Lipstick on a Pig: North Charleston's Middle Schools

Question: If you had the option to send your own children to a better-performing school, would you take it? Would you decide that your child's education is too important to experiment with based on promises from CCSD's administrators? Or would you take the chance that disciplinary and academic conditions in the failing school your child is slated to attend have changed? See Thursday's North Charleston Schools Courting Students.

For most of us, that's what's known as a "no-brainer."

NCLB in this case is working quite effectively! Parents who care are opting out of Brentwood, Alice Birney, and Morningside Middle Schools in North Charleston because, because--they can! Now ordinary, middle-to-lower-income parents have the choice that richer parents have opted for all along. How American!

The P & C doesn't like this situation, and neither does CCSD. Surprised?

In the story splashed across the front of Thursday's local section, the reporter makes no mention of NCLB. If you weren't paying attention to CCSD's situation, you might have assumed that students were going elsewhere in the district on a whim! Courrege's lead says, "Hundreds of North Charleston children opt to go to middle schools elsewhere in the district rather than trying the ones in their neighborhoods." The REST OF THE STORY appears in the back pages.

According to Patricia Yandle of the District office, "Each of the three North Charleston middle schools has at least 95 students who plan to transfer to other higher-performing middle schools next school year under the federal No Child Left Behind law. . . . Most of those students were incoming sixth-graders." Of course, the schools' principals want this cadre of parents to stay. These would be the most involved in their children's education. ALMOST makes you feel sorry for them.

However, changing "perceptions" about these schools is NOT what is needed. REAL change is! And it is happening, just too slowly for these parents. Losing students like these to other schools is causing CCSD to attempt change, as can be seen from the list of "goodies" held out to the parents like an olive branch--technology, arts-infusion, single-sex core classes. Does anyone believe these attempts would have been made without the pressure of NCLB?

When the so-called "rumors" about these schools stop, when their failing status under NCLB changes, THEN these students will return. Well, not these students. By then these will have graduated from other schools that are not failing.