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Students at the Rainbow Dreams Academy charter school’s summer enrichment program sit during their morning “Harambee” session in Las Vegas Monday, July 20, 2009.
Sunday, Aug. 16, 2009 | 2 a.m.
Sun Archives
- Airing of charter tensions set (2-20-2008)
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Beyond the Sun
At the time, it seemed like the solution to a problem perplexing a nation: how to extend the same educational opportunities to black students as white students.
It was the early 1990s, and the Clark County School District was dismantling what had been a federally mandated desegregation program, one that for years had bused black students from West Las Vegas to campuses in outlying areas as a means of maintaining racial diversity.
At the same time, white students were bused into West Las Vegas for one year to attend “sixth grade centers.”
In response to lawsuits and civil rights complaints filed by parents and educators, who argued that black students had as much right as their white peers to attend school close to home, district officials and West Las Vegas residents sat down to devise a possible solution.
The answer: Give students a choice. They could be bused to other schools, stay at their neighborhood schools, or apply to attend a new magnet school with premier programs.
The offer would be extended to students of six elementary schools in West Las Vegas, and the options became known as the Prime Six plan.
To school officials, the plan made sense because it embraced the recognized means of shrinking the achievement gap for at-risk students, promoting diversity and avoiding racial isolation.
But the Prime Six plan, which extended additional resources to the campuses, was left largely untended for years, getting only cursory attention.
Until now.
A recent review of the plan, by UCLA researchers hired by the district, points to its failure. The researchers found that almost without exception, the Prime Six schools are mired in lackluster achievement that lags far behind the districtwide average. The students are isolated by ethnicity, poverty and, in increasing numbers, language.
The review left many district officials “disappointed and disheartened,” School Board President Terri Janison said at a meeting Thursday. It’s also fueled the fury of those who say there are no surprises in the data, only confirmation that the district has fallen far short of its legal and moral obligation to provide equitable education to all students.
“Our children have taken the burden of being bused into outlying areas for the last 50 years,” Marzette Lewis, a longtime community activist and one of the district’s sharpest critics, told the Sun. “Now it’s 2009. We have a black president of the United States. These kids deserve to be able to walk to their neighborhood school and get a fair and decent education. Enough is enough.”
Research has shown that at-risk students perform better when they are in a diverse learning environment, rather than relegated to an isolated population. A small number of top-performing schools nationwide serves high-poverty and minority populations. But none of Clark County’s Prime Six campuses is “among those rare break-the-mold schools,” said Professor Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, which conducted the review.
What isn’t known is why the enrollment patterns are playing out the way they are.
Do families prefer the convenience and perceived safety of a neighborhood schools to putting their children on buses for crosstown journeys to higher-achieving schools? Has the district not done enough to inform parents about the potential benefits to their children of the magnet schools, which all boast higher academic achievement than the Prime Six campuses?
Are the schools performing poorly because of the inferior quality of the instruction or campus leadership?
The review does not make recommendations or draw conclusions because the findings are based solely on statistical data, with no independent research or visits to the Prime Six schools, Orfield said. However, the review lays out “extremely troubling” statistical patterns and explains the possible implications for students and the district as a whole, Orfield said.
Carolyn Edwards, the School Board’s vice president, said she was disappointed the review didn’t come with advice on what should come next. But she also knows that isn’t what the district requested — or paid for. Orfield told the Sun the district paid about $12,000 to have the data analyzed, and that the three researchers assigned to the project donated many hours of their own time to the job. Orfield said he received about $3,000 to write the final review.
So, where does the district go from here? At Thursday’s meeting, Superintendent Walt Rulffes said there might be grant money available to pay for a team of experts to help guide the process.
“There is urgency here,” Edwards interjected. “Pursuing grant money and taking two years to figure this out is not acceptable.”
There is no reason why the district can’t take immediate action, Richard Boulware, a federal public defender and lifelong resident of Las Vegas, said at the School Board meeting. He suggested experts be hired to return this fall to conduct a full-scale investigation and return to the School Board with suggestions. The cost of waiting, in terms of “misallocated resources and lost children,” is too great, Boulware said.
Clark County is hardly alone in struggling with such issues. Dozens of public school systems are under federal desegregation orders. After decades of busing black students to outlying suburbs, Boston’s mayor wants them to return to neighborhood schools. But the community is resisting because parents don’t want to lose the options that came with busing, Orfield said.
In North Carolina, two of the state’s largest districts have been studying whether it’s better to bus minority students or pour money into magnet programs to promote voluntary diversity. Orfield’s team is working with a number of districts on revised desegregation plans, including Tucson.
The roots of the Prime Six plan are in a 1968 class action lawsuit filed against the Clark County School Board, alleging it was operating a segregated district in violation of federal law. Two years later a U.S. District Court ruled Clark County’s West Las Vegas elementary schools were intentionally segregated, while the district was appropriately integrated at the high school level.
Facing a court order, the district created “sixth grade centers” in West and North Las Vegas, with white students bused in for one academic year. Black students attended their neighborhood schools for kindergarten and sixth grade, and were sent to predominantly white schools every other year of their academic careers.
The federal monitoring of the district’s desegregation plan ended in 1977, but the sixth-grade centers didn’t begin to be phased out until the early 1990s after residents — especially Lewis’ group WAAK-UP (a well-intended but tortured acronym for an alliance representing what was then called the West Side) — complained. The Prime Six plan was endorsed by an advisory committee formed in the wake of the uproar, because it would give parents of West Las Vegas students the option of continuing to participate in the busing program, or sending their children to their neighborhood schools.
Prime Six went into effect in 1994. But in the 15 years since, much has changed.
West Las Vegas’ black population has been steadily declining, replaced by Hispanics. The school enrollment demographics reflect a similar shift.
The problem for the district is that the Prime Six schools all have empty seats — sometimes hundreds of them — despite the apparent preference of West Las Vegas parents for those campuses. Empty seats don’t help the district make the case to taxpayers that money is needed for new construction. The district is considering a $249 million bond measure that would be used largely for renovation and construction. West Las Vegas residents want some of those dollars to go to building them their own high school. The closest they have now is West Prep, a K-12 program that has nearly outgrown the former Charles I. West Middle School.
West Prep has dozens of portable classrooms, mostly to house the younger grades that have been added over the past few years. Under the leadership of Principal Mike Barton, and with significant support from the district’s educational services division, West Prep has evolved from one of the worst-performing schools in the state to meeting the federal requirements for adequate yearly progress.
District officials say they are committed to the success of West Prep, noting that adjacent land has been purchased with an eye toward expansion.
But it’s not the building or the neighborhood that makes or breaks the school, if Booker Elementary is any proof. It is the exception among the Prime Six campuses.
On paper, it seems typical of the others. All students receive free or reduced-price meals. For the 2008-09 academic year, all but 18 of the more than 500 students lived in West Las Vegas. The school’s enrollment is about 47 percent Hispanic and 46 percent black. About a third of the students in the Prime Six schools are English language learners. Like the other Prime Six schools, just 3 percent of the students are white.
When Booker was being rebuilt in 2006, the school temporarily relocated to portable classrooms on the campus of nearby Wendell P. Williams Elementary.
That year, Booker was rated as high achieving under the federal No Child Left Behind requirements. When Booker returned to its brand-new campus, student achievement rose to “exemplary” status, the top ranking.
What distinguishes Booker is Principal Beverly Mathis and a loyal cadre of teachers, administrators and support employees. Family involvement isn’t just welcomed, it’s expected. Volunteers are a regular campus presence. The school’s redesign became a communitywide effort, with the district allowing a greater degree of input and involvement than with the standard prototype design. In 2008 Booker became one of the district’s “empowerment” schools, which allows Mathis greater control over daily operations in exchange for extra funding and stricter accountability.
When the district closed schools in December for a rare snow day, Booker students showed up for class, having spotted Mathis parking her car in its usual spot.
“When you have a strong leader who empowers their teachers and allows them to be professionals, when you engage your community and your parents, when you have culturally relevant instruction, those are the keys that are missing,” said Sonya Horsford, assistant professor of educational leadership at UNLV and executive director of the Freedom Schools enrichment program in North Las Vegas, a national model developed by the Children’s Defense Fund. “We can do report after report and study after study, but until we’re ready to accept these facts, the problems will continue to exist.”
"Are the schools performing poorly because of the inferior quality of the instruction or campus leadership?"
Or are some of the students performing poorly because of their home environments, or prenatally- drug-addled brains, or other physiological problems, or parents who shouldn't be parents, or a lack of a language boost when they first start school that leaves them lagging and straggling for years, or because they have IQ's of 85, or because they simply don't care, or are lazy?
Emily Richmond, please take some time to investigate this beat more thoroughly. Education is so important; please get off of the "blame the teachers and schools" bandwagon.
If the schools aren't working to this degree, radical change is needed. Sending kids to other schools may help for some, but is not going to do it for students with low aptitudes and terrible work habits. This society needs to stop asking schools to perform miracles.
So is our community ready to pump massive money into setting up before school/after school/ weekend/ extended day/ summer programs, including food, for kids who need it? Is it ready to put in the money to keep class sizes under twenty? No, it's not, but it wants to keep making absurd demands on school personnel.
West Prep is an example. Ms. Richmond should have reported that the funding for this school is far higher than average, probably double or close to it. (So much for the theory that "you can't throw money at the problem." No, don't throw it, but it can be effectively directed.)
That's nice for West Prep, but what about the rest of our children?
Booker I don't know about, but Richmond should have found out and reported it. Does it have significantly higher funding because it's an "empowerment" school? That would go a long way toward explaining its success.
This is not a race issue; it's more of a class issue. Color does not affect achievement, but social class can, for a variety of reasons - which is not to say there aren't great students from poorer families, because there are. It also does not mean that there are no failing predominantly-white, middle- to upper-middle class schools here. There are. Because, guess what? THE STUDENTS ACTUALLY HAVE TO DO SOME WORK TO ACHIEVE. Those who do work and try should have every available opportunity, and those who are simply lazy need something else...
We need better reporting on the massively important topic of education.
" He suggested experts be hired to return this fall to conduct a full-scale investigation and return to the School Board with suggestions.
Where are we going to get the money to hire more consultants? Where are they coming from? Have the schools they have worked for improved and been consistantly successful. Look at all of the times that outside consultants have brought in these amazing programs that have fallen flat. Is this worth the money when teacher's aides are being cut and class sizes are increasing?
My daughter just graduated from Sierra Vista High School. The school has a large number of black students. The black students are equally split between boys and girls.
When we attended the graduation, there were a disproportionately small number of young black males walking down the aisle of the Cashman Center to graduate, compared with the number of young black girls.
I asked my daughter what she thought of the discrepancy. She told me, very innocently, "Most of the black guys in my classes can't pass the Math Proficiency Exam."
The Clark County School District and the State of Nevada continues to make it harder and harder for students of all races to pass the Proficiency Exams and earn a diploma.
However, my daughter's black male classmates prove the fact that the Proficiency Examinations have a disproportionately discriminatory effect on the entitlement of young black males in our community to earn a high school diploma. As most people know, it is very difficult in these times for a person to get a job, especially a first job, because they do not have a high school diploma.
It seems to me that there are two things which must happen in Las Vegas very quickly: (A) A very serious plan needs to be implemented to bring all minority students "up to speed" on their mathematics so they can pass the Proficiency Examination and (B) A federal civil rights action needs to filed against the CCSD and the State to deal with this DISPROPORTIONATE IMPACT issue. If those words sound familiar, it is because they come from the last Federal court order on this subject, as well as from a raft of Federal court discrimination in education cases.
I find it very insulting that the Clark County School District USES young black males, to promote their football, basket ball and baseball teams, but seemingly doesn't give a rat's patootie about equipping those same students to be "allowed" to obtain a high school diploma.
Perhaps we should start with subpoenas of each of the CCSD Board members, and require them, in their depositions, to do the math questions on the Mathematics Proficiency Examination. My bet, less than a 50% pass rate among the Board members.
Then we could depose the CCSD hierarchy, and force them to answer the questions on the Mathematics Proficiency Examination.
The bottom line is that the CCSD has implemented a racist system for handing out diplomas, and no one in the Nevada educational community, at the high school or Chancellor of the University of Nevada's level seem to care.
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.
Running a small business I employ high school teenagers. Black, white, hispanic, asian. None of them can add up a group of numbers to save their lives - neither can their parents or their teachers. Teach them how to balance a check book.
To CynicalObserver:
You can file as many law suits as you feel are necessary against CCSD, but it will do no good to raise the scores of certain students, be they white, black, brown or yellow. If a student is not motivated to learn, there is NOTHING that a teacher or an administrator can do to change their minds. The problem with low-achieving students is with the parents, plain and simple.
There are children who will start kindergarten next week who have never owned a book or even had one read to them. They will have no knowledge of letters, numbers, colors, or the names of simple items outside of their home sphere. They will have never been asked to write their name and not even know what a pencil is for. They will have never used a pair of simple scissors, used a glue stick or sung a simple nursery rhyme song. So CynicalObserver, should we then file a law suit against their parents? What is a school to do? What can an administrator do, especially when there are 35 children in a classroom, and taking care of them is akin to herding kittens?
Yes, some schools have better test scores simply because of the neighborhood they are in. A school in Summerlin is going to perform better than a school in West Las Vegas. Why? Because the parents are educated people, and they realize the importance of an education. If someone places no value on something, no time or effort is put into it. The parents of children in low-performing schools have simple jobs that do not require them to read, write or add numbers. They, therefore, will not instill in their children a need for education. It's a simple fact of life.
To CynicalObserver:
There is no entitlement to a high school diploma! The suggestion that we should make the math test easier so black males can graduate is incredible. What are you thinking? Are you yourself saying that black girls are smarter than black boys? I have taught both and they are equally smart when they are motivated and apply themselves. NVCitizen got it right by saying it is a matter of motivation and family values. When students come to school (kindergarten) knowing absolutely nothing they are about 2 years behind from the beginning. Booker is high achieving because of where they started, and they have achieved growth from their past performance. They are still low achieving when you look at their overall pass rates (even against those schools who just made Annual Yearly Progress). There are actually schools with pass rates in the 90% range. But, because they are predominately white, and they have had high scores for a number of years, they do not get high achieving status or exemplary for that matter.
I have to agree with pattina. This issue of entitlement to a high school diploma is outlandish. It's this same attitude that allows society to fail to show any progression. Many people simply think they should be handed a good job without a work ethic.....Here's your reward, but we don't want you to sweat for it. When I see parents with this attitude it makes me thankful that I had a job as a ditch-digger for a number of months after I bearly scraped though high school and couldn't get into college. Call it what you will but it gave me perspective on what I want from the rest of my life. 12 years later I'm a combat veteran with a Master's degree. Parents need to teach their children to harness their drive, stay on point and accomplish the task, never to ask for lower standards but to set the new higher standards and say catch me if you can.
This is rediculous. But makes sense with Las Vegas being the 2nd dumbest city in America.