School choice bad, let the school board decide.
Via WBTV:
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools has posted new school diversity ratings that will shape which students get into magnet programs – and probably play into which schools see boundary changes in the coming months.
In November, the school board approved a system that uses Census data on family income, single-parent homes, English as a second language, parent education level and home ownership to balance schools by socioeconomic status, or SES. It replaces school poverty levels as a gauge of school diversity or isolation.
The theory has been known for months, but no one had seen how it plays out for schools until CMS quietly posted the list this week. Those ratings are already shaping admission to magnet schools for 2017-18 and will likely influence boundary decisions for 2018-19.
Twenty-three schools have at least 90 percent of their students coming from the most disadvantaged neighborhoods, and 16 have no students from highly advantaged areas. For instance, Devonshire Elementary, a neighborhood school in northeast Charlotte, has 623 students from low SES areas and only one from a medium area.
Eight suburban neighborhood schools have at least 90 percent of their students coming from the highest socioeconomic group, and three of those have no students from the most disadvantaged areas. Providence Spring Elementary, a south Charlotte school that had a 4 percent poverty level under the old system, is rated at 99.78 percent high socioeconomic status under the new one, with only two medium SES students and none from the low group.
One of the school board’s goals in revising school boundaries is to break up concentrations of disadvantaged students. The next step is deciding how much emphasis the board will put on that quest, compared with other goals of preserving successful schools and making sure buildings aren’t overfilled or underused.