When we think of educational inequality, we often think about parents who can afford private schools vs. public schools, but there is a chasm of opportunities between public schools, especially in upstate New York.
When you walk into St. Lawrence High
School it looks like any average high school across the state. Its walls are
freshly painted eggshell white and an energetic cobalt blue. Students’ artwork,
personalized collages illustrating the phrase, “Home is Where the Heart is,” decorate
the hallways. If you look closer, however, you will see that the floors are
grubby and the trash cans are overflowing with garbage because the cleaning
staff is only working part-time.
Brasher Falls is poor. Unemployment is above
10 percent and 16.9 percent of its residents living under the poverty rate,
according to the New York State Department of Labor.
For the children who live here,
that poverty is reflected in its schools. This small school district belongs to
the top 25 poorest school districts in New York. The high school’s population
has dropped to under 100 students according to New York State Department of
Education data.
Among the students who remain, the
chance they will graduate is less than elsewhere in New York. The district has a 63 percent graduation
rate. Statewide, the figure is 74 percent.
And for those in its classes, there
are fewer teachers, less options for classes, aging books, and dwindling
supplies. In the past two budget years, the school has cut a total of 24
positions. Four more positions will be cut in the 2012-2013 school year.
Students do not have a single Advanced Placement class. Teachers buy their own
supplies from Walmart, as their budgets shrunk from $500 a few years ago to
nothing today. Books are anywhere from eight to 20-years-old.
New York
State Department of Education Data
The struggles
Brasher Falls Central School District faces are not unusual among high needs
rural schools in New York. Poor rural schools do worse than average needs
schools as identified by the New York State Department of Education. Average
needs school districts graduates 85 percent of students, according to the most
recently released data compiled by New York State. But for poor rural schools,
that figure is 78.8 percent.
The gap between quality of education is
wider when poor rural school graduation rates are stacked against wealthy
suburban schools. In those wealthier schools, or low needs schools, the
graduation rate is 93.8 percent.
Poor rural
schools also lag behind average needs and low needs schools when you examine
Regents scores. Poor rural schools students scored as much as five to 10 points
below average needs schools and low needs schools did even better, scoring 10
points above rural school students on the English Regents and a whopping 17
points better on the Chemistry Regents.
It is the
dearth of opportunity for rural school students to prove themselves, however,
that is the starkest example of inequality between wealthy and poor New York
State school districts.
Few rural
school students are lucky enough to take advanced Regents tests that will allow
them to graduate with an Advanced Regents diploma. Only 33 percent of rural
school students graduate with an advanced designation in comparison to 60
percent of low needs students and 46 percent of average needs students.
In terms of free
and reduced lunch programs, 50 percent of high needs rural school students
qualify for the program, compared to 22 percent of average needs schools and
only 6 percent of low needs schools. The statewide number is closer to rural
school counts, at 41 percent of the student population.
Brasher
Falls Central School District
The town of Brasher Falls, New
York, is only a 30-minute drive from Canada. As you drive through, you see some
of the quirks of a small town without historical district zoning laws or an
invasion of Starbucks: a Trump for President sign made of wooden planks and a
statue of a polar bear holding an American flag greet you. The landscape is
flat. Winters are ruthless; dumping inches of snow on the highway several times
a week. Spare white and grey homes appear in the distance. They are made tiny
by long stretches of unoccupied land and the occasional farm. The region is
called the North Country according to most locals and it’s home to some of New
York’s poorest counties.
Post-financial crisis budget cuts
coupled with an impoverished student population challenge the teachers and the
administration as they struggle to provide disadvantaged students with a
quality education. Some teachers have been told they would not receive a single
penny for supplies this year, causing teachers to pay out of pocket for
pencils, paper, craft materials and instruments, or raise money through
community events.
The school had
an Advanced Placement English class last year but budget cuts removed the class
from the curriculum this year. St. Lawrence English teacher Margaret Snyder
said she is worried about a lack of opportunity for her young children as they
grow older.
“Rural schools
are being ignored in terms of their needs and it affects me in a different way
as well because I have two small children in the school district,” Snyder said.
“I know that what my kids are getting is not what I got growing up.”
Teachers are
looking for aid wherever they can find it or in some cases, volunteering their
time. Krista Easton, a high school music teacher, said she relies on the local
St. Lawrence Board of Cooperative Educational Services and community
fundraisers to buy instruments and fund her chorus class as the $600 she
receives from the school doesn’t fully cover her classes.
Krista Easton
“The $600 doesn’t even come close, so the rest of the money we’re fundraising or getting from BOCES. I’m not sure what I’d do without BOCES,” Easton says.
The school
cannot afford additional music teachers or assistant music teachers, so Easton
got creative. She works with SUNY Potsdam’s theatre department, which offers an
internship program at St. Lawrence High School.
“I have interns
I don’t have to pay a penny to work with my students and they like the energy
of the college students,” Easton says. “The head of theatre department there
wants to grow the program for their summer internship programs as well.”
School math enrichment programs
would have been abolished as well, if not for Ginger Armpreister, a junior high
school math teacher, who offers more challenging problems to students with
higher math skills after school and free of charge.
“I’m no longer
paid for it, but it offers the brighter kids a chance for math enrichment, which
is something most schools around here don’t do,” Armpriester says. “It’s
important preparation for college to get them to sharpen their problem solving
skills now.”
Guidance
counselor Dustin Stover says he is seeing the effects of the school’s cuts on
the students’ education. The school provides Distance Learning, which allows
students to watch a televised class at other high schools or the local
colleges. Most students lose out on that opportunity, however, because the
other schools’ schedules usually conflict with St. Lawrence’s classes.
“I feel like
we’re failing to prepare students, especially top students, which is really
frustrating as a counselor and a teacher,” Stover says. “We graduate students
and they come back to us and they say they couldn’t deal with an above algebra
pre-calculus and calculus class.”
Stover is
worried that the media and New York legislators don’t care about rural students
in Upstate New York as he said the conversation usually centers on city
schools.
To be sure, high needs rural
schools are certainly not the most troubled schools in New York State. The
lowest test scores and graduation rates, as well as the largest class sizes can
be found in New York City schools, whether they are charter schools or public
schools.
“There are some students who live
without running water or electricity here,” Stover said. “I know things are bad
in the city, but we have similar problems. I feel like we’re kind of forgotten
about up here.”
Superintendent
Stephen Putman said he believes the graduation rates and test scores can
improve if children receive better literacy programs. St.
Lawrence received state aid for a reading First Grant for
kindergarten through third grade beginning in 2005. Reading First grants
provide assistance to states and districts that need support for professional
development. The school eventually lost the grant and tried to maintain the
program by hiring a kindergarten assistant to allow for smaller class sizes and
better attention to students. The school doubled its prekindergarten program
to allow for 36 students instead of 18 students.
Stephen Putman
“We’re constantly monitoring our progress with data,” Putman says. We know we need more phonetic awareness. We’re getting lots of services and targeted help to kids so we can get them to progress through the grade levels so they’re ready to graduate.”
Karen O’Gorman,
a junior high English teacher, said students are disadvantaged at home as well
as at school. Many students are not reading at home, which leads to poor
literacy in high school, O’Gorman says. She said high school literacy could improve
once students who benefitted from the kindergarten through third grade reading
programs come of age. Until then, however, the school will have to compete with
schools like Massena School District, which has an international baccalaureate
program.
Karen O'Gorman
“When our students here have to compare to
Massena’s baccalaureate program, it’s never fair, because we have bright
students looking at RIT and Clarkson and even Harvard, but they don’t have the
portfolio that other students do,” O’ Gorman says.
Scarsdale
The opportunities
students receive at rural high needs and low needs suburban schools are vastly
different from one another. The differences can be seen in the availability of
advanced classes that prepare students with the critical thinking skills they
will need in college.
Depending on
where a student is born, however, he or she may never take the advanced classes
that will bolster a Harvard University application or find themselves studying
in the same classroom as special needs students, failing to stand out from the
crowd.
On the other end of the education
spectrum, Scarsdale Public Schools is renowned for its competitive education.
The high school was given the Gold medal in U.S. News and World Report’s prestigious
school rankings. St. Lawrence High School does not have any ranking.
Scarsdale has a
99 percent graduation rate. The school is adding two teaching positions this
2012-2013 school year. Scarsdale recently added Mandarin to their language
classes and is considering replacing books with tablets in the future.
Its public
school system is a five-minute drive from the center of town. The 1917
building’s gothic arched windows and well-worn façade lends the school an
ivy-league sensibility.
The school benefits
from a 3.39 percent tax increase in Scarsdale and 2.22 percent tax increase in
Mamaroneck in the 2012-2013 budget year. The $141 million budget will allow the
school to make infrastructure upgrades and repairs, replace the ventilation
system in the gym, remove asbestos above the school’s stage, and replace the
lighting and stage rigging system. Scarsdale Superintendent Dr. Michael McGill
suggests using the current school year’s budget surplus to lower taxes for the
2013-14 school budget.
Scarsdale high
school serves 394 students. The large number of students helps the school
divide students by skill level in English, math and science classes. Students
can take an honors level course, which requires a grade B+ or higher in the
prior year’s course, an accelerated class or a skills class. Teachers review
the student’s performance by grades and class participation to decide which
category a student falls into.
Parents are allowed to override the
decision if they believe the teacher’s decision is not accurate or if they
argue they can provide extra help at home. The majority of parents override the
decision because they want their child in a high level course, says high school
math teacher, Lynn Potter, who makes these decisions for the math department.
“Sometimes they
want a child to be on a lower level because they figure they can get a higher
grade,” Potter says. “But most of the time they want them taking high level
classes because colleges want high levels, so you think your child will be
better off in a higher level course.”
Unlike most
schools, Scarsdale does not teach Advanced Placement courses. The school
teaches Advanced Topics courses and curriculum is approved by school
administrators.
Ann Liptak
teaches a high school 12th grade Advanced Topics English class from 9 to 9:50
a.m. For the majority of class time, Liptak asks students to interpret a
Shakespearean sonnet, LXXIII, which compared the passing of the seasons to the
evolution of a person’s life. Liptak used her Smart Board to present a photo
slideshow of seasonal images associated with certain lyrics.
“‘In me you see’st
the glowing of such fire.’ What would that mean?”
“His youth is like the light,” a
female student wearing a Princeton sweatshirt answered. “He is fading away to
black like the ashes, but even then you have a moment of vitality.”
Liptak is confident
parents have accepted the drastic change from Advanced Placement to Advanced
Topics courses. “Our kids are going to competitive colleges and there are less
kids taking the advanced placement exam,” Liptak says.
If students are
continuing to attend illustrious colleges such as Harvard and Yale, it isn’t
simply Advanced Topics classes they should be thankful for. The school’s
resources, from Smart Boards in every classroom to individual laptops for every
teacher in the district, are difficult to top.
The school has a
two-floor library, which formerly served as a gymnasium. The library is
equipped with more than 20 computers in the open common area and study rooms
separated by glass, where teachers often bring classes for research purposes.
The skylight and tall potted ferns reach the second floor stairs, making the
space look more like a Victorian observatory than a library. The library is
filled to capacity at 1:30 p.m. Students silently click away at the keyboards
or quitely converse as they flip through books.
Students can
also visit the math center if they wish to study. The math center, open from 10
a.m. to 3 p.m., allows students to seek extra help in math. The school pays
Eleanor Landeau, a teacher’s aide, to work at the math center full-time. She
does not have any other commitments.
Students are
armed with the resources they need to graduate, but the school has higher
ambitions than maintaining their 99 percent graduation rate. The school’s
senior year courses are designed to put students at an advantage in college,
allowing students to take a year-long course in marine biology during their
senior year.
For the right-brained, the art
department boasts an art gallery where students can display their art instead
of posting them in the hallway. The school hosts art shows based on the themes
the students study in each of their classes. Students can take computer
graphics and architecture classes as well as standard drawing and painting
courses.
What
Experts Say Should be Done
School Size
These
inequities exist for a myriad of reasons, from school size to a complicated and
ineffective funding formula, says John Sipple, a researcher for Cornell
University’s Center for Rural Schools.
Rural schools such as Brasher Falls face unique challenges, due to their small size, poor
resources and already learning disadvantaged student population. These schools
are also losing student population, as more families move to cities or outside
of the state.
“Broader
demographic changes like population loss and an aging population that is now
older and young kids leaving the area once they graduate are all contributing
to this,” Sipple says.
To better
explain how loss of population is hurting public schools in rural areas, Sipple
gave an example of a school that enrolls 100 students. “A school of 100 kids is
losing enrollment. Let’s say it’s 2 percent a year. If two students are lost,
the school loses state aid for two students,” Sipple said. “That could be
$28,000 in state aid. How do you make that up? Which teacher do you fire? When
the scale of loss is small, it’s harder.”
These hard
choices could be minimized, Sipple argues, by merging schools to form larger
districts. There are many challenges to this solution, however. Students would
have to take long bus trips from one stoplight towns to less remote school
districts, demanding more resources for transportation. Some parents may resist
the idea, as it would become more difficult to pick up their child from school.
The biggest
obstacle to these mergers are school boards, which are dominated by a status
quo culture, Sipple says.
“Current policy
needs the Board of Education to vote yes, and both communities to vote yes a
second time. There are six votes for two districts and not more than six
districts have merged in 15 years,” Sipple said.
Assuming
mergers do work, Sipple argues that New York State’s funding formula is the
biggest obstruction to reforming high needs rural schools. After the 2006 court
case, Campaign For Fiscal Equity vs. New York State, the state government
promised to change its funding formula to become more equitable. New York State
does not fully fund its schools.
“There was a
high watermark of optimism, because finally there would be a fair share of state
money. The court studied it forever, and the state promised they would find the
formula because the formula wasn’t fully funded,” Sipple says.
The state’s
previous commitment to adjust the state formula became null and void once the
recession hit. New York State Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravitch presented a
new fiscal plan, using Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) that further
reduced the amount of funding set aside for education.
“When the bottom fell out of the state
and Wall Street, the formula was less than fully funded. When they looked at
how cuts are done, it hit poor rural schools more,” Sipple says. “It was not as severe a year but after that
(2010-2011 budget year) there was the same magnitude of cuts.”
Transient
Students
Assuming that the state legislature and
governor had the political will to reform the state’s funding system, rural
schools may continue to struggle. Rural school students are starting school
with a poorer vocabulary and fewer at-home resources than their suburban
counterparts.
Kai Schafft, a University of
Pennsylvania sociology professor, studied the lifestyle of rural poor students
and their relationships to the high needs rural schools they attended. Schafft
found that many impoverished children moved to another home more frequently
than wealthy children, making it difficult for schools to keep records of the
student.
Schafft studied 300 rural school
districts and found a wide variance in in the levels of student mobility
experienced by those school districts, ranging from almost no turnover to over
40 percent annual turnover. However, the most disadvantaged communities were
disproportionately affected.
The mean rate of transiency in the poorer
school districts was found to be about twice that of wealthier districts, which
were had on average, 8.8 percent turnover as opposed to 15 percent in
disadvantaged districts. Furthermore, school administrators expressed concern
that their schools may be affected by the low-achieving mobile students on
school testing assessments.
Schafft took an especially close look at
the Lamar School District, which qualifies as a high need school. Like Brasher Falls, enrollment in reduced
lunch programs is high, at 46 percent eligibility. In between 2003 and 2004, 15
percent of Lamar school district students were classified as special education
students and 17 percent of mobile students were CSE classified. The majority of
mobile students, 62 percent, were eligible for free and reduced lunch compared
to 45 percent of exiting students.
Those numbers
make sense since most of the families studied moved out of their original home
due to financial instability. The greatest percentage of families, at 11
percent, moved because they were evicted and 10 percent left temporary DSS
housing. Other families left because they lived in poor conditions, the housing
was too expensive, or the building was condemned. In total, 65 percent left
housing out of necessity not because they found a better housing opportunity or
decided to buy a home.
The Vermont
Model
Dr. Bruce Fraser, executive director of
the Rural Schools Association at Cornell University, said New York needs to
abandon the formula system entirely and emulate Vermont’s model for school
funding. Fraser has met with school boards in upstate New York to convince
school boards to pressure local legislators into supporting the policy.
Vermont’s state funding has accounted for
87 percent of all school funding after a 1997 Vermont Supreme Court decision.
The court struck down the previous state funding system in Brigham vs. State of
Vermont and directed the legislature to come up with a new system that would
eliminate inequities across the school districts.
There is a two-part statewide school
property tax. For businesses and commercial property there is a single rate
established each year by the legislature. For local residences, there is a
different rate determined by the state legislature annually. The local residence
rate determines a per pupil spending amount and calculates the residential tax
rate needed to fund that level of spending, according to The Rural School and
Community Trust.
The money from that property tax is
distributed to schools on a per pupil measure, taking into account poverty and
other cost factors. The local school district can raise the residence property
tax rate if its board members believe the funding is insufficient.
To make the
system even more complex, but some would argue more equitable, there is an
income sensitivity policy, which limits the amount of any property tax
homeowners making less than $97,000 must pay. There is also a luxury tax on
high spending districts. If a district spends 125 percent more than the
previous year’s average per pupil cost, its income sensitivity limits are
doubled for the portion of the budget exceeding 125 percent of the annual per
pupil cost.
“There is a high level of state support
for the Vermont model,” Fraser says, pointing to the political will
demonstrated in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit. “All non-residential
property is taxed at the same rate, which allows for them to spread more wealth
across every student in the state.”
The Campaign for Fiscal Equity, The New
York State Council of Superintendents and New York State United Teachers, among
others, have pressured politicians in Albany to address the issue of funding
inequity but it remains an unpopular subject among legislators.
Some upstate
New York legislators such as state Senator James Seward, Assemblyman Pete Lopez
and have pressured the governor and legislative leaders to address the state’s
original promise to adjust the state funding formula.
At the moment,
however, Fraser says he believes the hurdles are greater than the advantages
because legislative and gubernatorial leadership are not focused on rural high
needs schools.
“The winners
are going to try to hold on to what they have and the losers don’t have the
political clout,” Fraser says. “The formula has a huge impact on what programs
are offered leading to big disparities in educational opportunity.”
