ACCOUNTABILITY: PPS Transfer Audit -- District COMMITMENTS not met

One of the agenda items at the 11/5/07 PPS School Board meeting was to address the audit of the PPS Transfer Policy, a full seventeen months after the audit was published by City of Portland Auditor Gary Blackmer and Multnomah County Auditor Suzanne Flynn.

A link to that audit, entitled "PPS STUDENT TRANSFER SYSTEM: DISTRICT OBJECTIVES NOT MET" can be found here: http://www.co.multnomah.or.us/auditor/PPS%20Student%20Transfer%20Audit.p....

Presentations made 11/5/07 by Judy Brennan, head of the PPS Enrollment and Transfer Office, and Adam Davis of the "research" firm Hibbits, were thin, inaccurate, unscientific, cherry-picked, and so utterly lacking that the Board should be ashamed.

Never were the words "Flynn" or "Blackmer" mentioned by the presenters – let alone having the authors, respected auditors Flynn and Blackmer, at the Board to present data and answer questions.

Brennan's and Davis's presentations were inane, lacked data, and by their own admission were "qualitative not quantitative" -- i.e. they amounted to a popularity contest, and were not scientific or representative in any way! Brennan's presentation had already been made at a pathetic PPS "Board work session" last winter 2007, but material was presented as though it were new. As happened last spring, Monday's Board meeting produced no measurable results. Both presentations and the School Board follow up (or lack thereof) were insulting to the intelligence of the public, and not worth discussing further.

My purpose is the remind the School Board of the commitments and promises that former Superintendent Vicki Phillips made regarding Flynn-Blackmer audit and PPS follow up. Those commitments are found in the document above starting on page 22 (25) in a 6/7/06 memo from Superintendent Phillips to the auditors. Those pages are attached as a pdf file below.

Commitments made by Phillips include:

"Portland Public School’s (PPS) revised Transfer Policy, passed in August 2002, was designed to make the transfer process fairer, and it has; but throughout its continuing evolution, PPS has not stepped back to fully analyze and prioritize the underlying educational purposes and impact of the transfer process. This is the right time to do so.

In the last year, particularly, the need to grapple with fundamental issues around School Choice has become obvious to school district staff, the School Board and our school communities. The transfer process raises difficult value and policy judgments that go to the heart of how we raise student achievement in our schools and how we retain a public school system that keeps the support of its constituents. School choice policies touch many of the critical efforts underway at PPS: Our work to strengthen high schools, to ensure that we have strong neighborhood schools in every part of the school district, plans for creating new language immersion programs and focus options, our drive to reduce the achievement gap, and our efforts to strengthen education by creating K-8 schools.

We have examined transfer issues piecemeal, as they demanded attention or became pressing, but we have not conducted a thorough review, top to bottom, of all the issues our School Choice process involves. Your audit is thus very timely and helpful."

During recent years, the District has worked to redefine its future portfolio of schools. This has proven to be difficult. In a climate of tightening resources the Board’s goals – maintaining strong neighborhood schools, providing an array of educational options, and investing significantly in the lowest performing high schools – all depend upon and compete for resources. Attaining one goal may impede accomplishment of the others.

The Board adopted its new transfer policy with ambitious goals for increasing educational options, but implemented the new transfer system while facing declining enrollments and budget shortfalls. It has responded with a series of plans for school closures, consolidations, and reconfigurations without a set of strategic priorities to balance the Board’s competing goals. The Board has not clarified what it is trying to accomplish with its transfer system.

The District has not monitored transfer capacity and the implications for school choice as an increasing number of families are not approved for transfers to preferred schools. An effective school choice system requires an adequate supply of school capacity to meet the demand for student transfers.

The District’s efforts to centralize and formalize the transfer process and make it more accessible to families District-wide, as well as the new requirements for transfer under NCLB, all worked to increase the demand for transfer options while supply was diminishing. The number of transfer slots available for the FY05-06 transfer cycle was reduced by about 50%, compared to the previous year. Reductions were most significant at the high schools and elementary schools. With these slot reductions, the percentage of applicants who were approved for a transfer declined—from 84% in FY04-05 to 72% in FY05-06. Similarly, the percentage of applicants approved to transfer to their first choice school also declined—from 71% in FY04-05 to 61% in FY05-06. Because the lottery became more competitive and fewer families received their first choice, it is critical that the Board establish an explicit purpose for the transfer system. More detailed information can be found in Exhibit 10 in the Appendix. Board needs to clarify the purpose of its school choice system Transfer slots are declining

Recommendations:

I. Given the current uncertainty about funding and the future configuration of schools, we recommend that use of the lottery be limited for the short-term or put on hold until the Board adopts a policy that clarifies the purpose of the school choice system.

II. In order to insure that operation of the lottery will better meet underlying objectives for an open, fair and transparent transfer system which can better promote equity and achievement in the future, we recommend that the Board increase oversight of the student transfer system.

III. Once the Board adopts school choice system objectives we recommend that District management:
•Increase coordination, management and oversight of the various internal functions affecting the student transfer process, which include: ETC; Lottery Contractor; IT; Title I; Research & Evaluation; Communication; Transportation.
•Develop regular reporting mechanisms on student transfers to District families, management, and the Board.
•Develop a process for reviewing substantial changes to the lottery process, and simulate the impact of changes on lottery outcomes before implementation of changes.
•Develop a plan to build the District’s capacity for administering the lottery in-house for the FY07-08 transfer cycle.
•Conduct regular evaluation of transfer supply and demand. Reviewthe geographic availability of program/focus options. Consider expanding access in underserved clusters and assess the feasibility of using choice zones within a system of school choice.
•Develop procedures with criteria for principals to use in determining available transfer slots.
•Implement strategies to strengthen eSIS coding of student enrollment in schools with focus and program options, so that actual transfers to these programs can be better evaluated.
•Conduct ongoing monitoring and further evaluation of the impact of student transfers on school and student achievement.
•Follow-through with proposed efforts to support transfers system as outlined in the “Corrective Action Plan” for the final year of the VPSC grant.
• Develop better internal controls and consistent testing of the lottery weights."

If the Board's confidence in the Hibbits / Adam Davis study is so high, it should have no problem making public the "data" behind the Hibbits' color dot maps. Data to be made public should include:
1. Of 174 participants, HOW MANY focus option and HOW MANY neighborhood school parents participated?
2. What neighborhood schools did their children attend?
3. What focus option schools participated? (Obviously, with our transfer system, showing us where survey participants reside means nothing. Students can go to school all over the district.)
4. What was the original selection criteria for participants?
5. Were there really only three participants from entire WEST SIDE OF PORTLAND, out of 174 participants? If so, why?
6. Adam Davis, in response to a question by Sonia Henning about the unusual "demographics" in the study, stated they could not survey the west side because of "budget" constraints. WHAT budget constraints could those have been? PPS parents of the west side were available to participate; they don't live in Portugal or Antarctica, they are just on the other side of a river. Why would it be cheaper to survey east side parents than west side parents?
7. What SCHOOLS do the three particpants on the west side attend? (They could be schools on the east side.)
8. Isn't it true that Hibbits only surveyed three west side particpants out of 174 because, as my fifth grader was able to put it, "the west side is steamed?"

{For those who haven't had time to follow PPS on the west side, the west side is steamed for many reasons, including:
1. Smith closed, and kids were sent to a substandard school facility which STILL has biohazards on the playground; many families left the District entirely; Ash Creek property values have tanked with the loss of Smith. Smith must be reopened as a neighborhood school.
2. Rieke is the only west side school that has had elementary programs restored -- the rest of the west side schools have NOT seen a return of art, music, PE, library and counselors.
3. Rieke and Stevenson were given promises by Vicki Phillips and the district that they would NOT close, while no other Wilson cluster elementary schools were given such guarantees.
4. Rieke parents heavily "poached" the Hayhurst catchment area for students this spring and summer. When complaints are made, Rieke parents say "Well, Odyssey poaches Rieke." Touche, that is true. One of the many problems with PPS's transfer policy generally, and with co-located schools -- is they help set up a "school recruiting war" throughout the district. That's what Celebrate Schools! is really all about: setting up a Lord of the Flies atmosphere.
5. Rieke was able to offer all day kindergarten for this year before last year's transfer deadline; unlike Rieke, Hayhurst had no such guarantees of all day K last year -- not at the transfer deadline and NOT by the end of the year. So, as the Tribune reported, Rieke was able to gain 18 kindergartners from the Hayhurst catchment. This loss of 18 students from Hayhurst is NOT because Rieke knows how to market -- it's because Rieke has something TO MARKET. Rieke has FTEs and after school programs that Hayhurst doesn't have, and in spring 2007 Rieke could offer the ALL DAY KINDERGARTEN GUARANTEE, Hayhurst could not.
6. PPS historic gerrymandering around Markham and Stevenson elementaries, which is so blatant and severe that though these two schools are three minutes apart by car, Stevenson is 91% white while Markham is 54% white! There are many gross gerrymanders, including a huge cat-tail gerrymander which wraps around Mountain Park, and which PPS needs to address. This cat tail gerrymander is designed to send wealthier Mountain Park students to the white Stevenson, while keeping enough low income kids in Markham to make it the "Title I School" south of Barbur.
7. Sidewalks going in to the Rieke area through some City program of Sam Adams, even though the Rieke area has the MOST sidewalks of anywhere in SW -- as a matter of fact, Rieke used that sidewalk issue to help save their school.
8. PPS continues to under-resource Hayhurst school, treating it as two schools when it suits the District, and treating it as one school when it comes to under-resourcing. The Hayhurst neighborhood school has 53% of students in poverty, but it cannot receive Title 1 funds because of the Odyssey magnet which PPS placed in the school.
9. PPS appears to be starving out Hayhurst Elementary for its eventual closure. Non-white students who were traditionally not welcome at Rieke are now returning to Rieke under a boundary change, draining the non-white students from Hayhurst. The community knows that loss of non-white students is a sign you will be closed -- that was a first step at Smith.}

It's frustrating that the public's time was wasted by Judy Brennan and Adam Davis at the 11/5/07 Board meeting. The School Board must look at the commitments made by Superintendent Phillips to the City and County auditors in her memorandum. Answer the simple question that has been posed so many times: what is the problem the transfer policy is designed to solve?

This audit was a requirement of the three year operating levy which commenced last year. PPS is accountable to the taxpayers to this audit, and FIX or terminate the transfer policy. As Steve Rawley put it, if PPS is increasing segregation or inequity, PPS better darn well be able to explain WHY! What possible objective could override the Board's moral and legal obligation to provide equal access to equitable education throughout the district??

Parents don't understand how PPS can be entering into facilities discussions when it has not determined how to have equitable programs across the district. PPS must first address Flynn-Blackmer and equity, THEN focus on schools to provide that new, equitable plan. The Flynn-Blackmer audit found that PPS's current transfer policy fosters segregation. Why would we focus on real estate now, when we have not addressed district-wide segregation -- that's putting the cart before the horse.

I fear that Flynn-Blackmer will be another Annenberg Study: a hard-won, critical, competent study which will have absolutely no measurable result in stopping segregation and inequity in Portland Public Schools.

--Lynn Schore