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Neighborhood and school improvements go hand in hand

by Matt Edens

“So, what are the schools like?” It’s the question every listing agent in a center-city neighborhood dreads—because the answer isn’t one most buyers want to hear.

On the plus side, Knox County’s center-city public schools aren’t overcrowded; in fact, most are under capacity. But sample the state’s school “Report Card” site, and you’ll see that standardized test scores for inner-city schools are almost universally poor. This—despite the fact that the school system often spends more per inner-city school pupil than it does out in the greener pastures of suburban Knox County—was something proponents of a new West Knox high school were quick to point out.

What they didn’t disclose, however, was how much of that funding is either pass-through federal dollars or due to federal mandates. After all, it’s hardly a mystery that our poorest performing schools are also overwhelmingly home to our poorest pupils. The “report card” lists the percentage of students at each school that are considered “economically disadvantaged.” On average, 70 to 80 percent of an inner-city school’s student body is considered economically disadvantaged. Every single pupil in one school, Maynard Elementary in Mechanicsville, classifies as economically disadvantaged. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that this concentration of poverty is what’s driving those test scores down. In fact, skim through the state’s report card site for Knox County and the correlation between affluence and test scores.

Changing either set of numbers won’t be easy. But it must be done. If only for the simple fact that, like a first grade classroom where a quarter of the students can’t read, those schools with lagging test scores are holding the whole system back. Luckily, we’re taking some steps to address the issue: Project Grad’s program of curriculum changes and scholarships as well as the birth to kindergarten programs and incentive pay for “hard to staff” schools that are integral to County Mayor Ragsdale’s “Every School a Great School” initiative. Taken as a whole, they should nudge those test scores nearer to the county norm.

But, other than the move toward smaller, open enrollment “theme based” high schools in Ragsdale’s proposal, neither initiative does much to address what may be both the cause and effect of test scores: the current concentration of poverty. Sure, the possibility that hundreds, perhaps thousands more inner-city kids may eventually go to college will no doubt be Project Grad’s most lasting benefit. But that will take a generation or two to have an impact on the center city’s income demographics (and that’s assuming, of course, that those graduates return home). Knox County’s magnet program has, so far, failed to have much impact on the overall test scores of the schools it calls home. And the most direct, immediate approaches to the concentration problem—either large-scale busing or major redistricting—are surely risks for the politician who proposes them. Which means that selling middle- and upper-income families on center-city neighborhoods and center-city schools is essentially the only option left on the table.

It’ll be a tough sale. Even those neighborhoods that have shown recent success at attracting middle- and upper-income families have a harder time persuading them to trust their neighborhood school. “Every neighborhood,” as a friend has pointed out to me before, “is zoned for Webb.” And other friends in east and north Knoxville are—thanks to low home prices and miniscule mortgage payments—able to afford private school tuition on relatively modest middle-class incomes; which, when you think about it, isn’t all that different from an upscale suburban family whose “tuition” to a higher-achieving school is essentially factored into their mortgage payment.

The sale is so tough that local government has already thrown in the towel at least once. Last year, the school system expanded Sequoyah Elementary’s already gerrymandered zone to include downtown—which wasn’t so much an expression of commitment to downtown redevelopment as a vote of “no confidence” in the 10 under-capacity inner-city elementary schools that, as the crow flies, are closer to downtown than Sequoyah.

For downtown and the surrounding center-city neighborhoods to succeed, we need real solutions, not stop-gap measures. Which is one of the many reasons I’m glad Indya Kincannon was recently chosen to represent the school board district that, from Fourth and Gill to the Emoriland/Fairmont area, includes many of the center-city neighborhoods that have successfully attracted middle-income families. I don’t know that she has the answers. But since she’s both a Fourth and Gill resident and a mother of two, I know she has a gut-level understanding of the challenge ahead. And, because it’ll be two to four years before her kids are even in school, merely by running for office, she’s already demonstrated the kind of foresight Knox County Schools desperately need. I wish her luck... For her sake and ours.

August 26, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 35 © 2004 Metro Pulse