Birmingham City Schools (Hoover, Homewood, Mountain Brook: renting, house, neighborhoods)

[bluebeard]

I'm actually curious as to what people have to say about the schools, and if anyone has had any personal experience.
There are a select number of schools run by the city that get high rankings:


Schools in Birmingham City School District - Birmingham, AL | GreatSchools

Notes that Ramsay High School, Phillips Academy, and Wilkerson Middle School are decent.

In various places, including Newsweek, specifically Ramsay is noted as a top Alabama school:
AL: Best High Schools - USNews.com
Ramsay High School, Birmingham Alabama / AL School Profile, Ranking, and Reviews - SchoolDigger.com

Does anyone know whether these ratings are valid? They are supposed to be at least in part based on state and nationwide exams (AP, etc...). I have been told they cheat by a neighbor with a child in a private school, but that person has also said a few racist things so I didn't know if I could trust the comment. I don't know a lot of people in the neighborhood that have kids in the public schools within the Birmingham City Schools as most people at my work live in the suburbs and most of my neighbors don't have school-aged children.

Does anyone really know personally if these ratings actually reflect some sort of school quality and most people's opinions based on (the totally reasonable) assumption that any Birmingham City school sucks? Or are the ratings inaccurate and those schools are totally over-rated in the stats?

Personally I might like Homewood or Hoover schools the best anyway, since they are the most socioeconomically and culturally diverse (as opposed to private schools, Mtn Brook public and Birmingham public schools), but like I always say, that's my personal preference and value system.

[rawrockills]

I've always heard Ramsay was a good school...but I don't have anything to back that up.

[bluebeard]

Originally Posted by rawrockills

I've always heard Ramsay was a good school...but I don't have anything to back that up.

Well, I guess there's also the question: is it a good school given the district, or is it actually a good school metro-wide?

[cpg35223]

Ramsey is kind of a magnet school within the Birmingham school district.

We tried to do the politically correct thing and enroll our kids in Avondale Elementary. After a week, we yanked them and put them into St. Rose Academy. And for me to prefer trusting my kids to a bunch of fire-breathing nuns, that says a lot. Other nuns say the Dominican Sisters there are a little hardcore.

[bluebeard]

Originally Posted by cpg35223

Ramsey is kind of a magnet school within the Birmingham school district.

But it still doesn't seem to be a very desired school, in general, despite getting decent stats. Why is that?

I wouldn't send my kid to Avondale either.

[vezz77]

Care to tell us more about Avondale? I'd like to know the specifics of what is going on there since eventually any kids I have would be zoned for that school.

Here in Forest Park we had Superintendent Witherspoon come to our neighborhood meeting a few weeks ago. You can tell he really wants people in our district to start sending their kids to public school. Out of 2000 school-aged kids in Birmingham that go to private schools, District 3 (including Forest Park, Highland Park, and Southside) has 1800. That's a huge chunk. He encouraged anyone to go visit the school whenever they wanted, even if you don't have kids yet.

[cpg35223]

Originally Posted by vezz77

Care to tell us more about Avondale? I'd like to know the specifics of what is going on there since eventually any kids I have would be zoned for that school.

Here in Forest Park we had Superintendent Witherspoon come to our neighborhood meeting a few weeks ago. You can tell he really wants people in our district to start sending their kids to public school. Out of 2000 school-aged kids in Birmingham that go to private schools, District 3 (including Forest Park, Highland Park, and Southside) has 1800. That's a huge chunk. He encouraged anyone to go visit the school whenever they wanted, even if you don't have kids yet.

Well, we lived in Forest Park for fourteen years, and we really tried to do all the right things. We checked out Avondale, took the school tours, enrolled, etc. etc. The problem is that you have so many poor inner city kids going there that the school must devote all its resources to teaching them and dealing with all the accompanying social problems.

And I say this as someone who coached Southside baseball for five years. You would not believe the hoops we had to get through just to get the kids to games on time. Every baseball team I coached could be basically divided into three groups: Forest Park kids with motivated, responsible parents; Working class kids with motivated, responsible parents; and a third set with seemingly non-existent parents.

Mind you, these kids were great. They would come to our house after practice (We lived a block from the field), etc. etc. But some of these kids had parents who would essentially leave them at home for days at a time, some because of their jobs, but others because they were terrible parents. There were two kids, Adero and R.J., whom I coached for three years, and I never met a single one of their relatives. Never talked to them on the phone.
In my last two years as a coach, I finally figured out a buddy system. One kid was always responsible for the other when it came to getting to practices on time, etc. Because the parents sure weren't going to do it.

Now imagine the issues involved with simply putting a baseball team together apply that to a classroom. That's the problem you have with Avondale School. It's not the teachers' fault. It's not the administrators' fault. It's just some really crappy parenting. Call me harsh, but it's hard enough giving your child an education. When your six-year-old child is the only reader in a class of 15, what are you going to do?

We encountered any number of other parents who took a stab at it, too, white and black. After all who really wants to pony up for private schools if a decent public school is available? But at the same time, who wants their child to be a guinea pig?

To me, it was not so much a race issue as a class issue. My next door neighbor for 13 years was a black architect, and he and his wife refused to send their kids, too. Instead, they shipped their kids across town to OLS and John Carroll.

Now that's not to say that inner city kids can't learn or that inner city parents aren't motivated. I helped Cornerstone Schools for a couple of years and was just amazed at the ability and achievements of their students. By the time they reached the 7th and 8th grade, Cornerstone Students had standardized test scores roughly on par with Homewood and Hoover. But, at the same time, the requirement of Cornerstone Schools was that the parent be involved in the child's education and participate in the life of the school. Something you just won't find in Avondale.

Sorry to give you such a bleak view, because there was so much that we loved about that area of town from its convenience and diversity to the graciousness of its neighborhoods. But we finally faced the economic decision of sending our kids to Altamont or John Carroll and--guess what?--Mountain Brook won out. When the last child graduates, we'll be moving back. But you only get one chance to educate a child.

[vezz77]

cpg, thanks for your honesty and straightforwardness, even if it is bleak. I hate to hear stories like that, but they come all too often and it is easy to see why Birmingham is losing population when you hear these stories. The flip side is that it is really hard to turn a school around without students that have motivated parents. So, it is a kind of negative externality of having to move to a better district - the former district loses a kid with motivated parents. When you add all of those decisions together for a large group of people, the effect is magnified. To turn a school like Avondale around, the entire community will have to prosper enough for the majority of student base to have parents that demand a good education.

I guess it is my hope that Avondale Elementary will improve enough before I have school aged children that I will consider sending them there. I dont know if that is a foolish hope of not.

[bluebeard]

Originally Posted by vezz77

I guess it is my hope that Avondale Elementary will improve enough before I have school aged children that I will consider sending them there. I dont know if that is a foolish hope of not.

I wouldn't count on it. Parents need something that shows a possible system change, at the least, which is why charter, magnet, and alternative schools can be even reasonably close to suburban schools. I'm pretty idealistic, but its totally understandable that parents don't want to send their kids to bad schools. Like cpg said, its hard enough for kids to get an adequate education. Given a great home environment, my bet is a lot of kids would overcome the bad schools just fine. But these days no one wants to take that risk and has that extra effort, understandably.
This is not just a Birmingham issue. It is actually the exception, rather than the rule, that an inner city public school is decent. Including cities much wealthier than Birmingham. IF Birmingham schools became high-quality, it would be such an outlier at bucking the national trend I would be incredibly impressed.

But this is my question: Looking at the available ratings, Avondale schools are still at the bottom. However there are schools in district 5 (schools in Southside and downtown, not just Ramsay) that get very high ratings. If you want to send your kid to Birmingham schools, perhaps you should consider that district (except my guess is you own a house and don't want to move). I wanted to know if places like Ramsay and Philips Academy are adequate, given the top ratings they have. If not, then the rating are obviously not very useful.

I guess no one on the board has personal experience with the higher rated schools though. I don't entirely trust the comments online, since they may be school boosters or something.

[bluebeard]

Originally Posted by vezz77

So, it is a kind of negative externality of having to move to a better district - the former district loses a kid with motivated parents. When you add all of those decisions together for a large group of people, the effect is magnified.

This, of course is the problem. I feel deeply about this, and I feel that educational opportunity is the defining class issue of our time. But on an individual level, it is pretty difficult to ask people to gamble with their little treasures. I don't currently see any workable solution to this problem. THe efforts for reform may be seeds, but we will wait and see if they result in anything truly positive. I actually see a lot of these effort as being image more than substance, but that image can later beget real substance (e.g. the opening of a charter school making higher-class parents more comfortable enrolling their kids in public school).