait on the millions of dollars from saved busing costs.

It's right and necessary to ponder such questions. But residents shouldn't worry too much. Pinellas County's new school assignment plan will be one of neighborhood-based parental choice, a solid structure that has the potential to improve education for all students. It will free the school district to focus time and effort not on assigning youngsters to schools, but on academic achievement.

It's worth noting that while Pinellas' classrooms may have been racially integrated, they weren't academically so. The achievement data tell the story: In 2005-2006, 72 percent of Pinellas County's white students scored at or above proficient on state tests in math, but only 33 percent of black students did. In reading, 65 percent of white students hit the mark; again, only 33 percent of black students did.

Those test scores highlight the striking achievement gap that 35 years of busing did nothing to resolve. And that type of segregation, between the academic performance of white and black students, is far more worrisome than classrooms that don't conform to specific racial proportions.

Most parents in Pinellas County believe that, too. On surveys conducted by the school system, parents responded that they were less interested in having racially integrated schools than in having good schools in their neighborhoods.

The school system listened, and its new school assignment plan is a hybrid that allows parents some choices, while also emphasizing neighborhood schooling. The plan lays out attendance areas (eight for elementary, four for middle and two for high), and each school within the areas is surrounded by a zone. Students are assigned to schools in their neighborhood zone, but they are also eligible to apply for schools (fundamental schools, schools with magnet programs) outside the zone.

Superintendent Clayton Wilcox recently told the St. Petersburg Times editorial board that he wants to increase the number of fundamental schools. He also expects to save millions of dollars in busing costs and wants to reinvest that money in classrooms. Wilcox would lower class sizes and experiment with an incentive-pay program for teachers - one that would give pay raises to teachers who work at schools with large populations of poor students.

And such schools, with large populations of poor students, will receive more money than schools enrolling affluent students - i.e., school funding would be equitable, not equal.

Wilcox is mostly right about how to allocate dollars to schools, but there's an even better way: Instead of funding individual schools, the district should fund individual students.

Meet Johnny and Jane, who both attend public schools in Pinellas County. Johnny has stellar test scores and has shown steady academic improvement from year to year. Jane, though, has struggled in school, and she's making hardly any progress from one grade to the next.

The district could calculate, based on each student's individual needs, how many education dollars they require. By tying those dollars to individual students - i.e., Jane brings, say, $9, 000 per year to her school, while Johnny might only bring $5, 000 - Pinellas County would create a truly equitable system for funding its schools. Some cities (Houston and Edmonton are examples) have already implemented weighted student funding and seen positive results.

Pinellas has a chance to remake its school system, and the signs are so far promising. Developing lots of good, public schools is easier said than done. But the district is acting on the desires of parents, and it's developing a public school system that will offer both quality and choice. That's a good thing for Pinellas County students - no matter their race.

Liam Julian is a St. Petersburg native and a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

[Last modified June 30, 2007, 09:40:25]