Last month, during National School Choice Week, Kelley Williams-Bolar of Akron, Ohio emerged from jail after serving a nine-day sentence for choosing to send her two daughters out of their inner-city school district to a public school in the neighboring suburban Copley-Fairlawn district. Following a long investigation, indictment and a four-day jury trial, the black, single mother was convicted on two felony counts of falsifying her residence records.
In a similar case, two boys who live in Baltimore were kicked out of the suburban school they were attending and their mother is being forced to pay back tuition to the district even though she was in the process of renting a place to live in the suburb. As these two cases garner more media attention, more stories are emerging of suburban school districts setting up elaborate and often expensive border patrols to keep urban students out. Meanwhile, a growing number of parents with children stuck in failing urban schools -- be they public, charter or private -- are trying to make the right choices.
Ironically, in an era when school choice programs -- particularly charter schools -- are seen by policy makers on the political left and right of the answer, these mothers are getting little to no support from the usual school choice suspects. Indeed, reactions to Ms. Williams-Bolar's well-publicized case by some of the most vocal proponents of school choice have ranged from unsupportive to non-existent. Some blogs and websites frequented by market-based school reformers equated Ms. Williams-Bolar's act with stealing shoes. Never mind that her father lives in the Copley-Fairlawn district, or that, according to Ms. Williams-Bolar, she and her daughters live with him part time, or that her daughters go to their grandfather's house after school so that they can be safe and with an adult while their mother works and goes to school at night (to become a teacher).
Most striking in its absence was any discussion of successful Civil Rights-era, urban-to-suburban school choice programs in eight metropolitan areas through which urban parents legally do exactly what Ms. Williams-Bolar was convicted of doing: send their children to high-achieving, suburban schools. From Rochester, New York to St. Louis, and Boston to East Palo Alto, California, parents, students and educators have been trying to keep these unique urban-suburban school choice programs alive absent the national attention and support charter schools have received.
Despite a lack of public attention, these innovative urban-to-suburban programs -- most of which were court-ordered or created by state legislation in the 1960s -- have legally provided thousands of low-income urban black and Latino families meaningful school choices in more affluent settings. Most of these programs have no admissions requirements, and students are provided free transportation to assure they can get to their suburban school each day.
Reams of social science evidence explain why these programs are popular with participants, and why Ms. Williams-Bolar was wise to enroll her children in a more affluent, suburban, well-resourced and high-achieving school outside her city neighborhood. For instance, there is ample evidence that a high concentration of poor children in a single school is the most reliable predictor of school failure, even for the non-poor students in those schools. We also know that severe racial segregation in neighborhoods and schools persists, decades after mandated school desegregation and the passage of fair housing laws.
Meanwhile, segregation by income is increasing rapidly -- in our neighborhoods and schools. More specifically, the evidence on the impact of these eight urban-suburban school choice programs is far more optimistic than that on charter schools. Black and Latino students who attend suburban schools through such programs are more than twice as likely to graduate from high school and attend college than similar peers who remained in their neighborhood schools. One study of the urban-suburban school choice plan in Hartford found that graduates of this program were far more likely to work in fields in which blacks or Latinos have historically been underrepresented.
Research also suggests that students of all races who attend these now racially diverse schools in these suburban districts participating in these programs emerge with more open racial attitudes and more acceptance of people who are different from them. In fact, in several of these metropolitan areas, the officials and residents of the suburban school districts that accept the urban students have become staunch supporters of these plans. Indeed, in 2004, hundreds of students in an affluent suburban St. Louis high school walked out of class to protest efforts to end the urban-suburban school choice plan. According to one news report, the students organized the walkout to "show support for diversity in this top-ranked school district and for their friends."
Despite this mounting evidence, it is charter schools that have captured education reformers' imaginations, even more so now, following their alluring portrayal in the recent documentary "Waiting for Superman." The movie, which features Geoffrey Canada, the President of several Harlem charter schools, implies that poor children's future depends on them winning the lottery for admission to a charter schools. Interestingly enough, when Mr. Canada was a child, his mother made a choice similar to Ms. Williams-Bolar's, sending him to live with his grandparents on Long Island so he could attend a suburban school.
Thus, what Mr. Canada's mother and Ms. Williams-Bolar knew intuitively is well documented in the lives of the graduates of cross-district, urban-to-suburban choice programs. Ironically, these cross-district integration programs, which produce better academic outcomes for urban students, while preparing children for our demographic future, have received far less political support than charter schools, which tend to be highly segregated by race and class. But Ms. Williams-Bolar and thousands of other urban mothers who have participated in these urban-suburban transfer programs over the last 50 years knew that.
As their court orders are lifted and funds become tighter, several of these urban-suburban transfer plans are being phased out, while charter schools enjoy the political and financial backing of donors anxious to be superheroes to poor children. Perhaps a few of these supermen and women should get behind Ms. Williams-Bolar and other parents like her who want to make their own school choices.
James Perry: Home Is Where the Heartache Is ... and We Just Fired All the Heart Surgeons
Dr. Boyce Watkins: Fighting the Arrest of Tanya McDowell: Educating Your Child Should Not Be a Crime
Martin J. Blank: It Takes a Community: The Secret to Fixing Our Nation's Schools
http://fos teringmedi aconnectio ns.org/201 1/02/25/th e-educatio n-of-foste r-youth-in -massachus sets/
Two black women falsify their residence records for the noble intent of sending their kids to decent schools and get jailed.
Meanwhile, the former White House Chief of Staff successfully defends his residency in Chicago (despite not having lived there for at least two years) and goes on to win the mayoral race.
Methinks there is a double standard.
I have also always wondered why some of my kids blossomed in the suburbs while some their siblings couldn't make the leap.
The worst thing about NCLB was attaching stakes to test scores, but best thing about the law was disaggregating data so that high averages did not hide failure to educate poor children of color. Had NCLB been a Consumers Report, I hope, suburban schools would have risen to the challenge of learning how to welcome kids from intense concentrations of poverty.
I say there is more to this story.
First off - is it *really* okay for this mother to teach her children that it is okay to lie, cheat, and yes - steal from taxpayers to get what they want? This is what she is modeling for them. She aspires to be a teacher -- will she cheat on standardized tests, as well, because her students deserve to pass, and because she deserves the merit pay that will be based on test scores by the time she gets her certificate? Ponder on those things, please.
Next, and more importantly - channels were provided in the school where her children were enrolled. More than likely, tuition could have been negotiated easily, if the children were doing well. For those of you who live in affluent suburbs, where you pay higher taxes than most -- what if *many* such students came? If one mother can lie about her residency,
We have three low-income complexes zoned for my school. Some such families know how to 'work the system'. Children from those families often bring behavior problems and care little about achievement. Many come from highly dysfunctional families as well. If you've been reading about how teachers must spend extreme effort and time on 'the low kids' to the point of letting the able children drift (all for the sake of the almighty standardized tests) these are the children who are getting a great deal of extra help.
Conversely, there are families within those low-income complexes who are there due to some tough breaks in life. They are working hard to get out, and to support themselves instead of relying on government assistance. Children in those families are being taught that it is important to work hard, behave appropriately, and to be diligent about one's learning.
I wonder what the other side of this story involves?
It's not about denying a poor single mother the right to send her children to a good school, to me...
It's about finding a better way - a way that does not teach children that it's okay to cheat the system. Even if the system is not a good one - a person with integrity finds a way to change the system instead of lying and cheating to circumvent the system.
Both parties could have sat down and negotiated a tuition for the girls with a stipulation on if the girls lived full time with the grandfather after a period of 2 years or so they will be considered residents and will no longer have to pay.
We're too eager to call black human beings criminals don't you think? Especially when she was trying to give her children what she thought was best. Your trying to make her out as a terrible human when all she was doing was trying to be a good mom.
Had she been a robo-signer, and falsified mortgage and property records, not a darned thing would have happened.
But she gave a false address so that her kid could have the same education as kids in a more affluent neighborhood...And got a felony conviction and 9 days in jail.
As for the urban-suburban contracts, I'm not sure of the evidence yet. Only a small amount of students use it and the kids I've seen that have used it are extremely tired from the commute and have a hard time being part of either the community they live in or the one they go to school in.
Honestly, I think the best choice any parent can make it to be a part of their kids' educations, schools, and communities.
Regarding the first sentence, how many people can just leave everything behind and move in with their parents? And why should the father be the one to raise more children? He presumably worked his entire life and is now enjoying retirement in a quiet suburb. Other than his role as grandparent, not too sure how he feels about raising more kids.