Linehan: Suburban Parents Don’t Game Pre‑K

After hearing New Haven parents’ complaints about suburban students closing up spots in city magnet schools, Ed Linehan came back with some facts and some arguments to offer a rosier picture of cross-border education.

Linehan offered that take at Tuesday night’s Board of Education meeting on Meadow Street.

Linehan was asked to give a progress report on a committee he chairs that’s rethinking school attendance zones. (Read about that here.) He took the opportunity as well to answer several ​“frequently asked questions about the expansion of school choice.”

By and large, these questions dealt with parents’ concerns about the influx of suburban students causing overcrowding in the early grades of New Haven’s schools.

Linehan brought data to rebut the widely held conception that suburban parents ​“take advantage” of New Haven’s school system by sending their kids to preschool and kindergarten in state-backed magnet schools in the city — only to leave the school district for the more advanced grades. New Haven parents charge they can’t get their children into good local schools as a result because suburbanites, who are guaranteed slots in state-backed magnets, get there first, only to bail a few years later. (Read about that here.)

One of the parent organizers who originally brought the Pre‑K issue to the Board reacted to Linehan’s figures Wednesday morning by saying they miss the point. He said the organizers were not decrying the fact that suburban parents send kids to city schools — a central part of magnet programs — but rather decrying the lack of choices with which city parents are left. They were decrying a system of ​“school chance,” not ​“school choice.”

In a PowerPoint presentation Tuesday night, Linehan reported that the number of suburban students in New Haven schools actually increases in the higher grades. In the 2011 – 2012 school year, for example, there were 156 suburban kindergartners in New Haven — and 216 out-of-town eight graders. 

“Educational choice is a two-way street,” said Linehan. He pointed out that that 115 more suburban students had left New Haven’s schools than entered the city’s system by choice that year.

Linehan went on to note that local New Haven taxes are ​“not used to support the instruction or transportation of suburban students” in the city’s schools. Instead, the state’s education department pays for all the added costs associated with inter-district magnet schools.

He concluded by quoting from a 2009 study conducted by the Center for Educational Policy Analysis at the University of Connecticut, which highlighted benefits of the presence of suburban students at city schools. The study, he said, showed that inter-district magnet schools are ​“more racially integrated,” ​“help students develop a positive orientation towards multicultural issues,” and ​“provide an academic climate similar to that found in a wealthy, suburban, non-magnet high school.”

Linehan placed special emphasis on the fact that, according to the study, ​“the magnet school effect is to reduce the minority-White achievement gap by roughly 11 per cent in reading and 8.7 per cent in math” by the 10th grade.

After the end of his report, Mayor John DeStefano approached Linehan.

“Engagement, engagement, transparency, transparency,” the mayor chanted.

“School Chance”

“Ed Linehan understands the big picture of public school admissions in New Haven better than anyone, but he’s still missing the point,” Pre‑K parent organizer Tim Holahan remarked Wednesday. He said the parents with whom his group has spoken ​“all want the same thing: high-quality, integrated, walkable schools that include pre‑K education for all of our children. We’re far from that goal, and we don’t see the board working with sufficient vigor toward it.

“The current patchwork system of application and lottery for Magnet and neighborhood schools only serves to obscure the fact that a New Haven resident has a very low probability of getting into a particular school if they are outside its attendance zone. We have ​‘school chance’ in this city, not school choice.”

When the parent group asks for data on children’s chances of getting in certain schools, Board of Ed staff always respond that they’re ​“too busy with the lotteries,” Holahan said. He said parents need to file freedom of information requests to get any data.

“The net result of this opacity is confusion, stress, and disaffection,” he said. ​“Many parents with options leave the system; many of those who remain lose faith that their efforts can have a positive impact on the public education of their kids. Rather than defend the status quo, the board should act to change it.”