An Open Letter on School Choice in Baltimore City Public Schools

Ms. Hike-Hubbard and Chair Casciani,

On June 4, the Teaching and Learning Committee heard a slide presentation on school choice. I spoke at the hearing yesterday and plan to address the Board in the near future but wanted to make a few key points:

• Slide 5 presents an overly rosy picture. It states that 70–75% of students are accepted to their 1st or 2nd choice. However, only three of the last five years have a rate above 70%, and only for high school.
• Only 63% of middle school students are accepted to their 1st or 2nd choice. Only 70% of families are participating in middle school choice at all, a significant drop from the 98% participation rate just a few years ago.
• Diving into the schools themselves: They are presented in a list, as though they were equivalent. When one looks at just one factor for middle — chronic absence — one notes a range from a low of <1% at Roland Park to nearly 40% at Bluford West and National Academy. High schools are presented similarly but their chronic absence rates vary from <10% at City College to nearly half of all students at Digital Harbor. Graduation rates vary from 76% at Carver to 97% at City College. (Data from MSDE School Report Card)
• Please note these are school-wide rates; the disparities in achievement via PARCC by race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status and IEP status are enormous.
• I was able to get the demographic data on entry into advanced academics via MPIA. If you haven’t seen it, I would recommend you review as the disparities are quite stark: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2rvkERU6SXMTlBKQXhEVld6SzQyTjN0ZnhkZ29xRUxsR1k0

Apart from the slide set, there are many difficulties related to choice process:

• None of the choice deadlines and processes align. If a student achieves a 355+ on the composite and wishes to apply to advanced academics, Ingenuity, and a charter program (e.g., the Design School or Montessori), the student and parents must complete multiple online and/or paper applications (some charters are online only, others permit the application to be faxed, mailed, or emailed). The charter lotteries take place in February and parents must accept or decline by early March before results are out from Advanced Academics and Ingenuity.
• Ingenuity is weighting a student’s score by adding 5–15 points based on the comparative disadvantage of their elementary school. Advanced academics does not. Is there a reason that Baltimore City Schools’ own program would not seek improve equitable access, given that we are on the path to adopt an explicit equity policy and given the overrepresentation of white children in advanced academics?
• If a student attends a K-5 school and does not achieve a 355 or better, the likelihood that that student needs to wait until round 2 of the choice process seems quite high, based on my informal observations. Imagine being a 10 or 11 year old and having many of your peers know where they will attend middle but you are forced to wait until June. How is this not stigmatizing? And how is it not, in practice, an invitation for families to throw up their hands and move? According to your slide set, one in four participating in the middle school process are unplaced.
• Even if a student achieves a 355+, the likelihood of acceptance may be low. The choice guide mentions that the highest scoring children are accepted first and that the most popular programs have higher scores, but not how much higher. Last night, I learned the cut score for Roland Park was 385. There is better, more detailed information in a FAQ document (which used to be here: https://www.baltimorecityschools.org/cms/lib/MD01001351/Centricity/Domain/8058/Middle%20and%20High%20School%20Choice%20FAQs.pdf) but I can’t find it on the new website and the details are not included in the choice guide. Why not merge these documents to put all the information in a single place?
• Transparency. I have no data but based only on observation it seems zoned schools makes a difference in whether or not you are accepted to advanced academics. I know a few families who were not admitted to their first choice despite scoring higher than children who already attended that school who were accepted; it is wholly unclear how a child’s home zoned school plays into decision-making.
• Although I emailed Dr Warren’s office several times last year, and attended a choice event at Shake & Bake, the choice guide still doesn’t note whether absences for the purpose of computing a composite score includes all absences or unexcused only. This is critical for families like mine with children who require regular medical care and for families who observe religious holidays.
• The choice guide includes the quadrant of the school but not the bus line(s) nearest to the school. Given that we expect students to commute using S pass, why not?
• The commute times for students are very long and made more difficult by poor reliability. The figures below include a nine minute window to be counted as “on-time” (up to two minutes early or seven minutes late; h/t to Danielle Sweeney for providing these numbers)
• From May 1–21 this year: Hamilton Elem. served by #54–60% on time; Francis Scott Key served by #94, 65% on time and #71, 70% on time; Cross Country served by #92, 64% on time; Waverly served by #22–66% on time, CityLink Red — 55% on time, and served by the not high-frequency portion of the Citylink Silver — 62% on time; James McHenry served by the #80–66% on time; Mt. Washington served by #94–70% on time; #33, 85% on time; and #34, 64% on time; and Mt. Royal served by Citylink Gold — 66% on time.
• The choice guide mentions provisions for students with IEPs. As the parent of a student who achieved better than a 355 and also has special needs, here’s what this looked like in practice: Calling each school and trying to track down the IEP chair, then emailing and calling that person to get a sense of the space and its condition since the Jacobs report was released in 2012. How many stairs? What’s the condition of the athletic fields? How often is the elevator broken? What’s your experience with assistive tech?
• Finally, why are we engaging in a wholly developmentally inappropriate process for 10 and 11 year olds? Why are we, as a system, sending rejection letters to children like they are tiny adults? No college in the U.S. looks only at a single year of grades and one instance of the SAT/ACT scores for admission yet the city is essentially using an even more restrictive process.
• Colleges look at growth over four years. Baltimore City is using a year and one quarter of grades and single test (PARCC) to determine whether a child is worthy of admission to advanced academics. A single test is entry to Ingenuity.
• Using myself as an example: My child returned to 4th grade just after being discharged from JHU/KKI following a stroke. She never took the PARCC in 3rd grade, never finished her 3rd grade year. Admittedly, stroke is rare. But in Baltimore, other children sit for PARCC and spend their 4th grade year homeless, worried about deportation, with parental incarceration, surviving eviction, enduring hunger, and witnessing violence. That we make no allowances for the very real difficulties children and families face every day is shameful and exacerbates the inequitable distribution of the highest quality programming.