THE PERIMETER PRIMATE: Haves and Have-Nots

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Haves and Have-Nots

Two years ago I took an evening class at the Piedmont Adult School. My teacher was also a longtime faculty member of Piedmont High School. He told us this story.

The year before, some kid’s father walked into the school’s main office and casually handed a $100,000 personal check to a student who was working there. He told the student, “Here, give this to the principal and tell him to buy laptops for the teachers.”

This is just a tiny peek into another world.

For readers who don’t know the Bay Area, Piedmont is a small, affluent community completely surrounded by Oakland. Many locals are under the impression that it seceded from Oakland because it wanted to protect itself from such a poor, skuzzy city, but this is not the fact.

In the late 1800’s, Oakland was not completely covered by highways, streets and buildings like it is today. Rather, much of Oakland consisted of numerous village-like community districts scattered across a rolling East Bay landscape. Between the communities were small farms, grazing lands, and orchards.

The Oakland hills were a popular summer vacation destination for residents of San Francisco. Some owned summer homes here. Some would come across the bay and stay at one of Oakland’s many resort hotels. One such hotel was the Piedmont Springs Hotel which later burned down in 1892.

After the earthquake of 1906, the population of Piedmont quadrupled as families left the devastation of San Francisco and moved to the East Bay. Residents living in the district of Piedmont voted to make their district its own city in 1907, long before Oakland was suffering from its current reputation. By the 1920’s, Piedmont had more millionaires per square mile than any city in the United States and was known as the “City of Millionaires.”

Today, the Piedmont City Unified School District has three elementary schools, a middle school and a high school. It also has a small alternative high school and an adult school.

Here are Piedmont Unified’s 2007-08 demographics:

►Total enrollment = 2,552 students

American Indian or Alaska Native = 0.3%
Asian = 17.4%
Pacific Islander = 0.2%
Filipino = 1.1%
Hispanic or Latino = 2.7%
African American = 1.8%
White (not Hispanic) = 67.3%
Multiple or No Response = 9.2%

►Total number of English Learners = 94 students (3.7%)

►Participants in Free or Reduced-Price Lunch = zero students (0%)

►Average Parent Education Level = 4.47 (The average of all responses where "1" represents "Not a high school graduate" and "5" represents "Graduate school.")

In addition, the 2000 Census found the following for the City of Piedmont:

Median family income = $149,857
Per capita income = $70,539

Now, here is information about those Have-Nots in Oakland next door.

Oakland Unified's 2007-08 demographics:

►Total enrollment = 46,431 students

American Indian or Alaska Native = 0.4%
Asian = 13.7%
Pacific Islander = 1.1%
Filipino = 0.7%
Hispanic or Latino = 36.6%
African American = 36.2%
White (not Hispanic) = 6.2%
Multiple or No Response = 5.1%

►Total number of English Learners = 13,933 students (30%)

►Participants in Free or Reduced-Price Lunch = 29,716 students (64%).

►Average Parent Education Level = 2.34 (The average of all responses where "1" represents "Not a high school graduate" and "5" represents "Graduate school.")*

The 2000 Census found the following for Oakland:

Median household income = $40,055
Per capita income = $21,936

It may interest you to know that Piedmont Unified’s 2008 Academic Performance Index (API) is 919. Oakland Unified’s 2008 Academic Performance Index (API) is 674. The state's desirable goal for an API is 800 and over. The maximum number of points that can be obtained is 1000.

Some people might explain that the difference in achievement is due to a different quality of the teaching, one of the most common explanations for the achievement gap in some circles.

Do you think that the Piedmont teachers are really working that much harder and smarter than the Oakland teachers? What would be the result if the Piedmont teachers switched places with the Oakland teachers? Would the API scores soon be switched, too?

*Let me repeat this so you can absorb it. OUSD is responsible for educating – and feeding a government subsidized lunch to – 29,716 students, plus educating 16,715 students more. Piedmont Unified is responsible for educating zero students in this category. To put it another way, OUSD feeds free or reduced-price lunches to more than 11 times (11.6) the number of students who attend Piedmont's public schools altogether.

5 comments:

The Perimeter Primate said...: If a magic wand was waved and the demographics of the 46,431 students in Oakland's public school district were changed to those of Piedmont, OUSD would then become responsible for serving:

8,079 Asian kids (rather than 6,366 of them)

1,254 Latino kids (rather than 16,986 of them)

835 African American kids (rather than 16,819 of them)

31,248 White kids (rather than 2,875 of them)

1,718 English Learners (rather than 13,933 of them)

OUSD could also abandon its Free or Reduced-Price Lunch program because the 29,716 students who had once participated would no longer qualify.

Once again, consider if OUSD's API that year would change.

If you haven't figured it out by now, just take it from me: The achievement gap is NOT caused by the teachers. So why are they so frequently blamed?; December 17, 2008 at 12:29 PM
The Perimeter Primate said...: And as that magic wand was waved it would turn Piedmont Unified's 2,552 students into students with the demographics of Oakland Unified. Wouldn't the teachers of Piedmont schools be surprised the next day as their students arrived to class?

They would see:

350 Asian kids, not 443 of them

934 Latino kids, not 69 of them

924 African American kids, not 47 of them

158 White kids, not 1,718 of them

766 English Learners, not 94 of them

Piedmont would also have to suddenly create a Free or Reduced-Price Lunch program because it would have 1,633 hungry children arriving from homes that aren't stocked with much food.

Piedmont Unified's communication to its families would be immediately restricted because a sizable set of its parents would be non-English speaking so they couldn't communicate with most of the school personnel. Many of them would also be illiterate, or near-illiterate, so they couldn't read things that are sent home from school. Of course, many of the parents would also be computer illiterate or have no access, so email and online information would be totally out of reach to them. They also couldn't attend many school meetings because of ultra-long work hours and transportation options that are limited to public bus schedules and old cars that frequently break down. And that would be just the beginning of Piedmont Unified's new challenges.

What do you guess would happen to Piedmont's once stellar API?; December 17, 2008 at 1:06 PM
The Perimeter Primate said...: Whenever I hear Michelle Rhee or others blaming low student achievement on the teachers, I realize that they are deluded, or just plain dumb.

They remind me of someone who focuses on a blemish on their forehead while ignoring the fact that their entire body is covered with oozing sores.; December 17, 2008 at 1:33 PM
Anonymous said...: Based on your data, are you just saying that poor kids that eat subsidized lunches are dumber than rich kids?

Your effort to correlate isn't broad enough, and based on what you posted, I could come up with the above conclusion as well.; December 19, 2008 at 1:20 PM
The Perimeter Primate said...: Anon: We seem to view things quite differently and I am not going to bite at your simplistic bait.

Have you read "Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap" by Richard Rothstein, or "Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life" by Annette Lareau? If not, may I suggest that you do?; December 19, 2008 at 1:58 PM

Inform yourself about the Gulen movement!

1. WATCH the Gulen Movement 101: Session One webinar presentation (1/22/2014)
2. READ the "Expose the Gulen Movement" report.
3. LISTEN to my interview with At The Chalk Face , slide marker to 32:00 min. (5/19/2013)
4. WATCH the 60 Minutes segment "U.S. charter schools tied to powerful Turkish imam" broadcast. (5/13/2012)
5. READ my response to the 60 Minutes piece.
6. READ my guest article about Gulen charter schools published by The Washington Post. (3/27/2012)
7. WATCH my interview talking about Gulen charter schools, or my presentation at LaborFest (segment between 49:18 min. & 1:07:36 min.)
8. READ my postings labeled "Gulen movement" HERE.

As one observer tweeted, "U.S. media have focused too much on the Islamic nature of the Gulen movement. Real concern is its shady dealings and improprieties."

Please be aware that Gulenists have created a large number of anonymously-operated damage control websites. They started to appear a few months after publication of Greg Toppo's article in USA Today (August 2010).

WE CAN DO IT!

Jim Hightower on populism:

"... what populism is at its essence is just a determined focus on helping people be able to get out of the iron grip of the corporate power that is overwhelming our economy, our environment, energy, the media, government."

Jim Hightower on plutocracy:

"Plutocracy and democracy don't mix."

More Jim Hightower HERE.
Read his Lowdown newsletter HERE.

Plutocracy is rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth. In a plutocracy, the degree of economic inequality is high while the level of social mobility is low.

On Bill Gates' ed reform

Joel Shatzky's comment on Huffington Post:

The inferior "test-prep" agenda which bases the pedagogically fraudulent "data" standardized test scores serves as a way of diverting the concerns of working parents who hope that better test scores will lead to better job opportunities for their children. If they realized that they were being given a con job, they might consider other, more "active" forms of political and social protest than simply lobbying for more money for charter and public schools.

New wealth gap report

Research and Policy Brief from the Institute on Assets and Social Policy, Brandeis University, May 2010:

"New evidence reveals that the wealth gap between white and African-American families has more than quadrupled over the course of a generation."

You absolutely must click on this link to view the graph.

Now compare that graph to the one you'll see here.

Now read this entry.

And if you are a person who blames the schools, or believes they are responsible for fixing these problems, you can stop that type of thinking right now.

A Keeper

Posted on the Oakland Public School Parents listserv by a member:*

As a public health nurse, I am working with a generation of young parents who were drug-exposed, who are now having children who are drug-exposed, and it's a whole new ballgame. Many who were premature and will carry some deficits for life.

There are also many other families who have several generations of all kinds of abuse, not enough to eat, violence in and out of their homes, as well as chronic exposure to pollution and nutritional deficits. And there are regular people in the same neighborhoods who are just trying to live, but are poor and can't get ahead.

And there is major grief, and continuous LOSS. So many folks have lost so many folks, people around them dying, of one thing or another, every month almost. Young people (cousins, brothers, friends) dying from violent means, the elders dying too young of chronic disease and disparities in health care, among other things.

What we know about learning and development is that stressed nervous systems CANNOT learn, and that's what we have. Children with many major stressors. Abandonment, attachment disorders, fear, post traumatic stress, sadness, inability to trust or sleep. Many children. Many.

Resulting in: Lack of impulse control, lack of executive function, difficulty in expressing and controlling emotions, difficulty in sleeping, holding still, and paying attention, not to mention following directions and prioritizing tasks.

Our teachers will (perhaps already do) need more training, support, and smaller class sizes. They need major support and help with mental health issues. We really need some kind of expanded vocational track for those who can't perform even at the community college level.

We can't expect teachers to undo years and years of living. The availability of universal preschool would help. Sometimes a classroom is the first kindly, safe, structured, stimulating environment a child encounters.

Wise insights such as these are never uttered by people like Eli Broad, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan, Joe Williams, or any others who are of this type of school reform ilk. And this is why I know for certain that they just don't "get it." Maybe they don’t want to, OR maybe they don’t care.

* Thank you, B.R.

What Children Need

From Playing to Learn by Susan Engel (New York Times, 2/1/2010):

"Our current educational approach — and the testing that is driving it — is completely at odds with what scientists understand about how children develop during the elementary school years and has led to a curriculum that is strangling children and teachers alike.

…Simply put, what children need to do in elementary school is not to cram for high school or college, but to develop ways of thinking and behaving that will lead to valuable knowledge and skills later on."

And to tag onto that, check out this video about the wood shop at one of Oakland's middle schools.

Pages

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Haves and Have-Nots

5 comments: