The start of a school year is always going to have issues. But when those issues could potentially have a health impact on students and staff, citizens are left wondering why these issues aren’t taken care of during the summer months when students are not in the buildings. For Christina, several schools are having problems with their buildings.
Christiana High School
Oops! Christina’s NCS Wannabe Middle School Academy Forgot Something BIG In Their Application
Christiana High School Middle School Academy
Christiana High School wasted no time getting the application for their controversial “Middle School Academy” out to the public. The board approved this kind-of-magnet school last week with a 5-1 vote. The program, slated to start next year with 6th graders, seems to love the word rigor. Many concerned parents in the district have raised serious questions about potential discrimination and what effect this will have on the already existing middle schools in the district. One commenter on an earlier article I posted about this said “Honors programs should be down the hall.” I fully agree with this commenter. I hate the name of this program. It reeks of elitism and sounds like something it is pretending to be and wants to be, but really shouldn’t. It sounds really pretentious and sort of obnoxious. “My child goes to Middle School Academy”… I can hear it already…
The Christiana Middle School Honors Academy requires a high degree of commitment to academic and extra-curricular activities. Our vision offers selected middle school students the opportunity to become academically accomplished, confident, and well-rounded. Selected students will be educated using a rigorous curriculum focused on developing core knowledge, critical thinking and reasoning skills. This will be accomplished by providing each student with a smaller learning community that builds confidence and knowledge which will enhance their individual high school experience.
Aside from the extra-curricular activities, isn’t that what Common Core was supposed to bring to Delaware education to begin with? Why is this district using the same boring Governor Markell talking points to sell this program?
But in the application, one of the requirements is for the student’s Smarter Balanced scores. A quarter of the rubric for the application is weighted toward Smarter Balanced scores. But here is the elephant in the room… what if the student was opted out of Smarter Balanced by their parents? Christina has a board policy which states no student shall be penalized if they are opted out of the wretched test. But this application says nothing about that or gives any indication they would change the formula in that situation. This could cause students or parents who opted their child out to not apply because of the absence of this information. As well, who is determining what the placement test will look like? Has this been approved by the Christina Board of Education? Is this test used by other schools? Has this test been vetted and verified for its effectiveness? If the parent statement is not a part of the rubric, why are they requiring it with the application? Does the parent statement have any weight on the decision of placement? Is there a panel who approves the application or just a principal? What are the qualifications of whoever approves the applications?
Yeah, let’s throw some more controversy gas on an already raging fire!
Christina Moves Ahead With 6-12 “Rigor Academy” At Christiana High School
School Choice
On Wednesday evening, the Christina Board of Directors voted 5-1 to move forward on a controversial choice program at Christiana High School. The new honors program, which will begin with 6th graders at Christiana High School, will pull the smarter students from existing Christina middle schools. Eventually, this honors program with rigorous standards will have students from 6th-12th grade in it. This will only continue the choice game in Delaware school districts. Christina was one of the last remaining hold-outs on a program like this, but as a recent commenter wrote, they had no choice but to play the choice game.
Board President Elizabeth Campbell Paige was the only no voter for the program. Board member John Young was not present for the meeting, but I have no doubt he would have voted no.
Earlier that day, I gave public comment at a meeting for the Statewide Review of Educational Opportunities committee addressing the increasing divide between the “have” and the “have-not” students in Delaware. I warned the committee that very soon the divide will be inseparable. I feel the state is heading in the wrong direction in offering all these different “opportunities” for students. We all know the most disadvantaged students: the poor, those with disabilities, those who are English Language Learners… they don’t get the same opportunities their regular peers do.
In an inter-district choice program, a student can take a bus to school, but they have to be picked up at the closest bus stop in their feeder pattern to where the choice school is. This is true across the state. That makes it very difficult for students whose parents may not have transportation or the means to get their child to that bus-stop.
Choice has become a major joke in this state. We still have charter schools that are either mostly all white or in Wilmington, many charters that are mostly African-American. I find it ironic that the advocates in Wilmington for the WEIC redistricting plan think that will solve all the problems. The plan doesn’t even address the segregation in Delaware, much less Wilmington. All it will do is dump students from one district with a ton of challenges to another district with the same challenges in many of their schools. Both districts are steadily losing students to charter schools.
What Delaware needs is a weighted choice system. With a weighted admission system. Where every single student can get a chance. If there is a lottery at a school like Newark Charter School or Charter School of Wilmington, there needs to be a weighted lottery. This also goes for First State Montessori Academy. They need to get rid of their specific interest preference. They need to put their five mile radius preference first. For a school that is located in the heart of downtown Wilmington, their demographics don’t show it. Charter schools should represent the areas where they are. If the General Assembly won’t put something like this through, I have no doubt the courts will one day. Unless it is for good cause, I don’t think any student should go to a charter school outside of their school district. There should be an immediate ban on this practice.
No more of these “rigor academies” that purposely leave out students who don’t have a chance. It is stacking the deck a certain way. This includes these “honors” programs and even the World Language Immersion programs. The districts are killing themselves and they don’t even know it yet. The districts think these programs are these great things, but they aren’t. It might be for the few who would most likely have the same advantages either way, but not for the students who need more supports and just aren’t getting it. These are 21st Century discrimination games. No matter how many ways you cut this deck, students who need the most will continue to be shoved under the table and can’t make the final cut. What a success story Delaware…
Christina School District’s Very Dangerous Game With Equity Could Backfire On Them
Christina School DistrictOne of the reasons I have always admired the Christina School District is because they don’t have magnet schools or choice schools within their district. That could change tomorrow night when the Christina Board of Education will vote on a proposal to expand the Honors program at Christiana High School from a 9th-12th grade program to a 6th-12th grade program. I understand the why behind it as the district has empty seats in some of their buildings and they will be forced to consolidate at some point. But this… I can’t get behind it.
Before I get into why I can’t support this, let me explain why they are doing it. Christina, over the past fifteen years, has lost a ton of students to charter schools. I truly believe the district wants to let go of the past and start offering richer programs to keep students in the district and to hopefully lure students back from the charters. As well, they are losing honors students to Dickinson High School in Red Clay who offers an International Baccalaureate program. Eventually, the Christina students in Wilmington issue will be resolved one way or another and Christina will lose those students. The district has to make some major changes if they want to survive in the next decade.
But this idea is not good. First off, I don’t think it is a wise idea to place middle school students in a high school setting. Developmentally, they are not on the same level playing field. By osmosis, these students will be exposed to things they are not ready for. There is a reason students in public education are at elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools. To make matters worse, the plan would call for this to start with 6th graders only for the next school year and by 2019 all 6th-8th grade students participating in this program would be integrated as students at a high school. This cohort of 6th graders are going to have a very difficult time at a building with peers who are far older than them.
Furthermore, what happens when all the honors students leave the existing middle schools in the district? That will leave a higher concentration of students who have larger needs. Our current state accountability system for schools will place those schools with a bulls-eye on them when test scores come out. If anyone thinks the Every Student Succeeds Act is going to take care of that they are deluding themselves. It will set up an irreversible system of discrimination and segregation all over again, within their own district. That is something all schools in Delaware should be steering away from, not towards.
This program would have smaller “cohorts” which would mean smaller class sizes. I am all for that but it has to be done across the board. There are existing classrooms in elementary and middle schools that do not have enough support in this district but teachers are forced to handle large classrooms with no support whatsoever. But giving this preference to students who would most likely be considered talented and gifted while not giving those same choices to other students with just as much need if not more is just reinventing the discrimination wheel. I’m not saying talented and gifted students shouldn’t be given those benefits, but I am saying if that benefit exists it needs to happen for all students. No one wins in the large classroom scenario with one teacher.
The State of Delaware, and more specifically, the General Assembly, needs to look at the state school choice law. While the intent may have been honorable in the beginning, it has morphed into pockets of segregation across the state. Some are big and some are small, but they exist. While charter schools take the brunt of the shots fired at these practices, many districts are setting up programs within their own districts that are dividing students. Take the World Language Immersion program as an example. In my day, you took a language. They didn’t put a fancy name on it and start teaching Kindergartners Chinese or Spanish. While I do think it is good for students to learn a second language, and possibly a third depending on their abilities, we are already seeing school districts around the state dealing with issues of segregation between the smarter kids and those with higher needs based on this program. This isn’t even inequity, it is also inequality. When you have both, it is a recipe for disaster for the overall educational health of a state. This example is not just affecting New Castle County schools. Districts in Kent and Sussex County are having these issues as well. But their boards and administration don’t seem to be addressing what is happening within their own schools.
I don’t know what the solution is, but this isn’t it. I don’t understand why they wouldn’t attempt to instill those honors programs in the schools they have now. If they need to combine some schools and possibly sell old property that isn’t being used, that is one thing. But dividing students like this is a lesson Delaware doesn’t want to learn. This is a recommendation from the Superintendent (even though it is an Acting Superintendent). When Christina passed their referendum earlier this year one of their promises was to create programs like this. I am all for better programs in schools. But school choice has led to such severe competition among Delaware schools that future generations of adults are going to be more divided than ever between the haves and the have-nots. We have traditional school districts, charter schools, vo-techs, magnet schools, honors programs, World Immersion programs, and so forth. And I’m not even getting into the Pathways to Prosperity program and how that is setting up particular societal roles in the future.
How can we talk about equity in schools with a weighted funding system when we are forcing schools into that position? We are killing education in this state, one choice program at a time. I believe Christina is trying to rush a program like this into place. Let it marinate a bit. Look at other options. Slow your roll! I’m not convinced this isn’t a case where the Acting Superintendent who will be gone in a few months at most just wants a notch like this on his résumé. I think something this big would need to still be in the discussion stage with a new Superintendent who would be tasked to carry it out.
And in the name of all that is holy can we please get the words rigor or rigorous legally banned from discussion about education? As well, the word “Academy” in traditional school districts signifies something elite that only select students can get into. Not a smart idea to put an “Academy” into a school district.
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The Season Of Myths 