"Bright Flight" in NC: Poverty, flight hit urban schools

Middle-class families have long shunned Shamrock Gardens Elementary, wary of the school's low test scores and high poverty. Now, a growing number of Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools face the same struggle. From University City in the north to Quail Hollow in the south, parents are abandoning more and more schools with poverty rates they consider unacceptable. The trend is not everywhere: Most of the county's schools are not seeing flight. But in the past three years, about 1 in 5 schools has seen at least a 10 percentage-point increase in poverty rates.

Enrollment of gifted students has plummeted in several high schools. At the same time as this so-called "bright flight," these schools have seen a surge in low-income students, who tend to be lower performers. Most of the departing families wind up in the district's suburban schools. A smaller but growing number are leaving CMS or avoiding it entirely. "I didn't want to take a chance on my kids," said Carol Van Buren of Charlotte, who chose a private kindergarten for her daughter, partly because the CMS gifted program she considered was too far away and its poverty rate too high.

Experts say no public school system has successfully lured back middle-class parents once they started to flee. The rising student poverty rates that follow can depress property values and dampen efforts to attract families and businesses. "I just don't see how a school district remains healthy if it is not important to the middle class," said John Chesser of UNC Charlotte's Urban Institute. "How do you ever pass a bond? How do you keep support?" New Superintendent Peter Gorman agreed, calling the shift in enrollment "a big concern." Changes he's considering to keep middle-class families include shifting power from the central office, building schools to relieve congestion and raising student performance districtwide. "All I want to be is an option that people consider viable," Gorman said. "It's basic -- improve the quality of our schools. I can't give you the magic bullet."

The loss of white, middle-class Mecklenburg families has accelerated since 2002. That's when court-ordered busing gave way to an assignment plan based on neighborhood schools.There's no way to track the income levels of families who leave. But the number of white school-age kids in Mecklenburg has increased by about 4,600 since 2002, according to census estimates. CMS's white enrollment, meanwhile, has dropped by more than 900. Whites now make up less than 38 percent of the enrollment, down from more than 43 percent in 2002. More than 55 percent of the students are black or Latino, up from 50 percent. One number hasn't changed -- CMS still serves more than 80 percent of the county's children. But statistics show an increasing percentage from low-income families.

Some changes are fueled by birth rates: Black and Latino mothers are having more babies. But it's clear the pursuit of more desirable schools is also transforming CMS. Consider:

* In 2001-02, the last year of court-ordered busing, 1 in 7 schools had student-poverty rates of at least 75 percent. Today, that's true at nearly 1 in 3.

* Seven of the district's 17 high schools last year had white enrollments of less than 25 percent, up from three in 2002.

* Independence, Vance and Harding highs have lost almost half of their gifted students -- nearly 500 combined. Their numbers of low-income students, meanwhile, have risen. That's boosted the schools' poverty rates to almost 50 percent, up from a third.

Even parents who speak proudly of integrating CMS a generation ago are refusing to send their children into high-poverty classrooms. Scott Franklin, for one, sends his daughter to highly integrated Lansdowne Elementary instead of Shamrock Gardens, his neighborhood school. Why? Because Shamrock, with a 93 percent poverty rate and more than 80 percent of its students black or Latino, lacks racial and economic diversity, he said.

Several families interviewed by the Observer said they left CMS not because of race or class, but based on what they see or hear about school performance. Lawana McAllister, who is black, said she pulled her daughter out of a middle school that had a poverty rate higher than 60 percent. She said the girl told her too many stories of fights, trash-can fires and students disrespecting teachers. McAllister enrolled her daughter in a charter. She has since sent her back to CMS for high school. But she said she wouldn't have kept her there if conditions had been similar to before. "It's just parents wanting the best for their children," she said....

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BRITISH SCIENCE EDUCATION DUMBED DOWN

Recently, the Belfast newspaper the Irish News, not renowned for its education coverage, devoted three pages to the decline of traditional science in schools. The piece echoed fears already voiced on this side of the Irish Sea that two of the examination boards offering the new GCSE courses starting next month will use multiple-choice tests to account for between 75 and 60 per cent of the marks awarded. There is little support for this move. According to Jonathan Osborne, professor of science education at King's College London: `They are doing this to save money because computers can mark the papers.'

Boris Johnson, the Conservative MP, became an unlikely protagonist in the debate over school science when he wrote an article in the Observer mourning the decline of the `crunchier subjects such as the sciences, maths and languages'. This was followed by a rapid stream of cogent replies posted on the Observer website. I counted 76 pages of postings from a wide range of people. It seems that Johnson's claim that `some testing academic subjects are being ghettoised in the independent sector and grammar schools' touched a nerve.

On the face of it, the problem facing science education is simple: how do we get more young people interested in studying science at school and university? The trouble is, the answers being offered are poles apart - and there is too little emphasis on valuing specialist science subjects as a distinct body of knowledge worth teaching to a new generation.

In Science and Innovation Framework 2004-2014: Next Steps, published in March 2006, the New Labour government put the case for more specialist science teachers and a turn away from integrated science teaching to the teaching of separate science subjects. The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), on the other hand, has just introduced a new framework for teaching integrated science at GCSE level, which takes us even further away from teaching the sciences as distinct disciplines: physics, chemistry and biology. It would seem the government has a difference of opinion with its own educational authority on how to go about solving this problem.

It was something of a relief, then, to read the latest report by Professor Alan Smithers and Dr Pamela Robinson of Buckingham University. This is their second of three reports tracking the decline of physics as a school subject. They have carried out this survey to show that it is `important that policies should be grounded in the numerical picture'. Their report highlights the decline of both student uptake of physics at school (A-level entries down 35 per cent since 1990) and university (17 major physics departments closed between 1994 and 2004). It also flags up the problem of supplying enough specialist teachers to sustain physics as a school subject - only 1 in 8 science teacher trainees have a physics degree.

Their account of the decline of physics has come at a time when the government seems to have recognised the need to promote the hard sciences. The government has laid down ambitious targets for the recruitment of specialist subject teachers and encouragement of more students to study A-levels in physics, chemistry and mathematics. This is tied to efforts to promote the subjects at university. Part of the government's agenda is to promise every pupil the entitlement to study three separate sciences at GCSE if they achieve level 6 at Key Stage 3 from 2008. This represents a substantial extension of current provision; currently only eight per cent of students sit the separate science examinations, and even fewer within the state sector. GCSE physics teaching is now very much the preserve of the grammar schools and the independent sector. It is unclear how the government intends to increase separate science provision.

Bizarrely, at the same time as the government is prioritising separate science teaching in schools, the QCA is doing the opposite, introducing a new science programme of study at GCSE which dictates that all science GCSE courses from September 2006 must include an emphasis on `scientific literacy' for at least the equivalent of one GCSE or 50 per cent of a typical double-science GCSE course.

This shift towards citizen science goes much further than the current double-science integrated course in distancing itself from traditional physics, chemistry and biology teaching. Teaching `scientific literacy' looks at science in the news, especially in relation to controversies about the use of science and technology. This approach places a big emphasis on debate and discussion about the ethics of using science. Rather than teaching through laboratory experiments, the new science is more like media studies, with an emphasis on textual analysis and the identification of bias in the accounting of stories about science. The aim is to create a `critically aware' consumer rather than a future scientist.

The two approaches to science education could not be more dissimilar. Both claim to be able to promote a wider take-up of school science and to counter the decline in the study of the physical sciences at university. But it's difficult to see how we can go in both directions at once.

Smithers and Robinson, in looking at the historic decline of physics, may have given us enough ammunition to make up our own minds about which approach makes most sense - more separate science teaching or a new integrated science approach. As they explain, the decline in physics massively accelerated in the period after the introduction of the present combined science GCSEs or double-science course. Between 1990 and 1996 the decline in A-level physics entries was on average 2.5 times the current decline. This occurred mainly in the state sector outside the grammar and independent schools. Physics as a separate subject was even more popular under the old O-level system. At its peak there were nearly four times the number doing O-level physics than the current number doing GCSE physics. The introduction of double-science GCSE was meant to encourage the take up of physics, especially among girls. However, physics is still predominantly a male discipline with only 22.4 per cent of the total taking A-level physics being female.

So, the introduction of integrated science did nothing to halt the decline in physics as a school subject; it in fact accelerated that decline. This does not bode well for the introduction of the new science GCSE courses that are being promoted as a way of encouraging the take-up of science post-16.

The truth is that well-qualified and enthusiastic subject teachers make a massive difference to the chances of students doing well at school. As Smithers and Robinson argued in their first report: `Teachers' expertise in physics.is the second most powerful predictor of pupil achievement in GCSE and A-level physics.'

Concentrating on introducing a `scientific literacy' course can only be a distraction from what we really need - which is to encourage subject specialist teachers into the profession and value them for what they can teach young people. At my school, we have taken the decision to enter all our pupils for separate science GCSEs in physics, chemistry and biology. We hope that by valuing the subjects we teach as distinct and coherent bodies of knowledge, we can give subject specialist teachers the chance to really enthuse the pupils in the subject they studied. If we want to encourage young people to take up the sciences, surely this is a risk worth taking?

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MALE TEACHER DROUGHT IN BRITAIN TOO

Any guy who becomes a teacher these days is taking a big risk from false accusations etc. Prof. Rod Morgan, the British government's senior advisor on youth crime, is chairman of the Youth Justice Board

The decline in the number of male primary school teachers is aggravating the problem posed by the growing proportion of children who have no father figure to influence them at home, Rod Morgan told The Times.

The percentage of male teachers in primary schools in England and Wales fell from 25 per cent in 1970 to 15.7 per cent in 2004.

Mr Morgan said: "I think this is tricky territory and I have not come to any conclusion, but if an increasing proportion of young children are growing up in a single- parent household where there is an absence of a father figure, and if they are going to schools where there is a sing-ular absence of male figures, that does strike me as being a rather ill-balanced framework. "One of the things that magistrates complain to me about is that if children and young people come before the youth court it is rare to see a father present."

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

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