Unfortunately the voters didn't seem to care about this clearly reckless funding scheme. (I won't even bring up Horton's own sketchy history with finances and real estate, which should have been a red flag before he was even hired).
One obvious solution that I don't believe has been explored would be to work with the city to rehab the Mor…
Unfortunately the voters didn't seem to care about this clearly reckless funding scheme. (I won't even bring up Horton's own sketchy history with finances and real estate, which should have been a red flag before he was even hired).
One obvious solution that I don't believe has been explored would be to work with the city to rehab the Morton Civic Center and convert at least part of the building back into a school.
it is a historic school building in the Fifth Ward. It is not being used to its capacity and needs some capital upkeep.
A scenario could be one where the city continues to occupy certain parts of the building, move some departments downtown (where there is a surplus of office space available), D 65 could use the lease certificate cash to invest in upkeep in the building (and, hopefully the other buildings they own that are in a state of deferred maintenance).
I hold no hope for this to happen, largely because the D 65 Board obviously doesn't care about fiscal responsibility and I am confident that they will do another behind-closed-doors superintendent search to bring in another candidate with a weak record that fits with their ideological disposition.
These same voters that (I think) would've approved a referendum on this as long as it was couched in the right politics. This is why I think the lease certificate was short sighted, the Evanston electorate in 2012 has very different opinions on racial equity than it did in 2022.
One other thing to point out on the "racial equity" aspect of this: the vast majority of African Americans in Evanston live outside the Fifth Ward (2900 5th ward African Americans out of 12,500 city-wide).
How is this new school supposed to help those people?
Tom, Do you know if the District did ANY actual analysis on the impact of busing on student performance in school? They know all the kids who are bussed. They know their scores on the standardized tests. They know their race. They know their free- and reduced- lunch status.
You could do a very simple statistical analysis controlling for race, income, etc.. which could test if bussing is a predictor of test scores.
Before even contemplating a new school, it would be irresponsible to NOT do this analysis.
There are plenty of empirical studies that suggest bussing does not negatively effect performance AND that integrated schools result in better outcomes for low income and minority students. Does that hold in Evanston?
My hunch is that they a) either didn't do the analysis, or b) did the analysis and found that bussing is not a significant predictor. Likely the big predictors are things like reduced and free lunch.
This new school will do absolutely nothing for those kids in other parts of the city who may be minority or low income. In fact, as your article mentions it is going likely starve resources from throughout the district from things like instruction, so it could very well be a net-negative all around.
I don't know the answers to your questions; I have seen some research they did correlating test scores with bussing but that data is generally not available to the public (it can't be properly anonymized)
We don't necessarily need to see the raw data (although they could easily be anonymized by assigning specific addresses to a Census block group).
I would like to see the research you mention. If they did something like correlating bused students from the fifth ward with their test scores, that would ignore a bunch of other confounding variables like socio-economic status. It is basically meaningless in terms of understanding the impact of taking the bus to school.
If you do a basic regression analysis you can hold those socio-economic variables constant. Since we undoubtedly have low-income, kids of color walking to other schools in the district, you can map the differential variable (whether the kid takes the bus or not) and see if it is significant.
My sense is that they did not conduct a statistically sound analysis. If you look at the people in charge of the process, their resumes don't suggest a real background in statistics. The woman who directs student assignments is a clinical social worker who ran programming for the YMCA.
The head data person for the District has an EdD from Aurora University. For a PhD you usually have to have a strong data-oriented and quantitative study for your dissertation. For an EdD from Aurora? No such thing. The 'data' for her dissertation were interviews with 5 college students!?!?!
Unfortunately we don't have serious people running the show at D65--part of this is the Education-Consultant complex that elevates things like EdD degrees to give a veneer of credentialing. It is not surprising we get to this point with a board that is almost entirely comprised of functionaries in this same system.
I don't know, I have a pretty deep background in statistics and if you asked me to do this analysis I'd probably just shrug. The problem is, without a randomized control, you're comparing apples to oranges and even in an ideal world where you could control for every socio-economic variable possible, what's the point? Even if your proved some link between bussing and test scores, that's not the point of the project or the school. Maybe people *say* it is but that's all just political posturing.
I do largely agree with you on the EdD situation - they seem to be handing these things out like candy these days. One year of online schooling and you get a EdD?! Absurd.
I always find it so ridiculous when you talk to people at D65--and their public presentation--how it's always "Dr. this" and "Dr. that."
I work at NU and used to work at UC where I interact with Nobel prize winners, National Academy of Sciences members, top international scientists, and literally nobody uses honorifics.
Do we ever hear anybody refer to Dan Biss as "Dr. Biss"? I called him 'Mayor Biss' once and he told me to call him Dan.
Can someone explain how all these children are going to walk to school, during I don’t know, the winter months with extreme temperatures and conditions. Under 1.5 mile walks for all
One conclusion that HAS been reached time and time again, on the other hand, is that those living in poverty do MUCH better in life (Education, salary, health) when they are in communities and schools that are NOT full of poverty. HUD did a very powerful randomized study of Section 8 housing placing low income households in different neighborhoods/schools. Many of the recipients actually do NOT want to be placed in areas that aren't high poverty as they feel uncomfortable/not welcome in those areas. However, those children that were randomly assigned to areas where poverty/low education parents are NOT the overwhelming majority of their neighbors and peer-set had much better educational and life outcomes decades later. It was very robust longitudinal study. So, if certain fifth ward students are going from a school that is 25% free/reduced lunch now to a school that is 60% free/reduced lunch in the future (even if it's in "walking distance"), I would expect educational results to DECLINE based on the current accepted scientific research in the area. Of course, the aspect of taking a bus to the school wasn't an attribute studied for any predictive/correlative values in the prior studies. ;)
Unfortunately the voters didn't seem to care about this clearly reckless funding scheme. (I won't even bring up Horton's own sketchy history with finances and real estate, which should have been a red flag before he was even hired).
One obvious solution that I don't believe has been explored would be to work with the city to rehab the Morton Civic Center and convert at least part of the building back into a school.
it is a historic school building in the Fifth Ward. It is not being used to its capacity and needs some capital upkeep.
A scenario could be one where the city continues to occupy certain parts of the building, move some departments downtown (where there is a surplus of office space available), D 65 could use the lease certificate cash to invest in upkeep in the building (and, hopefully the other buildings they own that are in a state of deferred maintenance).
I hold no hope for this to happen, largely because the D 65 Board obviously doesn't care about fiscal responsibility and I am confident that they will do another behind-closed-doors superintendent search to bring in another candidate with a weak record that fits with their ideological disposition.
These same voters that (I think) would've approved a referendum on this as long as it was couched in the right politics. This is why I think the lease certificate was short sighted, the Evanston electorate in 2012 has very different opinions on racial equity than it did in 2022.
One other thing to point out on the "racial equity" aspect of this: the vast majority of African Americans in Evanston live outside the Fifth Ward (2900 5th ward African Americans out of 12,500 city-wide).
How is this new school supposed to help those people?
Tom, Do you know if the District did ANY actual analysis on the impact of busing on student performance in school? They know all the kids who are bussed. They know their scores on the standardized tests. They know their race. They know their free- and reduced- lunch status.
You could do a very simple statistical analysis controlling for race, income, etc.. which could test if bussing is a predictor of test scores.
Before even contemplating a new school, it would be irresponsible to NOT do this analysis.
There are plenty of empirical studies that suggest bussing does not negatively effect performance AND that integrated schools result in better outcomes for low income and minority students. Does that hold in Evanston?
My hunch is that they a) either didn't do the analysis, or b) did the analysis and found that bussing is not a significant predictor. Likely the big predictors are things like reduced and free lunch.
This new school will do absolutely nothing for those kids in other parts of the city who may be minority or low income. In fact, as your article mentions it is going likely starve resources from throughout the district from things like instruction, so it could very well be a net-negative all around.
I don't know the answers to your questions; I have seen some research they did correlating test scores with bussing but that data is generally not available to the public (it can't be properly anonymized)
We don't necessarily need to see the raw data (although they could easily be anonymized by assigning specific addresses to a Census block group).
I would like to see the research you mention. If they did something like correlating bused students from the fifth ward with their test scores, that would ignore a bunch of other confounding variables like socio-economic status. It is basically meaningless in terms of understanding the impact of taking the bus to school.
If you do a basic regression analysis you can hold those socio-economic variables constant. Since we undoubtedly have low-income, kids of color walking to other schools in the district, you can map the differential variable (whether the kid takes the bus or not) and see if it is significant.
My sense is that they did not conduct a statistically sound analysis. If you look at the people in charge of the process, their resumes don't suggest a real background in statistics. The woman who directs student assignments is a clinical social worker who ran programming for the YMCA.
The head data person for the District has an EdD from Aurora University. For a PhD you usually have to have a strong data-oriented and quantitative study for your dissertation. For an EdD from Aurora? No such thing. The 'data' for her dissertation were interviews with 5 college students!?!?!
https://www.proquest.com/openview/a91d9a3d030781ac00fb3de21f258b28/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y
Unfortunately we don't have serious people running the show at D65--part of this is the Education-Consultant complex that elevates things like EdD degrees to give a veneer of credentialing. It is not surprising we get to this point with a board that is almost entirely comprised of functionaries in this same system.
I don't know, I have a pretty deep background in statistics and if you asked me to do this analysis I'd probably just shrug. The problem is, without a randomized control, you're comparing apples to oranges and even in an ideal world where you could control for every socio-economic variable possible, what's the point? Even if your proved some link between bussing and test scores, that's not the point of the project or the school. Maybe people *say* it is but that's all just political posturing.
I do largely agree with you on the EdD situation - they seem to be handing these things out like candy these days. One year of online schooling and you get a EdD?! Absurd.
I always find it so ridiculous when you talk to people at D65--and their public presentation--how it's always "Dr. this" and "Dr. that."
I work at NU and used to work at UC where I interact with Nobel prize winners, National Academy of Sciences members, top international scientists, and literally nobody uses honorifics.
Do we ever hear anybody refer to Dan Biss as "Dr. Biss"? I called him 'Mayor Biss' once and he told me to call him Dan.
Ironic given they hand out PhDs in education at mediocre places like Chicago state like candy.
Can someone explain how all these children are going to walk to school, during I don’t know, the winter months with extreme temperatures and conditions. Under 1.5 mile walks for all
I walk my kid to school every day, even when it’s brutally cold
One conclusion that HAS been reached time and time again, on the other hand, is that those living in poverty do MUCH better in life (Education, salary, health) when they are in communities and schools that are NOT full of poverty. HUD did a very powerful randomized study of Section 8 housing placing low income households in different neighborhoods/schools. Many of the recipients actually do NOT want to be placed in areas that aren't high poverty as they feel uncomfortable/not welcome in those areas. However, those children that were randomly assigned to areas where poverty/low education parents are NOT the overwhelming majority of their neighbors and peer-set had much better educational and life outcomes decades later. It was very robust longitudinal study. So, if certain fifth ward students are going from a school that is 25% free/reduced lunch now to a school that is 60% free/reduced lunch in the future (even if it's in "walking distance"), I would expect educational results to DECLINE based on the current accepted scientific research in the area. Of course, the aspect of taking a bus to the school wasn't an attribute studied for any predictive/correlative values in the prior studies. ;)