hello welcome to education roundtable i'm maggie sun tank and today we have with us laura waters education writer for n j spotlight dot com news works and your jersey family she's also a blogger for a site called new jersey left behind welcome laura thank you very much jacki glad to be here ok thank you for driving all the way down here to present it as so early in the morning so we're going to discuss one of your articles for a spotlight it's actually an opinion it's called a county wide approach to desegregating new jersey schools and it's published on january thirteenth of this year so before we get started i'm going to read one sentence from from your from this article and we'll get started with that particular sentence it's an old problem you jersey has one of the most segregated public school systems in the country can you explain what that means and how it integrates with district factor groups which is something that new jersey uses kind of as litmus test for economic wealth of of a town yes jersey has more schools per square mile then any country state in the country and that ties into the segregation we have by paying this county between either the fourth or fifth most segregated public school system and that all relates to the way we group kids into school districts we have six hundred one school districts and they are largely populated by people who share the same economic class this all ties back to affordable housing and you can get all sorts of other issues but new jersey state rates each school district a there used to be called and for all practical purposes are still called abbott districts and they are all a's and that's the lowest level the law the grid the greatest degree of poverty the highest the f g is these segregated towns this is one of the hardest things for people who look at public education there's certainly poverty the degree of poverty in the family has an enormous impact on children they they have done studies that show that when and when children show up for kindergarten the child of a of middle class or even upper middle class family will have heard twice as many words as a child from a low income family and the impact of poverty on a child's academic achievement is long lasting and indelible at the same time it's very difficult for somebody who's interested in in expanding equity to say well let's solve poverty and that means of education the achievement gap i don't know that that's one in a way that's a cop out i view that as a cop out that we have to find a way to increase access to high performing school districts in new jersey in spite of poverty and housing codes in affordable housing limitations so certainly the degree of poverty is a big big factor but there have been models particularly in charter schools that find ways to address that successfully how how do the charter schools address them are they do that and ways that because their charters allow them to be more experimental for instance a tip not all charge every charter school is different but typically they have longer school days longer school years for instance the kipp schools in newark have saturday classes they have they have a much longer days they think some at some charter schools have a two hundred twenty day school year as opposed to a traditional public school that has one hundred eighty school year school day year they are they're able to work their teachers harder which sounds funny but they're because charter teachers don't have to be unionized they can if they want to be but they tend not to be they can the  ask them to stay longer and to take on additional duties that would be fiscally prohibitive in a traditional district they have a little more while they watch charter schools still take the sit the kids there take the same tests and they have there's all kinds of accountability rubrics that they fall under they have a little more flexibility with grouping kids and with experimenting with with  what's the demographic of charter schools that's one of the the legitimate gripes about charter schools i'd say our most active charter school environments are in newark and camden in those three cities which are all to get back to our d f g s eight districts are and their and original abbott districts by september one in four students in those three places will be attending charter schools and some of the complaints of people who regard charters as a threat to traditional public education they mean the the funding for traditional school districts as one of those complaints is that they they take a lower number of children with disabilities they take the demographics tend to be this is this is the charge that the demographic the socioeconomic profiles the charters tend to be will hire and they take fewer increased language learners and that is true for some charters and the state has there's various bills in the legislature that would that would reap require more oversight so their charter school demographics would reflect the heat in that their neighborhoods and it's interesting because you know we're just talking the week of may twelfth was the sixtieth anniversary of brown versus education forces board of education so what you're saying you know today to sounds like it's an ongoing issue yes the brown versus board of education sixty years ago  said that separate education is inherently unequal you can't have schools that have only save black kids separate from schools that have only white kids and say that they're equal because they're getting the same curriculum or the same funding and new jersey where the where the first the splay of that are we have there was an article recently by paul trachtenberg where he labeled new jersey a certain number of new jersey schools as apartheid schools and by that he meant that there are schools where ninety percent the students there are either are either black or white or latino and in other words it's intensely segregated and therefore according to the supreme court inherently unequal and there's been various temps to ameliorate that but because we weed we assign kids to schools based on their zip code and we are so we have if prisons were in princeton now nine miles away stratton which is in a district for instance and i we are whole infrastructure our whole state infrastructure segregate children but it's not just segregation by you know by a what the what we the politicians term color but it's also by economics it isn't in fact it's the economics that are that in sixty years ago it was more  color and now what's happening is as as some see an economics change there it's really is by by degree of poverty so you could have a school in camden where ninety from schools that serve wealthier children and there's been the christie administration has been i think they see this and they've been doing all sorts of things to try to kind of ameliorate the situation so what are your thoughts about one of the approaches which is interdistrict school choice what's happening there and how do you feel about the efficacy of that program yet as far as the into district school choice program that is a program that's been around for a while it was originally one thousand nine hundred five program that sort that was an active through a bill that said that schools with empty seats are allowed to accept children from districts outside those boundaries and it originally was very limited it was only one school per county was allowed to apply the sixteen schools mercer where we are sitting now had no just a choice programs it was the legislature took it from a pilot about five years ago and made it a permanent feature a included it and the governor has included it in the budget though not it numbers people would like to see and what this does is it allows a school that has empty seats to say i we have twenty seats the high school and we will take children from outside the district who can go there the district pays a little the state pays a little it's i think our wonderful program it's extremely popular right now there are six thousand between five and six thousand kids will attend into district choice districts in september there are hundreds of districts that have become choice districts there are there's some resentment because the districts who lose those students to other districts then feel physical pain because they lose that state aid but it's a wonderful way to open up access and give families choices in and if you live in camden you don't have a choice and the there's also the voter x calls or the technical schools and magnet schools they can get clinton to one new jersey has every every county new jersey there are twenty one counties every county has a vote text that special services district and they serve kids with disabilities  there are lots of other ways to kids with disabilities get served they also have otec prop programs which are traditionally things like automotive mechanics of cosmetology or food service and they lease programs are funded through a combination of district tuition and county taxes are counties tend to have a lot of money over time some counties not all some counties have use that vote tech model to set up what are really magnet schools and they don't call them that they still call them tech schools but they're essentially magnet school can you give us an example oh sure sure these tend to be in sort of wealthier parts of new jersey for instance bergen county has as part as part of their vote tech campus has something called the bergen academies which is so exclusive and so hard to get into that there is a book actually written on how you can get your kid into bergen academies they they look at test scores they look at teacher  required missions testing interviews but they're public schools they have and they are enormously successful new jersey now i should i'm sorry it was u s news and world  report publishes an annual list of the best schools and in new jersey the ten of the ten best schools in our state seven of them were those vote tech schools  schools well i listed all those ways in which they met these magnets are exclusionary if you said the same thing about charters there would be an enormous backlash there would be and there have been not that charters are allowed to discriminate in the same way but that that kind of that that that anger towards charters could just as easily and logically be directed towards magnets but they're not and that because there's not a lot of awareness about them there's not a lot of understanding about how much they spend per pupil which is far more than then traditional public schools for instance bergen academy to go back to the that example spends over twenty seven thousand dollars it's not twenty seven but it's it's in the twenty's because we were talking to kevin bowels the principal of high tech high ok that's a that's a great example yeah and he was saying his costs are only around like fifteen thousand per pupil and i'm not quite sure how that came about but you're saving the most of them are far greater not most of them the one i'm taught first but we have to distinguish between the ones that are truly vo tech ok and  various people how much a question out of the average for new jersey public schooling per year you're going to get numbers anywhere between eleven and thirty eleven thousand and thirty thousand it really depends how year i figuring  overhead i don't know how he read today calculation and it may be right and it's not and the money really is just not the main issue it's really about the exclusion o of low income kids if you look at the demographics if we're looking at high tech high or bergen county the numbers don't the demographic don't reflect the community because they don't have to right because i guess let's make a  quick differentiation so the magnet schools are purely based upon test scores teacher recommendations not everyone but the ones i pointed out in the article yes ok and the and the ones like i'm just go use biotech high and also high tech high biotech technology so what happened is a biotech academy what happens is that for a high tech high they take one student from every town ok that's great that's great that's great because they said because the the argument that if you take just the top ten per cent or whatever then you're going to get into the situation where you know you're only going to get affluent families live but if you're forced to take one child from every town no matter what the what the distro factor group is for that town then you're reflecting the whole county yes i mean i that can policy i wouldn't i can speak to that i think that just like are going to district public school choice program increases access for poor families to districts that would normally be out of they'd be barred from by law they be considered nonresidents the magnet schools offer us another opportunity to increase access to higher achievement in public schools for children who would normally be shut has a salary cap very controversial heavily disliked by school boards and the superintendent associations it was it came in with the two percent cap on on increases in taxes on the public school districts and it sets a salary cap for superintendents based on enrollment those county superintendent each of our county's county school systems have also a superintendent but they are immune from those caps so they can earn a lot more even if they serve your kids i don't know why it was set up that way diane ravitch no ok eighty three of the sixteen yeah and she's saying ok now now what we gotta do is we've got to fix the economic inequity period right i think maybe i'm being unfair but i find it hard to imagine a world our culture or a country where there's no poverty i don't know of one every country has poverty to say that we will fix educational inequity by obliterating poverty seems to me belies the urgency of the kid in camden central high right now right this minute a kid sitting there who is who is as smart and  ambitious academically driven as any other kid sitting next door in cherry hill which is a few miles of camden yet he has no chance and so we just sort of say well we'll fix poverty and you know these kids can wait i find that i i find they're objectionable i think that we need to look for opportunities right now for these kids right now infringement on the local batteries we're all about home rule but if it means opening up school seats in princeton or open or starting schools that are still public schools but draw from larger catchment areas instead of tiny little districts one of our little tiny six hundred three difference i think that that serves kids and anybody who's an education i really believe this is there to serve kids the reason underlying reason this is according to some researchers and some political activists not all of them the reason why we will the grownups don't want children from other districts like the trenton coming into princeton or you in coming to for anyone is because if you open it up so that any child from mercer county can come into princeton the real estate value that is their homes will go down it's true well i don't know if it's true but that's certainly the argument i think that in some ideal world which i know can happen in new jersey because we're you know we are our anthem is home rule local control we would have county district why isn't there a mercer county district that's how maryland has their schools they have maryland has i don't remember the number of districts th trenton i don't i think that our current infrastructure of schools is our greatest impediment to educational equity and i go back to the brown versus board of education separate education is inherently unequal and that's what we have here and it's basically based upon what's the code you live it's a zip code based education and it's going to be perpetually driven by real estate  i suppose so i mean there are there are ways to combat that affordable meaningful affordable housing structure would would help with that there'd been study there was a big was that there was no disgrace in home values there was the children the students from camden easily kept up their great with the kids from el laurel they integrated  well there was all there were all kinds of others social improvements for and the students who had been able to move with their families to a low income housing development now laurel there was no amount laurels rankings didn't go down it all worked so i don't i think there are ways where you can get around the fear about the housing values i think that these programs we have like into district school choice and is is is a way that maybe it serves so few kids as one there's one point two million kids one point three million kids in new jersey school children public school children only six thousand of them got into district public school choice but i think it can show new jersey that it's ok to mix it's ok to integrate it won't hurt the value of your house i think charter schools are another way to do that  i think integrating manned schools is another way to do that so thank you so much for your time this won't hurt i've been here thank you very much this was a great article as i was saying this hit upon every single point that educators and parents are thinking about so i really appreciate your writing this article thank you very much had to be here so if anybody has any questions for our guest laura waters or myself please e mail me at info at education  table dot origin thank you for watching