Quadrant Magnets for CPS Schools

Today, our local newspaper has dedicated it’s entire opinion page to criticizing the current first-come-first-served enrollment process for CPS magnet schools.  

First is an article written by a “Local Expert”, Michael Evans, a professor of education at Miami University, who lives in Wyoming.  Notable is that the suburb of Wyoming is just outside the City of Cincinnati neighborhood of Hartwell.  Also notable is that it is very expensive to buy a house in Wyoming, which you must do if you want your children to attend the highly-ranked Wyoming Schools.  Mr. Evans is worried about the Cincinnati parents who cannot spend the time camping out and waiting in line.  But is he concerned about the parents who cannot afford to buy a house in Wyoming?  Hmmm.  Did you ever notice that there are no apartments in Wyoming? No affordable housing?  Hmmm.  Why not? 

Look, my kids are old enough that I personally do not have to worry about CPS’s Elementary Magnet Schools.  But I remember what it is like when you have a 4 year old, and you are very anxious to give them the best education you can.  If CPS does not allow parents to have control and choice, then the parents that have the means will make a choice, and that choice will be spend a lot of money on a house in a better school district or send their kids to private/parochial school.

The only opinion on the page that was interesting to me was the one from Helen Adams, of Clifton.  She complains that Clifton no longer has a neighborhood school.  I think she makes a great point.  Fairview is located on the site of the defunct local Clifton School.  And now it attracts students from Pleasant Ridge and Westwood.  Does all this traveling from the far reaches of the district make sense? 

When my wife and I first looked at schools, we were most interested in the CPS Montessori Schools.  At the time there were 4 quadrants, and you could only apply to the school in your quadrant.  The schools were: Dater, Sands, Winton, and North Avondale.  I like the quadrant solution.  You stay somewhat close to home but still have choice.  The only problem for us, was that the year we started the process, our quadrant school Sands… moved.  And it moved as far away as possible and yet stay in the City limits: Mt Washington.  We were not interested in spending the next 8 years commuting our children to Mt Washington.

Maybe a lottery is the way of the future.  That seems to be the take of the Editorial page.  Hey Cleveland is doing it.  But I just cannot see new parents willing to risk the education of their children on complete chance.  Moving to a full lottery system could severely hinder the attraction and retention of young couples.  A lottery would be a step back for the City, and area-based magnets schools would be a step in the right direction.  

Substitute Teachers

Do CPS teachers take more sick days than the average teacher?

It seems to me that a teacher should schedule elective surgery for the summer months, not miss the last 10 days of school! Decades ago, when I was in elementary school, a substitute teacher was an extremely rare event. My kid's teachers miss more school than any students!

77% of Parents Happy with Public Education

"Memo to suburban voucher opponents who ‘support public education’: you’re already sending your kid to private school. You’re just confused because your tuition fees came bundled with granite countertops and hardwood floors."
- E. D. Kain
After this snark, he goes on to say that school choice and vouchers are not really the way to improve poor school districts.

An Excellent School System with No Testing

...I finished the film feeling a bit angry – angry that for all the talk of school-choice in our current education debate, the choices available to me and to my children (not to mention the countless people far less fortunate than myself) are really false choices. No matter whether you attend a public school or a charter, you are really bound to the modern testing regime....

The problem, I think, with the current conception of charter schools is that they create even more losers and winners than the status quo. In Finland there is a certain base-level of quality that every school is require to meet. Teachers are treated as professionals and teaching is an exclusive, competitive field. All students have free transportation and free meals.
- E. D. Kain

I really want to see this film.

Magnet Lottery System

Dear School Board Members; (email: davisph@cps-k12.org )

Please do not ruin your successful magnet programs by changing to a straight lottery enrollment system. My children are already in our chosen CPS magnet programs, so your decision will not directly effect my family. However, I do think the introduction of the lottery could result in young families leaving the City.

Seven years ago we were facing this decision of which school would be best for our oldest son. Our neighborhood school was Washington Park Elementary, a struggling school that was rumoured to be scheduled for closure. We considered private schools like Mercy Montessori but we could not afford them. It seemed to us that our options were either a CPS magnet program, or move out of the City. We visited several of the CPS magnet programs and we were completely thrilled with what we saw at each of them. In the end we decided the closest magnet program, Fairview was best for us and our son.

At that time we did not have to wait in line, but merely took a tour and then added our names to a waiting list a year before school would start for our child. The system was simple and painless. Also as you know, at that time, the school used the Tauber index to admit children partially based on race and gender. This system worked well for us as it kept the diversity of the student population, yet required some commitment by the parents to think ahead and at least visit the school and learn about it before applying. However, as you well know, because of court decisions, CPS's use of the Tauber Index's use was ended in 2007.

At about the same time the racial quotas were removed, CPS told Fairview administration to end the waiting list method of enrollment and made them go to the first-come first-serve method which resulted in a 24 hour camp out the first year. This has now grown into several nights of camping.

Now, I don't like the idea of making parents camp out, but the only worse enrollment method would be a straight lottery. The parents must keep some control. They cannot be left to the pure chance of a random drawing. If I can think back to when I was a younger parent, the one thing that kept us here, was the knowledge that we had the power to choose. We could do things like visit early and talk with the principal so we would have a reasonable chance of getting the school that fit our particular child's needs. The fact that we had these choices made us strong supporters of CPS.

If the Board insist on moving to a lottery system, then please at least keep the requirement that the parents physically visit and learn about the school before they are qualified to enter the lottery. Also it is only common sense that siblings continue to have enrollment priority. To make parents endure a lottery for every child would surely be demoralizing not to mention that the results could be a transportation disaster with kids from one family attending several elementary schools.

Remember that parents know what is best for their child. If you keep as much power in their hands you will end up with a much stronger school district.

Sincerely;

High School Ratings & NCLB

I plan on writing much more about the school system over the next year. My thoughts lately have been on the degree to which the elementary classroom is better suited to girls than boys, at least boys like my son. But while I ponder these issues in a stew in my brain, take a gander at some other school info that has been sitting in my inbox:


Here is a guy, who for fun, ranks Ohio public schools. For what its' worth:
(Click for larger view)

From the above graph, here are his numbers for CPS High Schools:
Walnut Hills: 114.8
Clark Montes: 105.9
SCPA : 100.8
RA Taft Tech: 99.0
West Side Mon: 97.7
Dater HS: 97.6
Schroeder Pad: 97.6
Withrow: 95.0
Western Hills: 90.2

Ohio Largest Districts Compared

Here is a PDF of the full report.




Also, here is an article from a few months ago about the possible changing of "No Child Left Behind":

...the past eight years should leave us wary of relying solely on isolated test results for high-stakes decision-making. She isn't against tests per se—or even tests being used as one element in a more comprehensive evaluation system. Schools have to have some way of judging performance...

...an astonishing 83 percent of charter schools were either no better or actually worse than traditional public schools serving similar populations. Indeed, the authors concluded that bad charter schools outnumber good ones by a ratio of roughly 2 to 1.

...The dirty dark secret of NCLB is that we may know how to identify the worst performing schools, but no one (yet) knows how to turn them around in any consistent and reliable way. And I mean no one. Not the Gates Foundation to date. Not most charter programs. No one.

... "The only guaranteed strategy [for improving schools] is to change the student population, replacing low-performing students with higher-performing students." And this is, in fact, what the rare success stories—like KIPP—typically do: skim off the best and most motivated students from disadvantaged neighborhoods....

...In the 1950s, smart women, except for truly determined trailblazers, had few professional options beyond teaching. Ditto for blacks and other minorities. If you had a particularly smart and ambitious daughter, people would say, "I bet she grows up to be a teacher!" While many things have happened to public schools over the last 50 years, one of the most important is that this low-cost captive labor pool of extremely talented men and women has evaporated completely—and along with it the respect that was once automatically accorded to those who entered the profession...

...trying to evaluate teachers solely on the basis of crude standardized tests is too reductive and will likely only alienate the kind of creative, dynamic people the profession hopes to attract in greater numbers. But the question remains: How do we lure more, talented people to the profession and give them—and the many superb teachers who already exist—the support and respect they deserve? For all its faults, if NCLB has done nothing else, it's helped to clarify this challenge.

CPS Schools Competitive

Recently I posted some anectdotal information about people moving to Cincinnati specifically so that they could send their children to Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS). I thought I would follow that up with some sampling comparing selected CPS schools to other nearby public schools. I chose the schools that everyone says are the best: Sycamore, Indian Hill and Lakota, and I threw in Colerain for comparison, because I know that district pretty well. Then I chose what people say are the best of the CPS schools. I kept the information limited and simple focusing on the NCLB number (No Child Left Behind mandatory testing), a sampling or two of minority numbers, percentages of those receiving free lunch, and number of teachers with advanced degrees:

Some thoughts about this:

We are not exactly comparing apples to apples because Schiel is only to 4th grade and some go to 6th while others go to 8th. It is harder to get the high scores in the upper grades.

I think Montessori schools have more teachers with advanced degrees because it is required to teach the method.

Some people love the Montessori method but believe their scores may be artificially low because they do not teach to the test as much as in a standard classroom. I tend to agree with this claim.

The "% poor" is shorthand for students that qualify for free lunches. This is not necessarily poverty, but is just a general indicator of degree of affluence.

I included %Asian and %Black just as a general indicator. Several other categories are tracked, including White, Hispanic and or course a growing number are checking the mixed race box.

The really high and really low numbers are worth noting:

- only 59% of teachers in Indian Hill (our richest neighborhood) have advanced degrees and 41% at Colerain Middle School?

- There are relatively high percentage of Asians in Sycamore Township.

- Sayler Park has so many economically disadvantaged families? Higher than even Schiel and Winton Montessori?

- Sayler Park, Indian Hill and Sycamore have very few black students.

Schools with strong academics combined with diversity of student population:
North Avondale, Dater, Sands, Fairview, and Kilgour. GO CPS!!!

Statistics from the 08-09 year found here: reportcard.ohio.gov

Maybe I’ll do some high school comparisons next.

Families Move Here for the (Public) Schools

Yes, believe it or not. Over the past two weeks I have talked with or heard about several families that have specifically moved back into the city so that their children can attend one of Cincinnati Public Schools' Magnet programs. A sampling:

1. I met a former co-worker at the art museum. When I worked with him 15 years ago, he had just married, and was living in Batavia and commuting in to the city. When his kids reached school age, they moved to Mt Washington, specifically so their children could attend Sands Montessori. I know many families who live in Mt Washington for this exact same reason. My old coworker grew up in Clermont County and he always said his primary education was very poor. Also his children are biracial and I assume he didn't feel the diversity would be sufficient in Batavia. They love Sands, and that feeling seems universal with families there.

2. I just found out that a young family from Seattle, in which the mother has some Cincinnati roots, is buying a vacant building on Elm Street. They have a 12 year old child that has auditioned for SCPA and has also interviewed for a possible Walnut Hills admission. They are selling their expensive house in Seattle and settling in OTR to be "where the action is".!!??

3. OTRCH (OTR Community Housing) just sold a townhouse on Pleasant Street to a young family that already attends SCPA. They are very excited about the proposed changes to Washington Park and the new SCPA building.

4. We have become friends with a new neighbor with a little girl. They moved from White Oak (a Northwest suburb) to Over-the-Rhine specifically to attend SCPA kindergarten in the Fall. They are very excited to be able to walk to school to such a wonderful new facility.

There are dozens more families that I know personally that have bought homes close to the CPS school of their choice. There are probably hundreds more that are buying homes close to schools such as Dater Montessori, North Avondale Montessori, Kilgour, Covedale, SCPA, Walnut Hills, Clark Montessori etc.. And think about this. Where else do you have such choice? If you live in Mason, you have no choice about which public school you attend. CPS has many city-wide magnet programs for elementary school, and ALL of the high schools now enroll district-wide and are effectively magnet schools. I know a family with many children and some are attending Walnut Hills, some are attending Clark and some are attending Mercy Montessori and other Catholic schools. In fact I think they have one attending Covington Latin. The choices here are amazing and I really cannot imaging having it any other way.

Good Public Schools Get Overwhelmed

Even in parts of Manhattan parents buy condos in areas with a known "good" public school, and soon overwhelm the school. Now the school board is building more schools to handle all the kids:

...The building boom of the past half-dozen years has reshaped Tribeca, adding residential high-rises where once there were almost none, leading to an explosion of school-age kids. There's 200 Chambers Street, for example, a newer 30-story and 258-unit building located in the same complex as P.S. 234. Across the street from P.S. 234 is 101 Warren Street, another new 35-story building with 228 units. Both condo complexes pamper residents with hotel-like services.... Both have been advertised as "zoned for PS 234."

For upper-middle-class parents, the anxiety isn't manufactured, particularly in this economy. High-paying jobs are less secure — or, in some cases, gone — and private schools are more difficult to pull off. Tuition continues to rise despite the recession, and competition for the spots is ferocious. Many Tribeca residents who are wealthy on paper feel squeezed and more reliant than ever on quality public education, raising the stakes. "One reason we moved here was for 234,"...

So the city wants some students to attend P.S. 89, "a very good" school, as Department of Education official Rose puts it. (The city is also constructing two new elementary schools nearby, one close to Battery Park and the other closer to the Seaport.) ...

Camping Out for 48hrs

Parents began a line/campground Sunday evening at Fairview and other CPS schools. Fairview will begin accepting applications Tuesday night at midnight. During dinner with a good friend Sunday he recieved a text message that the line had started to form. He left the supper immediately and is about #40 in line. Unfortunately he must miss 2 days of work to make this happen. There musst be a better way:
 

A Trip to CPS Bake Shop

OK, I had a comment on an earlier thread that I had to research. Turns out CPS sells baked goods out of it's central cafeteria (the Bake Shop) every school day 11-1.

Write-up in Cincinnati Magazine, Sept 2001:

CPS website on their food.\

The location is a 1928 era school building that was built to train kids how to repair automobiles. The neighborhood is technically Mt. Auburn, but is east of Reading Road and West of I-71. After going to get the baked goods, I explored some interesting side-streets that I had never walked before.

Iowa Street Building

Automotive Trades School

[where: 2315 Iowa Street, Cincinnati, OH 45206]

Inside the Bake Shop

Tornado Shelter Sign

The women in the shop were very friendly. I got a pie for $9 and also a few free samples of cookies and cakes:

Rated Excellent Again

 

Auction of Historic CPS Buildings

Four weeks from today, Cincinnati Public Schools is auctioning off some beautiful historic school buildings.

The 9 school buildings are: Bloom, Bramble, Linwood, McKinley, Swifton, Roosevelt, Windsor, Fairview, Heberle. Seven of these are amazing buildings on great sites.

Since they are right across the street, maybe Citylink will buy Bloom and Heberle? Then maybe Terry's Turf Club will buy Linwood or McKinley so that people could actually get a seat when trying to get one of their hamburgers. Alicia and Steve Reese could buy Bramble and Allen AME could buy Swifton(to demolish and build new houses) and Antiques and Antiquities guy could buy Roosevelt. The Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation could buy Windsor, and Justin Jeffre could buy Fairview.

Seriously, some of these buildings are amazing and would be fantastic conversion projects turning them either into housing or offices. Of course they would also make great schools, but that is another story.

UPDATE: Here is a photo list of a similar situation in St. Louis.

Standardized Testing Out of Control

First they started eliminating recess so that they could concentrate on increasing test scores. Now I read that many schools are testing Kindergartners! I think this kind of pressure is really bad policy. Kids can naturally learn to read. Forcing tasks that they are not ready for is detrimental.

...the kindergarten curriculum is what used to be the first-grade curriculum,” ...“What evidence do we have that this pushing is beneficial? While some children can handle the pressure, others cannot. One of my daughters struggles to keep up and hates school.”

...“In order to prepare kids ahead of time for the state tests, hard core curriculum must start in kindergarten. Our kids are not actually getting smarter. The scores are not increasing. And the rates of children with anxiety issues are increasing rapidly.”

...standardized testing and test prep have become daily activities in many public kindergartens. Teachers say they are under pressure to get children ready for the third-grade tests...

The findings are documented in a new report, Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School, released on March 20 by the nonprofit Alliance for Childhood. The authors, ... say that kindergarten testing is “out of control.”

...“Rigid testing policies do not make sense in early childhood education,” states the Alliance for Childhood report. “Standardized testing of children under age eight, when used to make significant decisions about the child’s education, is in direct conflict with the professional standards of every educational testing organization.”

...“The vast majority of kindergarten teachers now spend some time each day on testing and test preparation, an activity that would have been considered irrelevant and even harmful in the past.”

...a kindergarten teacher in Zanesville, Ohio, wrote to her local paper, “All we are doing is stealing childhood from innocent children. Shame on our government for making us be thieves. Shame on them for not listening to what children really need.”

...Long-term studies suggest that the early gains fade away by fourth grade and that by age 10 children in play-based kindergartens excel over others in reading, math, social and emotional learning, creativity, oral expression, industriousness, and imagination....

Thank You CPS Teachers

We are so fortunate to have such great teachers at Fairview. When I see an experienced teacher, with a masters degree and 25+ years of teaching behind her, still come every morning into a room packed with eight-year old kids, and keep order, and keep a positive learning environment, I am amazed. I could never do that job. When we talk with the teachers, they know all about our child's strengths and weaknesses, and they have learning plans specifically fitted to their needs. And trust me our kids have many needs.

The competence of these teachers is far above those I had in parochial schools. I would say the second grade curriculum is comparable to what I learned in fourth+ grade.

And they are doing it with up to 28 kids in each classroom. And they are doing it with personal attention and care to each pupil. And believe it or not, on top of all they do every day, we had several of them send us cards and even make us a meal when a family member was recently hospitalized. It will be impossible to thank them enough for all they do.

Property Taxes Due

If you are a property owner in Hamilton County, then you just recieved your annual invoice from Robert A. Goering. I'm posting this information for non-property owners, so they can see what we pay, and what it is spent on. For an in-city $100,000 house, the breakdown is something like below.

Item Funded	Dollars	Percent of Total Tax
Schools	450.00	16.8
City of Cincinnati	2075.00	77.8
Vocational School County Gen Fund	20.00	0.75
County Voted Bond Debt	1.25	0.05
Drake Hospital	6.80	0.25
Indegent Hospital	22.00	0.82
Mental Health	17.44	0.65
Mental Retardation	29.40	1.10
Park District	8.06	0.30
Crime Info Center	1.10	0.04
Children Services	19.75	0.74
Senior Services	10.00	0.38
Zoo	3.36	0.13
Museum Center	1.62	0.06
Total Property Tax	2667.22	2.6% of home value

Call me a liberal Democrat, but the amounts seem reasonable to me. $450 for public schools. $2000 for streets, garbage collection, police and all the other things the City provides? Of course they also get income tax, and the county also gets a sales tax.

And certainly, many people live in houses, condos and apartments that are worth more than $100,000, and the tax is increased proportionally.

Is the County Voted Bond Debt the Stadium projects?

Don't Camp Out

The CPS Magnet School sign-up was out of control last year. This year, applications will be accepted beginning tomorrow evening. Hopefully the lines won't start until Tuesday morning, at the earliest. According to the Enquirer, at the end of the application deadline last year, Fairview had 67 students on the waiting list for kindergarten and first grade. But keep in mind that by the time school started in the fall, only 10 were left on the list. This is because some kids get on the list, but they decide to go somewhere else, or the family moves etc...

Even last year with the 3 days of camping out, most people who showed-up to wait in line during the last hours got into the school of their choice.

NCLB Testing vs Portfolios

An Education Week article says Obama, doesn't want to dump the NCLB (No Child Left Behind) testing, but wants to reform it and include alternative testing, such as "Portfolios". If you are like me, you are asking, what is a portfolio? Well this is their description:

...portfolios ..and other forms of assessments that may be a little bit more expensive ...are allowing us to make sure children are getting the proper analytic kinds of tools. ...we're talking about tests that require children to assess their entire year ... to put together through writing and through speaking...we're looking at language skills as well as writing skills to get a sense of how well they've learned their lessons.

Taft Demolition

Taft High School is coming down fast. Classes are at Heinhold for this year and next, while it gets rebuilt:

Future image of this site:
pic via Building Cincinnati

Cincinnati Public School Sign Up Info

Tomorrow, Sept 23rd, there is open house at Cincinnati Public School neighborhood schools. Then, Thursday, Sept 25th, the Magnet Schools have open house. Interested parents should visit the school they are interested in for a tour and to meet some teachers. I think all the open houses are 6-8 pm.

The sign-up procedure has been posted on their website. Tuesday, Novemeber 18th is the waiting in line date for kids without sibling priority.