Dreaming of Desegregation, Elections, and Barbers

Two weeks ago I was at the 20th anniversary event for the Fair Housing Center of Southeastern Michigan. The evening included a showing of the Oscar-nominated short documentary, The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement. No, the movie didn't win the Oscar for short documentary. It was, however, very moving (and worth your time)--and in its honor, I have two thoughts on the second-to-last day of Black History Month 2012 and the day of the Republican primary.

I was--literally--toddling around my house at the time of the civil rights movement. So the history of the civil rights movement is just that to me--history--even though many of the struggles live on today. This documentary brings that history alive. In particular, the barber (James Armstrong) gave me a renewed appreciation for how groundbreaking the election of Barack Obama was. .  . and the path that connects those civil rights activists with his election. The documentary shows some moving footage of the day of the 2008 election, and it honestly did get me excited for the 2012 election. When the "foot soldiers" describe the difficulties they had in registering to vote, it is a reminder to me of how much we should cherish that opportunity. So often history is told in a dry manner. Not in this case.

And part of that history involves the desegregation of the schools. I've written in the past about efforts to desegregate the Ann Arbor schools. In Birmingham, James Armstrong's children were part of the desegregation effort of the Birmingham schools, and there is historic footage of those children walking to school, as well as contemporary footage of one of them as an adult. There is also discussion of the church bombings in Birmingham. Really, there is a lot packed into a short film!

I'm hoping that you will see The Barber of Birmingham, but whether you do or not, it is important to remember that school segregation--though banished by law--still exists in many many schools around the nation. To keep that history alive, I'm including here a video produced by the Baltimore Sun about the history of school desegregation in Baltimore.

Unintended Consequences

I know you've all been waiting for this post. 
At the end of the 1985 reorganization, several schools were closed: Bader, Clinton, Freeman, Lakewood, Newport, and Stone schools. In addition, the K-6 elementary schools became K-5 schools; the 7-9 middle schools became 6-8 schools; and the grade 10-12 schools became 9-12 schools. In addition, the Open School got a School Of Its Own, at Bach.
Now, back in the day--pre-proposal A--decision-making did not take into account the number of students in the district the way that it does today. Of course, overall the size of the district population mattered, but ten students here or there did not make any significant difference. In fact, the five-year forecasts the 1985 committee used showed the elementary school population growing slightly, and the middle and high school populations decreasing slightly. The 1984 total head count was 13,772 students, and the Committee on Excellence used a 1990 projected head count of 12,741 students.
After the decision was made to close the schools, the district had to decide what to do with them, and the decision was made to sell some, and keep others.
Bader (which is in Ann Arbor Hills) was bought by a preschool, the Ann Arbor Hills Child Development Center.
The district held onto Freeman (which is in the Dixboro area), and gave a long-term lease to Go Like The Wind Christian Montessori. Side note: Rec & Ed soccer games are still sometimes played there.
Clinton (which is halfway between Stone School and Bryant, and which abuts Clinton Park) was bought by the Jewish Community Center, and both the JCC preschool and the Hebrew Day School are located there.
The district held onto Lakewood School (on the west side of Ann Arbor near Dolph Park), and reopened it in 2001--at which point it got some fairly extensive renovations. After being closed for 15 years, it probably needed them.
Newport School (on Newport Road) was sold and became the Rudolph Steiner School.
Stone School (at the corner of Stone School and Packard) has been used by the district for various things over the years--for Rec & Ed, for the New School (an alternative high school), and now for another alternative high school, Stone School.
When you close a school, who are potential buyers? For whom is a building like a school perfectly suited? Why, for another school. 
One of the unintended consequences is that, in selling schools to other schools, the district set up competition for itself. This doesn't seem to have been anticipated at all, and in fact--pre-proposal A--what mattered most was whether the community would support the schools, and not the exact number of students in the public schools.

So, for instance, the Rudolph Steiner School started in 1980 with a handful of students, and grew slowly until 1986, when it was able to occupy Newport School. By 1999, the Steiner School had 298 students--the vast majority in their K-8 lower school (313 students K-12, 2009).
In 1985, the Hebrew Day School was in very inadequate space, and had under 50 students. By 1999, the Hebrew Day School had over 100 students (87 students K-5, 2009).
Go Like the Wind Christian Montessori school, which only opened in 1987, had over 100 students by 1999 (101 students K-8, 2009). 
And Ann Arbor Hills Child Development Center goes through age 8, with a K-2 primary school program that in 1999 had 35 students (33 students K-2, 2009).

Of course, not all of those 500 or so students live in Ann Arbor, but probably about 75% of them do. (That is an unscientific number, based largely on the people I know who send their children to these schools.) In addition, at least three of these schools have feeder preschools, so children who get started there are likely to stay there.
Certainly, all this was an unintended consequence.

All of this didn't matter so much then, but it matters a lot more now, when per-pupil counts matter so much--and I feel that in some sense, we gave these schools the freedom to expand. Sure, they might have found space anyway (several of the charters have), but we made it easy for them. Obviously, excess capacity can be a drag on the system. However, there were estimated savings at the time--have they come to pass? I don't know, but if you include the per-pupil costs, I think the closings probably haven't saved money.

And in the "this might be too far-fetched to consider" category, I will add one more possible unintended consequence: the building of Skyline High School and the building of the Ann Arbor Preschool and Family Center. Regarding Skyline, I say this because, today, we still have significant excess capacity at the middle school level. (Remember, this was also true in 1985, and one of the proposals that wasn't implemented included closing a middle school.) At the time, putting sixth graders in the middle schools kept the middle schools at essentially the same size, and adding the ninth graders to the high schools put Huron and Pioneer essentially at capacity. I say that the building of Skyline as an unintended consequence "might be too far-fetched to consider" for two reasons: first, the estimates of student enrollment only went out five years, and the estimates were essentially flat. This turned out not to be the case, at least ten years out, when the fall head count had grown by 1500 students. The other reason is that educational trends can be like bulldozers, and the trend to move to having ninth graders in high schools reached its ascendancy many years ago. I don't think there would be much traction for moving ninth graders back to middle school--at least, I never heard it entertained as a serious suggestion during the whole time that building a new high school was discussed.

In a similar vein, it seems to me that the building of the AAPS preschool center admits the importance of having feeder preschools to the K-12 AAPS program--something these private schools figured out years ago. Yet, at the point at which this was identified as a need, there was no obvious building for locating all of the preschool programs.
[As to what I think about the excess middle school capacity--I think that there is a lot of demand for K-8 schooling, and one of the middle schools could become a K-8 school. But that is a subject for a different post.]

Last, but not least--the planners did not (and I would say, probably could not) have anticipated the ascendancy of charter schools. Charter schools have undoubtedly had an impact on some of the schools' enrollment, particularly in the elementary schools. The Committee on Excellence had a goal of ensuring that all elementary schools have enrollments over 300. In 2009, three elementary schools fell short of that (I'll give Abbott a pass at 297), with Pittsfield School having the lowest enrollment--and my understanding is that at least some of the reason that Pittsfield is so small is due to the fact that charters have attracted many "potentially Pittsfield" students.

So--unintended consequences--is this what you thought I would say?

P.S. Because this is the last post I will write on this for a while (at least I think it is), I just want to say that I believe the Committee on Excellence did a really good job with the information at hand, and the reason is that the process was good. The process was used to the advantage of the school district. The process involved a citizens' committee gathering input from the larger community, bringing a proposal to the School Board, with the administration serving as support for the committee. Read about that process in the report itself. That was then, this was now--let's learn from our past. And if you see any of the members of the Committee around town (some have passed on, but some are still here), you can thank them, because I'm posting the list of members:
1. Mary Austin
2. Ronald Bishop
3. Vincent Carillot
4. Patricia Chapman
5. Susan Doud
6. Cheryl Garnett
7. Leonard Gay
8. George Goodman
9. Charles Kieffer
10. Norma McCuiston
11. R. Griffith McDonald
12. Bettye McDonald
13. Melinda Morris
14. Merrill Nemiroff
15. Duane Renken
16. Ingrid Sheldon
17. Joann Sims
18. Estelle Titiev
19. James Wanty
20. Ronald Woods

Desegregation Outcomes

The primary focus of the 1985 reorganization was integrating the schools--in particular, integrating the black and white populations. The Asian, Latino, and Middle Eastern populations were much smaller than they are today.
I was interested in the immediate impacts of this reoganization, but unfortunately I did not have time to dig through the microfiche and find the 1986 enrollment numbers. As a result, this post takes a much longer view of this reorganization. On the one hand, this is somewhat unfair, since the committee that developed the reorganization was only able to estimate out about five years. In taking the long view, I also need to recognize that there have been some (relatively minor, with the exception of the re-opening of Lakewood and the opening of Skyline) changes to the individual school boundaries over the years.
[By the way, his post gets a little numbers-heavy. I think the numbers tell the story, but if you don't, skip to the end. Also, for the purposes of counting here, I count Ann Arbor Open as an elementary school.]

At the time of the report (1985), the AAPS African-American population was 17% of the total schools population, and the state considered a school out of balance if the African-American population was + or - 15% points compared to the district average, which is how the state recommended a 2-32% guideline for Ann Arbor. The Committee on Excellence chose a more restrictive +/- 5-15% range.

If we look at the racial makeup of the schools today, the African-American population average is still between 12 and 27%, the goal of the committee. In September 2009 it was at 14.5%. Some individual schools are much higher or lower.  Angell School, for instance, has an African-American population of only 3.6%, and in total, the following schools fall below 12%: 9 elementary schools (give Logan a pass at 11.8%), 2 middle schools, and Community High School.

On the other end of the spectrum, Roberto Clemente's African-American population is 82.3%--but I should note that this was true back in 1984, and I guess because Clemente and Community were and are magnet schools, the committee was unable to address the numbers through redistricting--though they did say they hoped to reduce the achievement gap. (In fact, lawsuits against the schools, and Proposal 2, have limited options on this front even more.

So, aside from Clemente, the schools that are over the 27% number today comprise a much smaller number: Mitchell, Scarlett, and Stone.

[In 2002, by comparison, 8 elementary schools and Community High School were below 12% (Not including Forsythe, at 11.7%). No elementary schools were above 27%, but Scarlett, Clemente, and Stone were above 27%.]

If we look at the 2009 African-American AAPS population percentages, however, we only get part of the story. 
For while the African-American school population has shrunk slightly as a percentage of the school population, the Asian, Latino, and Middle Eastern populations have increased greatly. Where the fall 2009 headcount counts African-American students as 14.5% of the population, the Asian population comprises 14.2% of the population.
So, using a broader lens, let's take a look at Angell School again:

3.6% African American

32% Asian, 

4.2% Middle Eastern, 

5.8% Multi-ethnic, 

.3% Native American, 

.6% Other, 

4.9% Latino/Hispanic, and 

48.5% White. 

In other words--even though Angell doesn't meet the criteria of 12-27% African American, it clearly is diverse.
You might be surprised to know that the district, on average, is now 52.8% White. If I were to say that a range of 42-62% White was acceptable as a range for desegregation, these schools would be below 42% White: 7 elementary schools (at 41.9% I will give Thurston a pass), Scarlett Middle School, and Clemente and Stone high schools. These schools would be above 62%: 4 elementary schools, Forsythe Middle School, and Community High School.

And if we were to set up a committee to strive for racial balance today, we would find that the Asian AAPS population is highly concentrated in some schools, and barely present in others. Using that same 12-27% range, there are 10 elementary schools, 2 middle schools, and 3 high schools that that come in under 12% Asian population, and there are 5 elementary schools that are over the 27% number.

It is worth noting, however, that the 1985 reorganization had at its core, not 1, but 2 significant goals related to racial integration. One goal was "the elimination of racial isolation," which was considered an important value in and of itself. Although I hesitate to call that the "primary goal," it was in fact the driving force behind the reorganization. And although the reorganization was not, and is not, perfect--from the point of view of eliminating racial isolation, I think the work of the committee stands on its own, and 25 years later, it stands pretty well.

At the time, the Committee on Excellence of Education noted that

On a district wide basis, the academic performance of minorities lags far behind that of the majority population. Minorities are significantly overrepresented in lower curricular paths and significantly underrepresented in advanced courses of study. Disproportionately high numbers of minorities are the subject of disciplinary action. . . Measured by the critical index of progress toward educational opportunity, the Ann Arbor School District, in this regard, is in crisis.

The second goal, then, was the goal of reducing the achievement gap. Twenty-five years later. . . countless policy papers later. . . many efforts later (and whether these efforts have been wrong or inadequate--or both--we'll leave for another time). . . this goal remains elusive, and has not been achieved.

But Was It Worth It?

All over the state, school districts are announcing their intention to close schools. In Washtenaw County, Chelsea and Saline have said they are in the "definite" camp, and Ypsilanti and Willow Run are both highly likely to close schools. I doubt that is the end.

But this is not the first time that schools have closed, and--on the theory that those who don't know their history will repeat it (not always for the better)--it seems well past time to look at whether past school closings paid the dividends that past school boards wanted. In other words: was it worth it?

I moved to Ann Arbor in 1985, and at the time, the community was abuzz with the possibility of closing schools. Ultimately, six schools were closed, and there was quite a lot of reorganization as well. I didn't have kids then, and I was new to town, so I paid some--but not tons--of attention. In any case, I have spent some time, on and off, over the past several weeks looking for information about these closings, and now I think I have enough information to put up some posts over the next couple of weeks.

Three thoughts to start us out:
1. The 1985 closings were part of a long (very long) deliberative process that gathered steam over time, and covered the tenure of more than one AAPS superintendent. The timelines today, by comparison, seem like when you put the video on fast forward and get the "Mickey Mouse" voices speeding by. In other words: deliberative process? What is that?
2. Whether you think those school closings were successful depends in large part on your assessment of the defined objectives. In the case of the 1985 school closings, the primary issues were desegregating the schools and reducing the underutilization of some schools (particularly at the elementary and middle school levels). There was more, but those were the BIG ideas.
3. The law of unintended consequences suggests to me that we should also be looking at how these changes caused other, unintended, changes. Were those unintended consequences desirable, or undesirable?