Pittsburgh School District (Harrisburg, Plum, Oakmont: appointed, buy, school districts)

[BrianTH]

Rhee would have been fine with me, but it would have been considered a step down for her. Fortunately, it appears Lane is committed to the reform process.

Edit: By the way, PPS once again did pretty well according to the PBT "Overachiever" rankings, which are a bit crude but at least try to factor in the nature of the incoming student population when assessing district performance.

[gg]

Originally Posted by szug-bot

2009 PBT Honor Roll Rank (local districts) | Pittsburgh Business Times

Wow, I am shocked Penn Hills is ranked so low. It is amazing how fast a school district can move to the bottom in such a short time. Woodland Hills is horrible as well and I didn't know that. Not that long ago places like Edgewood enjoyed their own high schools. That area would be so nice if they didn't get lumped in with such a crowed. It sure goes to show you time and time again that these big schools that mix the neighborhoods together have a very negative effect on the nice areas where parents and kids want to learn. the districts go down the tubes and parents have to send kids to private schools and pay the huge tax bills on top of it. The system sure has proven to be broken. Hope more and more money moves to the city, but it will take many decades for there to be any improvements in the schools, if it ever happens.

[BrianTH]

To keep this brief since we have been through all this before: not every public school district can have less than its fair share of disadvantaged students, and the more school districts you have like that, the more disadvantaged students the remaining school districts will have to deal with. The only acceptable solution is therefore more consolidation and more dispersal of disadvantaged students, not less.

[gg]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

To keep this brief since we have been through all this before: not every public school district can have less than its fair share of disadvantaged students, and the more school districts you have like that, the more disadvantaged students the remaining school districts will have to deal with. The only acceptable solution is therefore more consolidation and more dispersal of disadvantaged students, not less.

Your old ideas and plans have failed miserably. Seems you are not much of a history buff. I will try and educate you a little, so maybe you will at some point realize that huge schools that lumped tons of disadvantaged kids with kids from homes that care about education and properly raising kids had a completely negative effect on many neighborhoods in the Pittsburgh area. Lets take a look at Edgewood for example. It was a great school district and founded in the late 1800's. The big push came along in the early 80's (I lived in Pittsburgh at that time and you didn't), to not allow the nice little neighborhoods to have their own school districts and they were to merge with some very rough neighborhoods. At that time the idea was to boost the disadvantaged kids. Trying to pick up kids with horrible home lives was obviously the idea, but the proof is in the statistics. It has been over 20 years since the nice little neighborhood schools were FORCED to merge with the disadvantaged kids and what do the statistics say? Hmm, overwhelmingly they state that it had a very bad effect on the once very successful smaller schools. For some reason, Brian, you just don't understand it? The statistics ARE there for proof, yet you continue on the same path. I guess I just will not understand someone that can't understand simple stats? Maybe I have an advantage being that I grew up in Pittsburgh and saw the destruction of many of these schools and in turn the very negative effect on the once beautiful areas. They didn't want the nice areas to have such an advantage over the poor districts. Seems like a good idea to merge them, but statistics say, it didn't work and it won't work.

I find it very boring to convince you. I really see no way of getting you up to speed on Pittsburgh history. I suggest you start reading about the old schools and what has happened to the kids that had to merge with non-likeminds. There are reasons for boarders and reasons people live in certain areas. They have a desire to raise children in a way they see fit. No one is to blame, because we are talking about parents and how they feel about raising kids. Parents have a right to raise kids their own style. That style didn't work out when these schools were made to merge with districts that didn't have that style. I am trying to make this as simple as I can for you to grasp, but it seems you just don't understand.

[BrianTH]

Again, we have had this conversation before, so I will keep this brief.

To repeat, the only solution is forward, not back. Many areas have county-wide school districts, and we would likely need to do something similar here, or at least close to it (say, no more than 2-4 districts in Allegheny County).

Just to add a couple new facts so as to make this not completely pointless:

As I have noted before, the Pittsburgh Metro Area as a whole has about 34% disadvantaged students (defined as students who qualify for free or subsidized school lunches). Not every school district could be exactly 34%, but we know that the effects on school quality start getting bad around 50%, and they get more and more bad the farther you get past 50%. So, a reasonable--in fact minimal--goal would be to have no school/district in the Pittsburgh area over 49%. Which is achievable, since the overall average is only 34%.

Woodland Hills is currently about 69.7%. That is over twice the Metro average, and well past the 50% threshold. Therefore, it is completely unsurprising it is not performing well. Again, if you try to go backward--say by carving back out Edgewood--that necessarily means the rest of Woodland Hills will have an even higher percentage. This should be an unacceptable result, knowing what we know about concentration levels and their effects on school quality.

So one more time, the only acceptable solution is to move forward, to the point there are no more Woodland Hills-type school districts left at all.

Edit: Oh, and suffice it to say I very well understand the history of Woodland Hills, having lived in Woodland Hills for many years during which time I had a child. The disagreement here isn't caused by some lack of understanding on my part. The disagreement arises because I am unwilling to make already-bad public schools even worse for large numbers of children. We need to be making them better, not worse, and we need to be making them better not just for the children who are lucky enough to be born to wealthier parents.

So the basic problem is I care about poor children. And h_curtis does not, and that is the gulf we cannot cross.

[robrobrob]

The problem with Woodland Hills is the school district is not as affluent as it once way. At the onset, Churchill, Edgewood, Wilkins and Forest Hills were all pretty nice and initially they were able to prop up the district. These four areas are no where near as nice as they were 25 years ago. It was a slippery slope. If the schools aren't any good, then no one wants to buy a house there so the prices decrease. Or they don't appreciate at the same rate as other neighborhoods so they become cheaper. The result is that less affluent individuals buy there, or individuals without kids buy a house because it is a lot of house for the money and they don't care about the school system or people with kids think it is a great value so they can afford private schools.

I lived there when the merger happened. My family did the private school thing for a couple years before moving to a better school district. A lot of my friends that stayed switched to private schools. None of us were affluent but our parents just believed in a quality education so they penny pinched to afford private schools.

The only way to turn this around is to have small neighborhood schools and hope that enough students stick it out through high school.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by robrobrob

The only way to turn this around is to have small neighborhood schools and hope that enough students stick it out through high school.

Or do what they do elsewhere, and have such big districts that you can't easily move to the next district over to exclude the poorer students.

Not that neighborhood schools--and for that matter charter schools--are necessarily bad. But they already have some decent neighborhood schools for the lower grades in Woodland Hills--you just can't get past the middle-school/high-school problem. The only way to do that is to have the upper grades drawing from a bigger, more economically-typical potential student population.

[robrobrob]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Or do what they do elsewhere, and have such big districts that you can't easily move to the next district over to exclude the poorer students.

Not that neighborhood schools--and for that matter charter schools--are necessarily bad. But they already have some decent neighborhood schools for the lower grades in Woodland Hills--you just can't get past the middle-school/high-school problem. The only way to do that is to have the upper grades drawing from a bigger, more economically-typical potential student population.

I realize that they to a certain extent have neighborhood schools, but I was suggesting even smaller schools.

One thing going against a county wide school district is that our roads are terrible. Practically speaking this prevents us from busing kids very far.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by robrobrob

One thing going against a county wide school district is that our roads are terrible. Practically speaking this prevents us from busing kids very far.

I agree there are some practical issues that would need to be worked out. That's part of why I wouldn't necessarily insist on only one district for Allegheny County, although I don't think it would need to be more than a handful.

[squarian]

Originally Posted by robrobrob

One thing going against a county wide school district is that our roads are terrible. Practically speaking this prevents us from busing kids very far.

OK - how about one district south of the Mon-Ohio, another north of the Allegheny-Ohio and a third for everything between the Mon & Allegheny, with all three subdivisions sharing magnets and other specialized schools. The "East Allegheny" district would be saddled with most of the inner-city & Mon Valley areas of poverty, but with prosperous areas everywhere from Shadyside/Sq Hill to Oakmont/Plum, it could cope.