Urban vs. suburban matters little when it comes…
Urban vs. suburban matters little when it comes to student test scores, Pioneer Press analysis finds
By MaryJo Webster and The Associated Press | ap@ap.com | Pioneer Press
PUBLISHED: October 1, 2011 at 9:36 pm | UPDATED: November 12, 2015 at 4:59 pm
Ann Hobbie has seen jaws drop when people find out she sends her children to St. Paul Public Schools.
The Merriam Park resident and former teacher said some of her shocked friends or acquaintances can't believe it because, they say, students' test scores in St. Paul are so much worse than in suburban public schools.
But do suburban kids really post better test results than their peers in city schools? Not if they're from middle- and upper-income families. Scores are virtually the same for those students on statewide reading and math tests, no matter where they live, according to a Pioneer Press analysis.
"Our experience from kindergarten on is that our kids have been happy and learning in St. Paul. That's our litmus test," Hobbie said. "As parents, we sometimes make assumptions about schools without any real experience with that school."
In St. Paul and Minneapolis, 85 percent of students who did not receive free or reduced-price lunch were proficient in reading this year. That's just 1 percentage point lower than reading scores in the inner suburbs and 2 percentage points lower than those in the outer suburbs.
The results show what education experts have known for decades: Poverty, and the social factors that often go with it, matters more than where you live.
"A parent making a decision on where their child attends school based on test scores risks making a very bad decision for their kid," said Kent Pekel, head of the College Readiness Consortium at the University of Minnesota. "The scores give you some context for the school, but it doesn't tell you what the school is doing to help students succeed."
Critics of testing have long complained that results have been used unfairly to judge schools, at times damaging reputations and curbing enrollment.
In St. Paul, blanket judgments based on test scores have made it difficult to keep parents because they feed into the myth that urban schools can't educate their kids, said Evelyn Belton-Kocher, the district's director of research, assessment and evaluation.
But in fact, St. Paul does just as well, if not better, than some districts when it comes to educating certain student groups, such as those learning English.
"When we do a good job, we don't get credit, Belton-Kocher said. "From a PR standpoint, it hurts us. And it demoralizes our faculty."
Preconceived notions about schools come into play when parents are looking for a new home and are trying to decide what district they want to live in, said Jennifer Snyder, a Woodbury real estate agent and president of the St. Paul Area Association of Realtors. Test scores definitely come up, she said, as well as sports and what kind of academic offerings they have for kids.
"It's all about reputation and word-of-mouth, and people see that as the truth," Snyder said. "I feel bad because I see these schools are doing great things, too, but they just don't have a good reputation out there for some reason."
Education experts say parents should visit a school before they make a decision about a school being "good" or "bad."
"I'm not scared to talk about test scores," said Mary Cathryn Ricker, head of the St. Paul Federation of Teachers. "But I absolutely also want to take you into one of those classrooms. I want you to talk to the teachers. I want you to talk to the students."
NOT DESTINED TO FAIL
Although middle-class city kids are on par with their peers in the suburbs when it comes to performance on statewide tests, that's not the case for children from low-income families.
The Pioneer Press analysis found that children living in poverty had significantly better scores in the suburbs than in the city. In the outer suburbs, about 64 percent of low-income kids met reading standards this year compared with 43 percent in the core cities.
As Pekel puts it, there's poor and then there's really poor. Poor children in the core cities are more likely to not have a stable residence and to bounce from home to home or shelter to shelter. Others don't receive good medical or dental care, which can leave with untreated problems that grow from minor ailments to those bad enough to keep them at home or distract them from learning.
"It's the level and the concentration that's different here," said Michelle Walker, chief of accountability, planning and policy for St. Paul Public Schools.
That doesn't mean, however, that people should assume low-income students are destined to fail. As suburban populations change to look more like city schools, districts need to work together to advance their most-disadvantaged students instead of pitting them against each other, education experts say.
"The achievement gap is something that's a challenge for everyone in the state," Walker said. "We have a lot to learn from each other, no matter where we're located geographically."
It's usually the parents rather than the schools that are pushing the us-against-them mentality.
Parents are more engaged than ever in picking the best schools for their children, said Mary Cecconi, executive director of Parents United for Public Schools.
"I think it sometimes brings on tremendous angst for parents because there's this notion that there must be just one choice, the best choice," Cecconi said. "For me, you find a school that works best for your child."
And once parents make that choice, they're invested. Parents are their school's biggest cheerleader, which sometimes turns into belittling the choices of others.
"Sometimes, we wholeheartedly reject the options we haven't picked," said St. Paul parent Hobbie. "There's more than one right answer in Minnesota. And we're lucky that's the case."
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