In early September, it was an article in the Star praising Catalina Foothills District for having the highest AzMERIT scores in Pima County. Last week it was the same thing in the print edition of the Tucson Weekly. Both articles gave Cat Foothills’ Assistant Superintendent multiple paragraphs to pat herself and her district on the back.
From the articles, I learned the district achieved its high ratings through its “commitment to rigorous curriculum in schools, ongoing evaluations for its students and professional development for teachers.” Also by “developing a curriculum that considers the end goal and works backwards from there to achieve that goal.” And by using “authentic real-world scenarios.” Wow. Good stuff. Other districts should consider using similar strategies if they hope to match Cat Foothills’ success. Especially Tucson Unified, which apologized for its poor scores in both articles and swore it would try to do better.
But I’m not sure Cat Foothills is the district we should be looking to for pedagogical advice. Among its seven schools, the highest passing rate is 77 percent for Language Arts and 74 percent for Math. In a district outside of Pima County, three schools topped that, with Language Arts passing rates from 79 to 84 percent and Math passing rates from 77 to 85 percent. We should really be asking the superintendent in Scottsdale how the district manages to pull such spectacular achievement from its students. I know Scottsdale isn’t in Southern Arizona, but listen, if it’s getting results, the whole state could benefit by learning more about the secrets of its success.
And while we’re at it, we should also be asking a low-scoring Phoenix-area district how it plans to improve. One of its schools has a 16 percent passing rate in Language Arts and a 17 percent passing rate in Math, and other schools are in the teens and twenties. We need to hear the educational improvement plans for . . . Scottsdale? Really? The same Scottsdale district with those 80 percent-plus passing rates?
Yes, Scottsdale. The reason for the wide disparity in its schools’ passing rates is, some are filled with students from high income families and others draw mainly from low income families. The free/reduced lunch rates in Scottsdale schools range from 3 percent to 83 percent. And, no surprise, the schools in low rent areas have low passing rates, and the schools in high rent areas have high passing rates.
Catalina Foothills district avoids the large fluctuation in passing rates because it’s nestled in a uniformly affluent area. The schools’ free/reduced lunch rates range from 11 to 17 percent. Just like in real estate, Cat Foothills’ success is all about location, location, location.
While we’re looking at school’s passing rates, lets’s look at two Tucson Unified schools that leave Cat Foothills in the dust—and that doesn’t include University High which only admits top students and, naturally, has ridiculously high passing rates. At Sam Hughes Elementary, 80 percent of students passed the Language Arts portion of the AzMERIT test, three points higher than the top Cat Foothills school, and only one Cat Foothills school topped Sam Hughes’ 73 percent passing rate in Math. The other is Fruchthendler Elementary School with a passing rate of 77 percent in Math, three points higher than the top score in Cat Foothills. Its 73 percent passing rate in Language Arts isn’t too shabby either. To make the Tucson schools’ achievement even more impressive, both have a higher percentage of students on free/reduced lunch than any Cat Foothills school. Maybe someone should ask the principals at those two great Tucson Unified schools how they managed scores that topped the top-scoring district in Pima County.
This article appears in Sep 21-27, 2017.
Where’s the punchline, David? You know what it is, right? SES / home values and parent education levels in the neighborhoods surrounding those two schools and SES and parent education levels of many if not all of those who open enroll. If TUSD schools were integrated by SES and parent education levels, would these two schools be the stand-outs they are?
So what are you trying to highlight, TUSD’s chronic failures to integrate? Its decades-long persistence in maintaining enclave schools where people who live in the right neighborhoods can get services superior to what is available even in the wealthy Catalina Foothills school district, while people who live on the South and West sides of TUSD distinctly do NOT get those test scores — or the kind of staff and investment available in those schools — out of TUSD? How about making one of your fabulous graphs showing teacher vacancy rates at Fruchthendler and Sam Hughes vs. south and west side TUSD schools or average years of experience of teaching staff in Fruchthendler and Sam Hughes VS. south and west side schools? Or graphs showing differences in supplementary private investment and tax credit investment in those schools vs. other schools in TUSD?
I really don’t understand the point you’re trying to make here. Is it that even failing TUSD can do well teaching rich kids whose parents voluntarily invest in their schools, or is it that there are some significant failures of justice in resource allocation in TUSD? Or both?
Do tell.
“Just like in real estate, Cat Foothills’ success is all about location, location, location.”
Catalina Foothills High must be built on magic dirt. Maybe we could load up a truck or two of it and send it down to Tucson High. That should help.
David, how, in your view, does high parental income cause higher student test scores? The typical answer I get from defenders of the public education industry is that schools in wealthier districts are better funded. But if that’s the explanation, the relevant metric ought to be per pupil instructional spending, right? But the state auditor report that you cited in your March, 2016 article on this subject (https://www.azauditor.gov/sites/default/fi…) shows that in 2015, TUSD spent $4005 per student on instruction, whereas Cat Foothills spent LESS: $3792 per pupil.
So, what’s the causation, in your view?
I’ll be interested to see what David replies — if he replies. In the meantime perhaps another commenter can add a few thoughts on money and test scores.
High parental income does not cause high test scores. It enables the possibility of higher test scores, when the money is applied in the right way. (Example: when a wealthy family where both parents work 70-hour a week jobs employs a nanny who does not know how to provide the right kind of educational support in the home, their money will not cause their children to have the highest possible test scores those children are capable of having. If, however, they hire a retired teacher who provides the right kind of educational enrichment and support, their money may enable (but not CAUSE) higher test scores — if, that is (to add another significant variable) their children are willing to apply effort in school. In a poor family, both parents may have to work full time to pay rent and utilities and there may not be enough extra left over to secure the optimal kind of child care for the hours when children are not in school.)
Similarly, public funds allocated to a school district can enable but do not cause higher test scores. They will enable higher scores only if the money is applied in the right way. It is easier in wealthier districts where the families have the means to provide maximal educational support in the home. But let’s look at poorer districts, where students come to school with more needs unmet and where helping them learn is harder: if desegregation and / or Title 1 funds are applied to ensure that every classroom in neighborhoods with high concentrations of lower-SES and / or minority families has a qualified teacher in it rather than to build a swimming pool or to add vaguely described “support” positions that have no clear function in increasing the quality of education delivered to students (two examples from the long and baffling history of TUSD’s management of its funding supplements), increased funds may have a chance of enabling better test scores.
To sum it up: what enables (not CAUSES) maximal student success is complex and involves many variables, which would include at a bare minimum: 1) sufficient funding at home and in the school system, 2) the right kind of support in the home either from parents or from supplementary care they hire and fully qualified faculty in the schools, 3) intent on the part of school governance and administration to apply funds they control for STUDENT benefit, and 4) some level of oversight both from an active, engaged, knowledgeable citizenry and from higher level authorities within the state’s educational system. Then there are always the variables of student motivation and application of effort, without which no amount of resource allocation and responsible oversight can do any good.
Some of the variables needed for maximal student success are missing throughout Arizona and others are missing in some of the institutions in this region. One political party whines constantly about what is missing statewide while ignoring or cloaking the local problems and the other denies the reality of statewide problems while failing to use the means at its disposal (state level institutions and governance) to identify and treat the regional problems.
The only way to infer the point of view of the commenter who appears now and then to drop profanities into Safier’s comment streams seems to be to assume that he or she disagrees with the comments he or she insults. So here I suppose we can assume that he or she doesn’t agree that how money is applied in homes and in schools makes a difference to the quality of support or educational services students receive. And / or perhaps he or she does not agree that Title 1 and desegregation funds should be applied to improve the quality of educational services delivered to the populations that should benefit from those funds (the poor and minorities).
It would be interesting to understand how those opinions could be supported. Perhaps one of these days this commenter will state an opinion or a policy preference and be so kind as to explain the rationale for it…?
If you don’t like long comments, you can always skip them. Personally, I don’t like reading profanity, so usually I won’t bother reading or responding to comments that don’t have much to offer besides four letter words. Everyone has their likes and dislikes, and fortunately no one is required to read comments not to their taste.
Nathan K, let me comment on your question about the link between income and test scores. First, the major problem is not the spending on schools. If you spend more on schools in high income areas and less on schools in low income areas, that compounds the basic problem, but it’s not the prime mover.
One of the few things about education we know for sure, based on good international data, is that there’s a very strong correlation between family income and standardized test scores. So the question is, why is that true. Here’s a few probable reasons, in no special order.
Children from families with adequate income have enough to eat and don’t worry about where the next meal comes from. They live in adequate housing where the children most likely can get a little privacy and be guaranteed uninterrupted sleep. They live in reasonably safe neighborhoods where a walk down the street isn’t a cause for concern. They have good health and dental care. All those factors mean they are less likely to walk through the school doors with bodies and minds filled with physical problems and emotional worries. As any of us know, when we’re burdened with personal concerns, or we have a toothache or a stomach ache, or our stomach in rumbling from hunger, we’re going to have more trouble concentrating on things that seem less important than what’s going on inside us, like what the teacher is talking about or what’s written in some book about a subject that’s not intrinsically interesting to us.
Another issue is, higher income parents generally have more education than lower income parents, they generally have jobs which require higher education and they value education more. The children grow up in an atmosphere that emphasizes the same kinds of values as schools when it comes to education. The house has books in it, and the children see their parents reading. They are more likely to be read to. When they go to school, parents expect them to pay attention, do their work and perform well — and as important, since the parents have been successful in school, they know what to encourage. If a child demonstrates gifts in an academic area, those gifts are encouraged and nurtured. Someone in the home can help the children with schoolwork, or a tutor can be hired. And those children are likely to have a wider range of experiences outside the home which are valuable in terms of their classroom education.
When a child has parents, family and neighbors who have gone to college and are in professions demanding education, they assume that’s where they’re heading. If they don’t attend college, that’s the exception, and usually a disappointment to the family. If parents haven’t had higher education or tried it for a short time and did poorly, the children don’t picture themselves as college material, and if they see college in their future, they get less help and encouragement than if they were in higher income families.
The biggest exception to the correlation between poverty and poor educational attainment is people who are educated and come from cultures which encourage education but for some reason lack money. The most typical example is immigrants who were educated professionals in their countries of origin, then come to their new country with no financial resources. While they are low on the economic ladder, everything about their attitudes is more like people who have more money. They expect their children to attain good educations and become professionals, and their expectations tend to be met by their children. You see that in Asian immigrants to the U.S. who tend to come here with education and come from a culture which values education. From what I read recently, African immigrants to the U.S. are the most educated immigrants to this country in history. No matter where these groups of people fall in the economic spectrum, they’re going to encourage their children to excel. One exception from Asia is people from the Hmong ethnic group who come from a culture with little formal education and whose children generally don’t do well in our schools. It’s a telling exception.
Poverty tends to be a vicious cycle which breeds more poverty, and the U.S. creates fertile breeding grounds by not dealing with some of the root causes of poverty. As someone said, trying to get schools to fix poverty without dealing with the problems in the outside world is like trying to clean the air on one side of a screen door. That doesn’t mean we should give up on schools. Schools can do a great deal of good. But to burden them with the task of repairing our societal ills is to ask them to do the impossible.
What’s interesting about your perspective, David, is that it always seems to omit reference to the factors of individual choice on the part of parents, politicians, and administrators. That’s a choice you make, based on political ideology, that screens out several things that are highly relevant to what happens with educational outcomes and in education policy.
I don’t deny that money matters or that culture matters, but individual choice and virtue (or lack thereof) matter as well. Take it from someone who has taught (among other places) in private schools serving primarily high SES families: too often even these families do not know how to, or choose not to, or are too busy to provide optimal levels of support to their children. It’s actually quite common to observe kids floundering academically in families where both parents are high income earners in demanding professions. Where can you go to hire the right kind of consistent social, emotional, and educational support for your child from a fully educated, committed, reliable and engaging adult? Talk to a few professional women who’ve recently become mothers and are looking for it: it is in very short supply indeed. 50 or 60 years ago we decided as a society that two parents working outside the home was the ideal for families of a certain educational / professional level. The formal and informal messages that communicate disapproval to women in those cohorts who leave the workforce to care for their own children are at this point pervasive in this country. Unfortunately, while we were developing that new social (economic?) priority, we forgot to develop solid, high quality services that could keep that societal decision from harming the next generation. It’s a massive systemic “oops,” that harms kids, parents, and the exploited workers in what is largely still a ghettoized employment area: preschool & K-12 “education.”
Leaving aside the now highly politicized area of decisions made within the family, let’s admit that in school districts, what choices politicians and administrators make and whether they have sufficient virtue that they deny themselves the $500 per night hotel suites when traveling and $500K per annum compensation packages and whether or not they are willing to prioritize funding allocations that benefit students over contractors, consultants, and political affiliates matters a great deal to the quality of education students receive. And to their test scores.
All this beautiful rhetoric about cultures and poverty has a certain amount of truth to it, and those factors do need to be taken into consideration. But narratives that are built exclusively of factors outside individual control don’t end up telling the whole truth and they don’t end up providing sound foundations for public policy, either.
To “Include a few more factors if you want an accurate account.”: I’m more likely to pay attention to a comment which has a consistent name attached to it. This doesn’t mean a real name, just something which, when I see it, I can put it in context of other comments by the same person. If this is your first comment on The Range, I apologize for thinking you might be a returning commenter.
Of course, you’re free to continue using a different name as a headline each time, but when someone addresses me directly, I assume that person wants me to read what’s written. I’ll still exercise the option of reading as much or as little as I wish, but like I say, I’m more apt to take something seriously when I can put it in context of previous comments by the same person.
Thanks, David. Good tip. If it ever becomes important to me whether you read and respond to my comments, I may take your suggestion and start using a consistent name and / or my own name. In the meantime, I’ll keep posting under whatever title strikes my fancy, just like the individual who keeps writing to call me a “long winded fuck.” (Your failure and the editors of these streams’ failures to police that behavior: duly noted.) I’m not writing to you or to anyone else in particular, just punishing myself for all the years I spent voting for, donating to, and volunteering for candidates in your dishonest and irresponsible political party, and continuing to measure the distance between Party propaganda and what is actually true. Good mental exercise, and they / you provide plenty of material to work on. Thanks for that.
About the abusive, profanity-laden response to you. I can’t edit the comments section. I sent a note the person at the Weekly who can remove the post and haven’t heard a reply. Those two comments were pure ad hominem attacks without any substance and they don’t belong in the comments thread. I would have removed them if I could have. (If I don’t catch something like that, you can click on “report” at the bottom left of the comment and ask for it to be removed. In this case, the comments were so out of bounds, I’m sure your request would be granted — once the web editor had time to look at it.)
Good luck with that, David. Some of the thuggish behaviors on the local political scene may not be quite as easy to correct as you seem to assume they will be. But there is definitely merit in trying.