Just as private schools have always done, Oklahoma City's newest
public schools have become a haven for the wealthy and
well-educated, a study by The Oklahoman has found.
The numbers suggest that the district's 5-year-old school choice
movement - which has coincided with the dismantling of
court-ordered desegregation - has produced a two-tiered system: one
academically elite, middle-class and disproportionately white; the
other struggling, poor and mostly minority.
No longer are paying expensive private school tuition or moving
to the suburbs the only options for those who want to escape
Oklahoma City's beleaguered, poverty-ridden schools.
Today, they can choose public schools such as Classen School of
Advanced Studies, a school with top-notch orchestra, drama and
ballet programs, a college-caliber core curriculum and strict
admissions standards.
From Boston to San Jose, Calif., the free-market approach is
immensely popular, but some here in Oklahoma City fear that the
school district is catering to the powerful and well-to-do while
leaving others behind.
"Personally, it seems like they're trying to create a whole lot
of publicly funded private schools for their own personal use
instead of working to improve the schools they already had," said
Rick Lane, a longtime art teacher at Harding Middle School, a north
Oklahoma City school that has lost hundreds of students to the
city's choice schools.
Here is what The Oklahoman found:
- In 11 of Oklahoma City's 13 neighborhood middle and high
school attendance zones, a disproportionately low number of
students in poorer areas - and a disproportionately high number
of students in wealthier areas - have left neighborhood schools
for choice schools.
- While choice schools such as Classen have boosted the
district's reputation, neighborhood schools have struggled to
deal with falling test scores and increasingly impoverished
student populations.
- At the same time, the regular schools have seen their
percentages of minority students climb, in part because choice
schools have drawn away white students.
Hoping to contain so-called white flight to private schools and
the suburbs - not to mention middle-class black flight - the
district increasingly has turned to school choice as a means of
improving the quality and perception of its educational offerings.
"There's been no question that we pressed the right button with
our community," said Assistant Superintendent Guy Sconzo, Oklahoma
City schools' leading advocate and architect of choice.
In Superintendent Marvin Crawford's view, choice schools have
infused enthusiasm into the 40,000-student district and the
community.
As for the number of affluent students in choice schools,
Crawford said, "I don't know that that should be considered a
detriment. It may simply be that parents in those neighborhoods
have taken advantage of the system.
"Maybe we need to do a better job of advertising the
possibilities and... the successes of those choices."
Where 'people care'
Five years ago, Oklahoma City had one public choice school: a
health careers magnet that was a part of Northeast High School.
Today, the district has choice programs at 20 schools - and the
number keeps growing - out of about 90 total schools. The choice
schools include selective specialty schools, enterprise schools run
by parents, community groups and corporations, and federally funded
magnet schools.
Aspiring doctor Tim Wofford, 17, drives his Subaru about 16
miles from south Oklahoma City to attend Northeast Academy of
Health Sciences and Engineering.
Wofford, who lives in the U.S. Grant High School attendance
zone, said Northeast's biomedical program attracted him.
"Here, kids don't cut up as much," said Wofford, who scored 1470
on the SAT and is applying to Harvard and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. "Most of the people care about the classes
they're in."
In creating choice schools, the district hoped to offer "unique,
innovative, enriching" programs it could not afford at every
school, Sconzo said.
But choice schools rob neighborhood schools of students and
resources, critics argue.
At mostly black Douglass High School in northeast Oklahoma City,
students and teachers complain of second-class treatment and
dumping-ground status - meaning, as one student put it, district
officials view their school as a place "to throw all the dummies."
"Basically, it's like your landlord-tenant deal," said Douglass
senior Calvin Walton, 17. "If you just give us an equal
opportunity, we'll be right up there with the rest of them."
Sconzo denies claims of unequal treatment.
"Go to Classen," he said. "Just go see everything that they
have, because you don't know what you're talking about. They're far
from have everything. And the truth... is, we're a bit unfair
because we don't give them much, because we don't want to hear
those indictments."
Bill Scoggan, director of magnet and specialty schools, said
Classen succeeds not because of money or preferential treatment but
because of choice.
"If kids are in schools that they and their parents choose...
they do better. There's just a better buy-in."
Money buys choice?
The Oklahoman matched more than 40,000 student addresses for
this school year with a leading marketing data firm's 1999
income estimates for Oklahoma City census block groups.
Based on that analysis, the typical student lives in a
neighborhood where the median household income is $25,000.
But that figure rises 17 percent to more than $29,000 for
students who leave their neighborhoods for choice schools.
The disparity is larger at the specialty and enterprise schools.
At the highly competitive Classen, the estimated median family
income is $34,500 - 38 percent higher than districtwide.
At all middle and high schools, three-fourths of the 16,304
students receive free or reduced-price lunches - a good indicator
of poverty because eligibility is based on income.
But at five secondary choice schools that use selective
criteria, less than half of the 3,144 students receive free or
reduced-price lunches.
The disparity is most extreme at Classen: Just 28 percent of the
979 students receive free or reduced-price lunches.
The Oklahoman found a correlation between student reading test
scores and percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price
lunches. The higher the percentage receiving subsidized lunches,
the lower the school's test scores.
A study by the Oklahoma Center for Policy Research at the
University of Central Oklahoma showed a link between socioeconomic
status and test scores. The socioeconomic status within a student
body - a combination of ethnicity, parents' education, poverty rate
and community support - predicted about half the difference between
schools' test scores.
As the concentration of poverty increases, "You should expect
that their performance would also diverge," UCO economics professor
Michael Metzger said. "Socioeconomic status is the main determinant
of test scores."
Students who live in areas representing the poorest quarter of
the district's population comprise only about one-eighth of
students getting into four sought-after choice schools - Classen,
Belle Isle Enterprise Middle School, Independence Enterprise Middle
School and Northeast Academy.
However, students who live in areas that make up the highest
quarter of district incomes account for about one-third of students
at those choice schools.
Beyond income, the parents of choice school students tend to be
more educated, the study found.
A review of all students' neighborhoods showed the median number
of families with any college credits is 37.4 percent, based on 1990
census data.
That number rises to 44.7 percent for all choice school
students, 49.3 percent for specialty school students and 56.8
percent for enterprise middle school students.
Blurry dividing line
Of course, statistics don't tell the whole story.
Based on the study, Belle Isle Enterprise fits into the category
of "rich."
Yet 63 percent of its students receive free or reduced-price
lunches. That doesn't sound low, until you consider that 100
percent of students at Harding Middle School - the school many
affluent Belle Isle students avoid - receive free or reduced-price
lunches.
"We've got some kids from Nichols Hills," the state's most
affluent community, said Belle Isle Principal Lynn Kellert, wife of
former school board member Frank Kellert.
"But two of our highest-performing students live in what
Oklahoma City police tell me are two of the most difficult,
high-crime areas in Oklahoma City.
"And we've got everything in between."
That's a mix some regular schools could only hope for.
At Capitol Hill High School in south Oklahoma City, almost every
student comes from a low-income family. The estimated median family
income of the neighborhoods in which Capitol Hill students live is
about $21,600.
At the top choice schools, students choose from a smorgasbord of
Advanced Placement and/or International Baccalaureate courses that
help students get into college.
At Capitol Hill, teacher Pam Chamblee said she was supposed to
teach an Advanced Placement U.S. History class. But another history
teacher was not hired.
So the advanced placement students were combined into a class
with regular history students, making the advanced aspect almost
impossible, she said.
"It's not fair to them. It's not fair to me," Chamblee said this
fall after gathering the advanced placement students in a circle to
discuss special projects while regular students assembled their
notebooks for nine weeks' grades.
The combination of advanced placement and regular students
wouldn't happen at Classen, she said.
"They have a wonderful program, and I think that's good, but I
don't think the other schools should suffer."
Using the system
For students accepted to choice schools, the district provides
transportation if the child lives at least 1.5 miles from school.
Nevertheless, the district's constant shortage of bus drivers
and frequent mechanical problems with aging buses make some parents
reluctant to choose schools outside their neighborhoods.
Most of the district's 285 buses are at least 10 years old. In
repeated memos, Crawford has warned of frequent breakdowns,
impaired efficiency and safety concerns, as The Oklahoman first
reported last year. After a failed bond issue in June, voters will
return to the polls in February to decide a $52 million proposal
that includes $10 million for buses.
"We have trouble getting kids all the places we're trying to get
them," said Scoggan, a former Classen principal. "Our bus drivers
go out there and... start like three buses before they find one
that starts.
"Right now, there are folks calling at 10 o'clock, asking, 'Why
haven't you picked up my kid yet?'"
Transportation aside, Sconzo acknowledged the district must do a
better job informing poorer students about their choices.
But he said The Oklahoman's findings did not surprise him.
"There is no doubt in my mind that more advantaged people -
whether they're advantaged financially, whether they're advantaged
in... personal education background - will take more advantage of
schools of choice," Sconzo said.
"That doesn't at all mean, obviously, that less advantaged
people could not greatly benefit from schools of choice and be very
competitive within schools of choice."
Scoggan agreed.
"They just don't know how to use the system - the system is so
intimidating."
Poor at a disadvantage?
Classen, Belle Isle and Northeast Academy all use academic
and/or performance criteria to choose students.
District officials defend that selectivity as a means of
ensuring the best, most gifted students gain admission.
"You don't put a child in... any one of those programs you don't
believe has the strong likelihood of succeeding," Sconzo said. "You
don't put a kid in there simply because you want a better
percentage of any group of students.
"We're not helping kids when you do that."
Barbara Bowersox, president of Belle Isle's board, said that
parent-run school was formed, in part, because Oklahoma City
schools were not serving above-average students.
Classen was taking students scoring in the mid- to upper 90s on
standardized tests, she said.
"But there was a gap of kids from the 60th to 94th percentiles
not being served," said Bowersox, whose son, Will, is a Belle Isle
sixth-grader. "We were trying to create an environment that really
supported achievement and encouraged it."
However, three education experts, including two nationally known
proponents of school choice, told The Oklahoman that grade and test
score entrance requirements can put poorer students at a
disadvantage.
"The choice plans where the school chooses the kid are the worst
kind," said Gary Orfield, a Harvard University professor who has
written extensively about race and class in schools. "They choose
the kids who are high achievers, who happen to be the kids from the
families who are the most privileged to start with.
"So, they're giving an extra boost to the most advantaged kids."
Picking and choosing
Joe Nathan, director of the University of Minnesota's Center
for School Change, said a choice program already exists for
wealthy families: It's called the suburbs.
Nathan is a proponent of charter schools, independent public
schools free from many government regulations. The Oklahoma City
School Board is expected soon to approve Oklahoma's first charter
schools under a new state law.
"We have lots of choice for wealthy people in this country,"
Nathan said. "What we need are more choices for low- and
moderate-income families.
"There's a lot of evidence that schools can offer high-quality
programs without picking and choosing students."
Like Orfield and Nathan, Marquette University education
professor Howard Fuller said choice schools should use a random
lottery selection process.
Fuller is a former Milwaukee schools superintendent who
advocates education vouchers, which give students public funds to
attend any school, public, private or religious.
Public educators generally oppose vouchers, although the
Oklahoma City board declined to take a position earlier this year.
While a pilot charter school program passed the Legislature in the
spring, vouchers failed to gain support.
"Most of the choice programs where people with resources benefit
are the choice programs within the existing system - magnet
schools, gifted schools, theme schools," Fuller said. "Many of them
were set up to try to keep people with money in the district."
So, why would a district care about keeping - or drawing back -
affluent children?
"I don't care if he comes back," Sconzo said of a hypothetical
Johnny enrolled at a private school. "But I care deeply if he feels
he doesn't have the choice to come back."
If the district can make its schools a viable option for all
students, Sconzo said, "The payoff is in the overall community
support for the public system because the community has to pay
for it."
Is a lottery better?
Unlike Classen, Belle Isle and Northeast, seven new, federally
funded magnet schools, including Moon Middle School and Star
Spencer High School, use a lottery selection process.
That means students are randomly chosen if more apply than space
is available.
In approving the magnet school grant application last year, the
school board reluctantly supported the lottery requirement - but
only for those schools - because federal guidelines mandated it.
Still, board President Kenny Walker doesn't like it.
"I just think there's got to be a better way to get kids into
those schools. You may have some child who's extremely qualified
and their name's not drawn."
The admissions process at schools that use selective criteria is
"way more fair than people perceive," Walker said.
But the school board's lone black member is not so sure.
"It's a pick-and-choose kind of thing," Thelma Parks said.
"They will deny they do it that way. They'll say they do it
strictly by your test score or your application and teacher review
and that kind of stuff."
Occasionally, it doesn't hurt to know somebody.
Board member Harry Wilson told this story to illustrate the
popularity of choice schools:
"The response I've had from people who go to those schools has
been extremely positive. Before school started this year, I had a
friend who had a friend who was frantically trying to get her child
into Classen. She had been going to Casady. The student had heard
about Classen and, in particular, wanted to take piano.
"Anyway, I was able to get her student into Classen, and she was
very thankful."
What do you think?
The Oklahoman wants to hear your comments on the "Winners &
Losers" school choice project.
To reach staff writer Bobby Ross Jr., call 475-3342 or e-mail
him at rross@oklahoman.com.
To reach Database Editor Griff Palmer, call 475-3694 or e-mail
him at gpalmer@oklahoman.com.
You also may call our special telephone line at 475-3430. After
the beep, record your comments and include your name and spelling,
your hometown and a telephone number in case we have questions.
Your telephone number will not be printed.
Reactions from readers will be included in Monday's Oklahoma NOW!