Disaster for black children that ensued when Pinellas County, FL abandoned desegregation efforts
Here's an article in the Tampa Bay Times about the disaster for black children that ensued when Pinellas County, FL abandoned desegregation efforts:
In just eight years, Pinellas County School Board members turned five schools in the county's black neighborhoods into some of the worst in Florida.
First they abandoned integration, leaving the schools overwhelmingly poor and black.
Then they broke promises of more money and resources.
Then — as black children started failing at outrageous rates, as overstressed teachers walked off the job, as middle class families fled en masse — the board stood by and did nothing.
Today thousands of children are paying the price, a Tampa Bay Times investigation has found.
They are trapped at Campbell Park, Fairmount Park, Lakewood, Maximo and Melrose — five neighborhood elementary schools that the board has transformed into failure factories.
Every year, they turn out a staggering number of children who don't know the basics.
Eight in 10 fail reading, according to state standardized test scores. Nine in 10 fail math.
Ranked by the state Department of Education, Melrose is the worst elementary school in Florida. Fairmount Park is No. 2. Maximo is No. 10. Lakewood is No. 12. Campbell Park is No. 15.
All of the schools operate within six square miles in one of Florida's most affluent counties.
All of them were much better off a decade ago.
Times reporters spent a year reviewing tens of thousands of pages of district documents, analyzing millions of computer records and interviewing parents of more than 100 current and former students. Then they crisscrossed the state to see how other school districts compared.
Among the findings:
· Ninety-five percent of black students tested at the schools are failing reading or math, making the black neighborhoods in southern Pinellas County the most concentrated site of academic failure in all of Florida.
· Teacher turnover is a chronic problem, leaving some children to cycle through a dozen instructors in a single year. In 2014, more than half of the teachers in these schools asked for a transfer out.
· At least three walked off the job without notice.
· All of this is a recent phenomenon. By December 2007, when the board ended integration, black students at the schools had posted gains on standardized tests in three of the four previous years. None of the schools was ranked lower than a C. Today, all the schools have F ratings.
· After reshaping the schools, the district funded four of them erratically. Some years they got less money per student than other schools, including those in more affluent parts of the county. In 2009, the year after resegregation, at least 50 elementary schools got more money per student than Campbell Park.
· Other districts with higher passing rates are doing far more to aid black students, including creating special offices to target minority achievement, tracking black students' progress in real time and offering big bonuses to attract quality teachers to high-minority schools. Pinellas does none of those things.
The problems don't end in the five south St. Petersburg schools. Overall, black children in Pinellas County are failing at higher rates than black children in virtually any other school district in Florida.
In 2014, they were a third more likely to fail math than black children in Miami-Dade, Broward, Orange and Palm Beach counties. They were 23 percent more likely to fail math than black children in Hillsborough.
Fifty-seven of 67 school districts in Florida recorded better reading scores, putting Pinellas in the same league as the poorest, most rural counties in the state.
In an interview with the Times, Superintendent Mike Grego acknowledged the school district's role in creating problems at the schools.
"You can't undo the past. You have to take the district from where it's at," Grego said. "I'm going on record saying we're going to fix this. And we're going to educate our students as if each one of them was our own kid."
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Nikole Hannah-Jones
Nikole Hannah-Jones covered civil rights and fair housing for ProPublica. Previously, she covered governmental issues, the census, and race and ethnicity at The Oregonian.
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One fateful decision. Years of neglect.
Five once-average schools remade into the worst in Florida.
Failure factories
Aug. 14, 2015 By CARA FITZPATRICK, LISA GARTNER and MICHAEL LaFORGIA
Photographs by DIRK SHADD
Tampa Bay Times
In just eight years, Pinellas County School Board members turned five schools in the county's black neighborhoods into some of the worst in Florida.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 9:39 AM
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