“I don’t have an answer for this” except “busing”

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“I don’t have an answer for this”, said Dr. John Dimmock of the NAACP, about the 40 point achievement gap between white and black students in Huntsville City Schools.

Dimmock should have stopped right there.  Even though Dimmock says he doesn’t have an answer, he recommends “busing” as THE solution.  Dimmock offered no other solutions in his presentation.

This was the second public meeting covered by The Huntsville Times where forced busing was discussed – and not reported by The Times.  Ignoring the issue will not make it go away – the NAACP seems determined to bus kids from ‘white’ schools into ‘black’ schools and vice versa.  I don’t know of a school system that has significantly improved the academic performance of students because of busing.

Since it is Black History Month, let’s recall the history of the NAACP, which was founded by socialists including Mary White Ovington and W.E.B. Dubois  in 1909.

Brian, Dale “The Kingmaker” Jackson of WVNN, and I attended the NAACP Town Hall Meeting last night at Rolling Hills Elementary School.  Elected officals attending included State Board of Education member Mary Scott Hunter (R), State Senator Paul Sanford (R), State Representative Laura Hall (D), County Commissioner Bob Harrison (D), Mayor Tommy Battle, City Councilmen Richard Showers and John Olshefski (who was out of town for the SHCA meeting), and City Board of Education member Laurie McCaulley.

The principal of RHE, Helen Scott, seems like a keeper.  Scott introduced their Math teacher who described the First in Math online computer game (~$30 per year per individual license – the game is based on the card game “24″)  saying  “children in America aren’t getting enough practice” and “competition” improves their performance. The teacher said that Rolling Hills ranked #1 in Alabama in Math improvement (or something like that - I missed it).  Of course, some people might note that “practice” and “competition” tend to improve skills in a wide variety of areas – somehow that has been forgotten, along with scoring T-ball games.

After a (very nice) prayer from Reverend G.W. Lindsey, Jr. and some introductory comments, HCS BOE member Laurie McCaulley spoke. 

McCaulley said that some of the City capacity figures don’t reflect State figures. McCaulley told the audience that the City and Senator Sanford hired a demographer and said “if we are wise, we will follow what he says”.  McCaulley said that rezoning “will be done fairly” and that “every community will have to sacrifice something”.

McCaulley spoke about the search for a new Superintendent: about 6-8 weeks for advertising / recruitment, then 4-5 weeks for BOE interviews, then bring in 3-5 candidates for “public interviews”.

McCaulley said that locally-funded teaching and support units will be reduced, then told a story about some kids who get to school late because their father beats their mother – he doesn’t beat her if they stay home until he leaves.  McCaulley said ”we have to do more than we’re doing for the plight of the children”.

McCaulley provided more detailed information than I’ve seen elsewhere, saying that Middle Schools and High Schools are where we fund more local units, as well as special education programs.  McCaulley said “the old days of being an employment agency are gone” and we “may have to eliminate programs”.

McCaulley noted that when she was elected in 2008 the budget had already been approved, and that in 2009 HCS Finance Director Herb Wheeler told the BOE about the looming debt crisis.  McCaulley said “from the day I was elected… the finances were disgusting”.

***

Dr. John Dimmock spoke next, saying that the budget is “not the only problem the schools are facing”.  Dimmock presented a chart based on the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama (PARCA) Report for the Schools Foundation.  Here’s a summary of the chart (which also included income – for space I won’t include that here):

Huntsville = white scores 67.4 compared to black scores 26.8 (40 point gap)
Madison City = white 74.8 / black 41.2
Madison County = white 59 / black 39.3
Birmingham = white 43.2 / black 32.6
Montgomery = white 64.3 / black 32.3
Mobile = white 58.4 / black 34.6
Jefferson County = white 51 / black 31
Alabama = white 55.3 / black 30.1

Dimmock said “I don’t have an answer for this” and “we have an educational problem”.  Dimmock then suggested “busing”, saying “we can do that here” and “it’s not going to hurt anybody”.

***

HCS Finance Director Herb Wheeler gave a financial overview, saying the crisis was “not a surprise to anyone” and “we will not solve this in one year”.

***

Madison County Commissioner Bob Harrison gave a “History of the Huntsville City School System”, which was interesting.  Harrison said, in sum, “racial inequity” – and took shots at Mary Jane Caylor and John Tyson during his speech. 

Harrison said “we have nothing to lose by asking the State to take over the school system”.  Harrison “hell no to dissolving the court order until all vestiges of segregation have been addressed”.  As expected, Harrison managed to beclown himself, saying ”if we can’t resolve it with reasonable dialogue, then we will use unreasonable dialogue”.

***

My notes on the Q&A equal the notes about the speakers, so I’ll -really- summarize this part.

McCaulley said “every district will have to make compromises” and “just because a school is at 100% capacity doesn’t mean it won’t be closed” [Monte Sano].

Harrison said that rezoning “goes beyond population and capacity” and that “racial equity and racial balance are important”.

Harrison said there was a “misnomer about parent involvement” and that “different communities have different ideas about what parental involvement means”.

When asked about the new Lee High School, McCaulley said “that’s before I got elected” (and implied that she would not have voted for it); Harrison said that a City official “who is not with us anymore” wanted it built.

McCaulley said that people should “get upset” that special education children were moved from CDL (?) to mainstream and that there were 6′ tall grown kids who needed changing tables (for their diapers).

***

Crystal Bonvillian of The Huntsville Times wrote “Hundreds battle rain…”.  Challen Stephens of The Times wrote “Large achievement gaps based on income and race persist in Huntsville schools”:

In Huntsville, white students and non-poverty students for the past four years have beat or kept pace with state averages in reading and math among their peers. But black students and poor students in Huntsville score well below the average for black or poor students in Alabama. As a result, the sheer size of the achievement gap in Huntsville was in a category by itself.

“What that says is, something we’re doing is not reaching those particular students,” said Jim Williams, who led the PARCA study.

In fact, the gap itself is moving. For the last two decades, there has been a north south divide. That still exists. A dozen Huntsville schools, 11 in north Huntsville and one to the southwest, were labeled persistently low-achieving this spring.

But as a rule, parents flee poorly performing schools. While some moved to the county, hundreds each year use federal transfers to send children on a bus to south or west Huntsville.

Transfers haven’t erased the deficits. What used to be a fault line between schools in different parts of the city is now found within individual schools.

Take Challenger Middle, where half the eighth-graders scored at the highest possible level in math, well above the state average. But when sorted by race, only 14 percent of black students or 14 percent of poor students at Challenger reached that mark last year.

Meanwhile, across the city at Westlawn Middle, more than half of the eighth-graders didn’t read on grade level, much less score at the highest level.

***

In 2006, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that “there is little evidence that racial and ethnic diversity in elementary and secondary schools results in significant improvements in academic performance” and that “the academic literature really provides little or no support for the view that racial preferences in student assignment serve any compelling interest”.

63 thoughts on ““I don’t have an answer for this” except “busing””

  1. Once again, thankyou. I was beginning to wonder if I’d fallen asleep and had a nightmare in which the primary message of two speakers comments was busing. There has been no mention of this in either the Huntsville Times or on any t.v. news report. Flashpoint is becoming our only resource for honest and complete reporting.

  2. I thought the crowd response to busing was tepid at best. Here’s my guess at what the folks in attendance at that meeting believe and want…

    They think the north Huntsville schools have been mistreated by the powers that be, which has led to poor performance. They don’t want their kids to get a better education by riding a bus for 45 minutes each way. They want their kids to get a better education at the school they are zoned to.

    I based that on words from Harrison and others claiming some kind of structural racism. Amusingly, the same people are fervent defenders of Ann Roy Moore. Ann Roy Moore has considerable control over personnel and management of those schools that are simultaneously considered so poor because of neglect. Very confusing.

    • It’s not confusing once you recognize that their support for Moore is, literally, skin deep. Change her color, and the folks up there would have been demanding her firing years ago.

      • Let’s not rewrite history regarding Dr. Moore’s hiring or her support among the African American community. Dr. Dawson, the only African American of the Board voted against hiring Dr. Moore. Dr. Moore had full support of the board and the white community until she refused to go petition the justice department to rezone Providence. It wouldn’t have made any difference if “the folks” had demanded her firing years ago, no one would have paid any attention.

    • Everyone wants the schools and others to raise their kids. It is the parent’s responsibility to check up on their children. I wouldn’t pay too much attention to Mr. Harrison. He always tries to blame someone else for failures. It all goes back to the home. Unless people want to change they won’t change.
      There is free tutoring in the schools and most don’t take advantage of it. The opportunity is out there but a person has to want it.

  3. Here’s something I find incredibly interesting: The chart presented by Dr. Dimmock does indeed show that there is a large discrepancy between the scores of black and white students in the various school districts. But it also shows that the distribution of the scores of the white students between the school districts varies a whopping 31.6 points when compared with a distribution among the black students of less than half that amount – 14.4 points.
    If his contention is that a bussing program is the answer to inproving the education of our students, who would benefit more? Black students or white students? According to the chart, white students would reap the most benefit. In my mind the chart itself PROVES that bussing is not the solution.

    • If the problem is student achievement, then the problem with busing is that it is ineffective and wastes resources that could be spent addressing the real problem of student achievement.

  5. Busing is such a bad idea that I wonder what the NAACP’s real angle could be… No one could be so stupid to want to implement a policy that has a history of 40 years of documented failure… Or could they?

    Brian – I think that people want the best for their children, but there is not even a common definition of “parental involvement”… I think we should start with defining the terms -the “parental involvement” definition which results in a 67 score is a better model than the parental involvement model which scores 27. The individual / family responsibility model performs better than the government / collective dependence model.

    Sadly, there are some heartbreaking stories about the breakdown of the responsibility model like crackhead parents pimping out their daughters – but I hope that’s only a small part of the low scores. The schools need to do their part by referring those stories to appropriate law enforcement and child protective agencies and then providing what comfort (and structure) they can to the child.

    • Harrison’s comment that “different communities have different ideas about what parental involvement means” is quite telling. It is the perfect demonstration of what President Bush aptly termed “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” And as sad as it is to say, the people often most responsible for this bigotry are excuse-making leaders in the black community.

      I am reminded here of one of the episodes of Penn & Teller’s exposé television series “Bulls**t” where they (O.K., Penn) mocked a crackpot black “diversity consultant” who goes around telling companies that meeting deadlines, dressing professionally, and being on time are all “white things” and that allowances must be made for black employees who don’t value these behaviors.

      • Bussing works. Ask the Wake County School district.

        Yeah, it worked so well that the district has now abandoned it.

        Did you really just link to a post you wrote for a blog that has since disowned you?

      • Did you reall call Mary White Ovington and W.E.B. Dubois Socialist? And yes I linked to something I wrote for Left in Alabama defining parental involvement.

    • The Wake County degregation plan “worked” if you consider loss of student market share in order to achieve racial balance working. You continually fail to recognize that black student achievement did not improve in Wake County – the plan failed if academic performance is the goal.

      Redeye doesn’t care about academic performance – she is willing to sacrifice education for “racial balance”.

      • What loss of market share?

        How many ways do I have to say academic achievement is not the ultimate goal of school integration? The United States Supreme Court says seperate and equal is against the L-A-W. The court order says there shall be no vestiges of segregation in HCS. What part of that don’t you want to understand?

        And what gives you the right to put words in my mouth and say what I care or don’t care about? Those are your words not mine.

    • Redeye – obviously you know about market share because you use it in another comment in this same thread.

      Redeye = “academic achievement is not the ultimate goal of school integration”. Those are your words – you would rather force a black child and a white child to ride buses for hours to sit next to each other than provide a quality education for either of them – shame on you.

      • What is wrong with black children and white children riding the bus together for two hours? I want every child to have access to a quality public education. Always have. Always will.

    • Redeye = “did you really call Mary White Ovington and W.E.B. Dubois Socialist?”

      Did you even bother to read their biographies on the NAACP website? The NAACP calls them “socialists”.

      How is it that I know more about the NAACP and its founders than you?

      • I know soclist is a code word around here, but let’s take the word socialist in context.

        William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American civil rights activist, leader, Pan-Africanist, sociologist, educator, historian, writer, editor, poet, and scholar. He became a naturalized citizen of Ghana in 1963 at the age of 95.

        Mary White Ovington (April 11, 1865 in Brooklyn, New York – July 15, 1951) a suffragette, socialist, unitarian, journalist, and co-founder of the NAACP.

        Her parents, members of the Unitarian Church were supporters of women’s rights and had been involved in anti-slavery movement. Educated at Packer Collegiate Institute and Radcliffe College, Ovington became involved in the campaign for civil rights in 1890 after hearing Frederick Douglass speak in a Brooklyn church.

        Founded Feb. 12. 1909, the NAACP is the nation’s oldest, largest and most widely recognized grassroots-based civil rights organization. Its more than half-million members and supporters throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, campaigning for equal opportunity and conducting voter mobilization.

        Founding group
        The NAACP was formed partly in response to the continuing horrific practice of lynching and the 1908 race riot in Springfield, the capital of Illinois and resting place of President Abraham Lincoln. Appalled at the violence that was committed against blacks, a group of white liberals that included Mary White Ovington and Oswald Garrison Villard, both the descendants of abolitionists, William English Walling and Dr. Henry Moscowitz issued a call for a meeting to discuss racial justice. Some 60 people, seven of whom were African American (including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell), signed the call, which was released on the centennial of Lincoln’s birth.

        http://www.naacp.org/pages/naacp-history

    • Socialist is a code word meaning what?

      Unlike your friends on the left, we believe in straight talk. Socialism is a statist economic and political system – the economy is controlled by the state either directly (i.e., communism) or indirectly through regulatory control (fascism). History shows that socialism kills people (Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler, Idi Amin, and on and on and on…).

    • Hiya folks, did you know the Pledge of Allegiance was written by a socialist! *gasp!* Think of the children!

    • Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, & Hitler were Americans? Who knew?

      Comparing Americans to Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Hitler is bad.

  7. It makes me so happy that Dr. Dimmock has finally pegged HCS for their lack of concern for poverty stricken children of this city. All of these board members should be asked to step down. Most of them have been there to watch this atrocity take place. Where were they when Columbia was approved and the faculty at Butler High School pleaded with them to not approve it? The faculty, principal and the parents assured the board that this would be the demise of Butler. The building of Butler High School holds 2000 students…why build another school instead of filling a school to capacity first? They never got an answere to that question. Everyone knows the answer was political favoritism. Butler High School was left with the students that are within walking distance and more than 90% of those are free lunch students without a support system. Here is another question…Why did Huntsville City Schools spend money on elevators in at Butler High in 2009-10 with only 600 students
    in the building. Sure every building needs one to follow code ,right? but why now with the extreme dialogue about the school closing? Does this make sense? I wonder how many thousands these new elevators cost the system? They are talking about cutting teachers…what about the WASTE AT CENTRAL OFFICE…THEY COULD SAVE MILLIONS By CUTTING ADMINISTRATIVE JOBS FIRST SO WE DON’T IMPACT THE CHILDREN. Someone needs to look into that! Voters don’t vote for higher property taxes to support the system because they know about the waste at cental office.

    • The building of Columbia was approved because of BRAC. The Arsenal was zoned for Butler, but the school had become so abysmal that it was becoming a liability in terms of Huntsville getting new BRAC jobs transferred here. The rational solution would have been to rezone the Arsenal for a better school, but because most of the Arsenal kids are white, this would have likely run afoul of the desegregation order. So we built a brand new high school instead. The amount of money our system wastes dealing with race-related stuff is truly astronomical.

      • Attaining BRAC jobs is not a school system function. Johnson and Bulter could easily accommodate all the kids without the new high school or the new Robert E. Lee High School. Both projects were done at the request of the city, and the city should be paying for them, not the school system.

        And, I will never understand why all schools are not built using the same blueprint.

      • Wrong Ben. Colombia was approved because HSC promised to combined New Century Technology School’s racial composition to satisfy the desegregation order. It was supposed to be a Magnat School, not a neighborhood school.

      • Art — Nice try, but it’s not “Robert E. Lee High School.” The school is named for the Lee Highway, not the general. And no, the highway isn’t named for Gen. Lee, either.

        Edgra — Everyone knows Columbia was built because of BRAC. This is not a big secret.

      • The Lee Generals. The General as the mascot. The painting of the General in the gym. Rewriting history is easy, but you cant undo history.

        Perhaps someone should sue the city to recover the funds expended for the $100million or so spent on building new schools in the last few years to satisfy the cities needs to develop and redevelop particular areas of the city.

      • Art, they claim Lee High School was not named after General Robert E. Lee but we all know it was and is. The school newspaper used to be called The Traveller which was the name of Robert E. Lee’s horse. The Dance Team used to be called the Confederettes.

      • The point of my comment on Lee wasn’t to whitewash anything. Montgomery still has high schools named for Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. Unfortunately, that kind of thing went on in many Southern towns. Given that there is confusion even in the community over where Lee H.S. got its name, it does not surprise me at all that some people would assume it was named for Gen. Lee, or even that some at the school have tried in the past to make that connection (such as with the mascot, for example).

        I’m not arguing any of that. My points are simply that 1) the school is not named Robert E. Lee H.S., so calling it that is incorrect, and 2) a report in The Times just a couple of years back pretty clearly established that the school was named for the highway, not the general. You can’t just make stuff up because you think it’s clever.

    • Ben, Colombia may have been built for BRAC but it got justice department approval because of New Century Technology High School.

  8. Ash – if ‘closing the achievement gap’ means we turn into BHM (with white 42 / black 33 scores) then HSV fails. What I noticed from the chart is that white students in HSV and Madison City (and MadCo barely) score much better than whites in the rest of the State – something up here works.

    • You know what works in closing the achievement gap here? The Magnet Schools.

      You know why they work? Because they are diverse. They draw students from all walks of life, race and class.

      They use cutting edge innovative curriculums and hire the best teachers and staff.

      All students should have access to a Magnet School. They should be able to attend school based on their interest and not their zip code.

  9. Magnet schools also work because of parent involvement. One reason schools lag behind is becasue parents are not truly interested in their child’s education.

    • What do you mean parents are not truly interested in their child’s education? How many parents do you know personally who aren’t interested in their child’s education?

      Magnet Schools work because some parents can afford to be at the school everyday and take up the slack for the parents who can’t.

  10. As a parent of 3 children I can say that if I did not make sure that homework was done, read with my children, contact teachers and follow up regarding grades and missed work, all of my kids could very well fall below the achievment line. Define it how you want, but when “parental involvement” is NOT there, the child suffers. Neither bussing nor re-zoning will alleviate the achievement gap. . . parents should.

    • Andrea, how many parents that you personally know who don’t read with their children, make sure homework is doen, contact teachers and follow up regarding grades and missed work? Just because parents are black, brown or poor doesn’t mean they don’t care about their children. But even if they didn’t care, the school system should care about them and take up their slack. It’s not the child’s fault their parent can’t read. It’s not the child’s fault the parent has to work two jobs to keep a roof over their head and food in their mouths. It’s not the child’s fault the parent can’t be at the school 5 days a week. It’s not the child’s fault their parent(s) died, or in prison, Iraq, or deserted them. We are our brothers keeper. What you do for the least of these you do for me. Remember?

    • We have to have parental involvement. That is the main problem. The children that don’t have that are not usually successful.Most of the schools that do well, have a strong PTA. Booster clubs are also vital. It is not money. If a child wants to learn and has strong ,stable family support system they will learn.
      Busing is not the answer. It is costly and sometimes dangerous.Neighborhood schools are the best way to go.
      There are too many single moms. Teens having children and living off entitlements breeds poverty. Fathers are absent from the child’s life. It keeps on getting worse and worse..Money ,busing,and tutoring doesn’t work Spirtual leaders need to talk to their parishioners about how they are harming the children and stop blaming everyone else.The children are the losers.We can have good schools all over the city if people will take some responsibility and stop leaving it up to the schools. Parents have to be parents.They are the ones that need to be sure their children are doing what they are supposed to do in school.Another thing is discipline. We need to teach children at home to respect our teachers and all adults..Teach some values at home.Teachers have to spend too much of their time with some disruptive student.That needs to stop. The reason our students are so behind is that in other countries they have strict rules and discipline.Disruptive students are not tolerated.Better wake up and return to some old fashion basics.!

      • Most of the schools that have a strong PTA are affluent. So it is about money.

        All children want to learn, regardless of their circumstance, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender.

        Bussing students to school is no more dangerous than carpooling or students driving cars to school. Actually it’s more energy and cost effiecient because it will cut down on the number of cars on the hiwaay and in school parking lots.

        Neighborhood schools are “the best way to go” for students whose parents can afford to live in the “best” neighborhoods.

        Teens having children and living off entitlements is not the cause of the blame for the sad, sorry state of the HCS school system.

        People all over this city share responsibility for the state of the schools with their TAX DOLLARS and by electing public officials to be accountable to them.

        If a trained, certified teacher can’t control their classroom, they are one of those bad teachers who need to be fired and replaced by someone who can. Parents handle their children at home. Teachers handle them at school.

  11. I will call my School Board represenative to encourage the School Board to rename Lee HS, Hwy 72 High School.

    Regardless of the rational behind the 2005 BRAC Commission’s opinion of HSV/Redstone, the school system will not be a HSV selling point for the next BRAC Commission whenever that happens…….in the meantime HSV schools are a negative selling point and a boon for Madison.

    • LOL@HsvAccountant regarding Hwy 72 High School.

      It’s too bad the powers that be would rather lose their “market share” to Madison City and County than do the right thing in Hsv City. It didn’t have to be like this. Huntsville could have had centers of excellence and been a premier school system, but noooooo, they would rather have a segregated school system.

      • Did “segregated” zoning of schools cause fiscal ruin of the system? Or vice versa, did fiscal mismanagement cause “segregated” zoning decisions?

    • Which is exactly why there is nothing more dangerous than ignorance in action.

      Homeschooling is not growing by leaps and bounds because most parents WORK and those who don’t work realize they are not trained, certified teachers. Home schooling is popular among the segment of the population who don’t want their children attending public school, but can’t afford private school.

      • Redeye, you speak of what you do not know or apparently do not have the desire to understand. Homeschooling families homeschool because they believe it is the best choice for their families and are willing to make the sacrifices required to do it like live on one income, live in a less expensive house, drive older cars etc.. Homeschooling families don’t even get any educational benefit from their tax dollars that are absorbed by the public schools. They have to pay for all educational materials and extra classes out of their own pockets.

        You don’t have to be a certified teacher to homeschool in the state of Alabama, yet homeschooling students average 80+ percentile on the exact same SATs that the public school students take. Many colleges heavily recruit homeschooled students.

        Also, a very telling side note: there is no difference in average scores between black and white homeschooling students. I know why; do you? Also there are ways to homeschool even if both parents work.

        That being said I am for choice, the more educational choices the better which is why school vouchers would be an excellent idea whether a parent wants public, private or homeschool for their children. Create competition among schools for vouchered children and schools will instantly perform better. Give teachers a percentage of the money (bonus) so they will take ownership and allow local control over schools i.e. curriculum, teacher requirements, hiring/firing etc. If the parents are not happy with a particular school they can send their child to a better performing school. Competition increases excellence and is just about the only thing that does.

  13. I think Redeye would be happier with “equal dumbness for all” or “no child ever gets ahead”

  14. When are people going to learn that a school is only as good as its neighborhood ownership. Neighborhood ownership has little to do with the cost of home ownership in the neighborhood and everything to do with ownership of a school’s reputation. If many of the schools in North Huntsville took the same pride in their academics as the do in their basketball teams they would be some of the best schools in Alabama. Until this happens North Huntsville students will continue to fail. The good news for the people that take ownership of their schools (either North, South, East or West) is that busing students into their school should not lower their investment. Under no circumstances let them bus your children out of your neighborhood school.

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