Why is AISD shrinking? (Austin, Round Rock: condo, credit, public school)

[ScoPro]

Austin97 said:

“AISD just announced equity for disciplinary outcomes. That means that each race should have an equal number of incidents per student. This is going to make it harder for teachers and administrators to discipline students which mainly hurts the good students and makes the education worse. Alternately maybe they will increase the number of disciplinary actions against asians and whites.”

AISD’s decades-long “equity” virtue signaling policies have indeed worsened the quality of education in the city’s schools. Sad, really.

[verybadgnome]

"Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde emphasized the importance of moving away from a zero-tolerance policy toward disorderly conduct to lower rates of disciplinary actions in the district."

"As of February, African American students made up 19% of students who received disciplinary actions—defined as in-school or home school suspensions for full or partial school days, and discretionary removals to the district’s Alternative Learning Center—despite being 6.3% of AISD’s student population. Special education students were involved in 32% of disciplinary action incidents. They represent 13% of AISD students."

https://communityimpact.com/austin/c...on-in-schools/

The only way this and the disparities can be reduced is to adopt a "look the other way" approach which of course doesn't make the problem go away.

[cheeva]

AISD has the best of intentions, but they try to engineer certain outcomes, and it has unintended consequences. I would say that AISD is a main driver of segregation in Austin neighborhoods.

Example: Two middle class families live in a marginal, yet affordable neighborhood that tracks to mediocre schools (like Akins or Crockett). This is an Anglo and an Hispanic family. Both families have the opportunity to transfer to a decent school (like Austin High) which has kept BOTH families in the neighborhood instead of leaving for better school tracks or districts.

What happens when the race-based transfer policy is applied to this families? The Anglo student is told to attend a crap school (Akins, Crockett) in order to racially balance the campuses, while the Hispanic student is told he can attend Austin, Bowie, or McCallum?

This is happening in AISD, and the Anglo students are leaving these marginal neighborhoods, and movign to Buda, CP, etc because they are not being giving the same quality of school choice.

This is causing a racial divide in Austin among families. The Travis/Crockett/Akins tracks are being purged of middle class Anglo students because of AISD's anti-Anglo transfer policies.

It's not racist for middle Anglo families to leave. The middle class Hispanic families would leave if they were treated this way too.

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by cheeva

AISD has the best of intentions, but they try to engineer certain outcomes, and it has unintended consequences. I would say that AISD is a main driver of segregation in Austin neighborhoods.

Example: Two middle class families live in a marginal, yet affordable neighborhood that tracks to mediocre schools (like Akins or Crockett). This is an Anglo and an Hispanic family. Both families have the opportunity to transfer to a decent school (like Austin High) which has kept BOTH families in the neighborhood instead of leaving for better school tracks or districts.

What happens when the race-based transfer policy is applied to this families? The Anglo student is told to attend a crap school (Akins, Crockett) in order to racially balance the campuses, while the Hispanic student is told he can attend Austin, Bowie, or McCallum?

This is happening in AISD, and the Anglo students are leaving these marginal neighborhoods, and movign to Buda, CP, etc because they are not being giving the same quality of school choice.

This is causing a racial divide in Austin among families. The Travis/Crockett/Akins tracks are being purged of middle class Anglo students because of AISD's anti-Anglo transfer policies.

It's not racist for middle Anglo families to leave. The middle class Hispanic families would leave if they were treated this way too.

like the other person that said only childless families were moving to austin, this is a fun story without any data to support it.

One answer is the boom in charter school attendance.

https://www.kxan.com/news/austins-ch...lack-families/

The researchers say, “this leap in charter enrollment is predominantly attributed to an increased number of Black and Hispanic enrollees, indicating an over-representation in the charter student body statewide.”

Over the past seven years it’s lost $562 million to charter schools.

The district says 16,000 students zoned for AISD currently attend charter schools instead, a number that’s expected in increase to 24,100 by the 2026-27 school year.

This is AISDs reason for why they think students are attending charters.

“There are so many different reasons as to why someone would want to go to a charter school,” Lowe explained. “We know charters do a lot of advertising, and a lot of marketing — traditional public schools do not have the capacity to do that.”

This is one of AISDs solutions

For now, they are hoping programs like Operation Reconnect will work. The door-to-door neighborhood walk allows parents and teachers to engage and recruit families back to AISD.

[ScoPro]

It is obvious why parents are sending their kids to charter & parochial schools, and it ain’t because of advertising.

[chitown50s]

Originally Posted by ScoPro

It is obvious why parents are sending their kids to charter & parochial schools, and it ain’t because of advertising.

Things may look obvious to ScoPro and other grumps, but I guess I'm looking at things with the wrong colored glasses.

I see, personally, from the last 20 years until right now, lots of kids going to Austin High, McCallum, LASA and Anderson then getting into the most selective colleges and then the older kids just killing it in life thereafter.

[ScoPro]

Originally Posted by chitown50s

Things may look obvious to ScoPro and other grumps, but I guess I'm looking at things with the wrong colored glasses.

I see, personally, from the last 20 years until right now, lots of kids going to Austin High, McCallum, LASA and Anderson then getting into the most selective colleges and then the older kids just killing it in life thereafter.

No matter how dysfunctional the district, the top students with caring parents will almost always do well.
It’s the lower 2/3 with inactive parents that tells the tale.

[cheeva]

Originally Posted by chitown50s

Things may look obvious to ScoPro and other grumps, but I guess I'm looking at things with the wrong colored glasses.

I see, personally, from the last 20 years until right now, lots of kids going to Austin High, McCallum, LASA and Anderson then getting into the most selective colleges and then the older kids just killing it in life thereafter.

If you're a minority, you can easily transfer into those schools. Anglo transfer? Not a chance.

[cheeva]

https://www.kvue.com/article/news/ed...2-14307df7d9ee

AISD continuing to decline. Teacher resignations in AISD last month up 500% compared to March 2019. That was not a typo.

AISD may collapse soon.

[cheeva]

Originally Posted by Dialgatime321

Fascinating! I guess my theory is not explanatory in this one particular case. I suppose people with kids are moving to greater Austin, and people are coming to Austin and starting families. But for some reason, parents are not putting their kids in public schools. It doesn't change my theory that progressive culture represents an overall drain on the national birth rate, though.

Progressives don't value the fundamentals of education (STEM) the way conservatives do, and those areas of study are what show up on standardized test and the SATs, which is what colleges look at. Liberals focus on areas such as SEL and the Humanities instead. The more expensive an area becomes, the more it disproportionately attracts childless people with more disposable income. Those people tend to be more liberal, and the ideologies entrench themselves within the community. Children's playgrounds are replaced with hobo camps and dog parks. The nuclear families find themselves unwelcome in the urban neighborhoods, and they leave. It's not just AISD's fault, it's that the urban Austin community doesn't prioritize families or education to the level that the suburbs do, so families leave.