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Consortium hears advice on race, choice

Study Circles cites misperceptions, equity and expectations as problems

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

The three high schools in the Northeast Consortium suffer from issues of public misperceptions, equity and expectations, and it’s up to the community and Montgomery County Public Schools to solve it, according to the findings of a Study Circles group.

Over six weeks, 23 teachers, students and parents discussed the question of how race affects school choice in the Northeast Consortium. In the final meeting Thursday evening, MCPS officials and high school and middle school administrators heard the group’s recommendations.

The group found that misperceptions played perhaps the greatest role in influencing school choice.

‘‘There really are tremendous misperceptions in the county, and I think people base decisions on information they think they have,” said Susan Marks, community superintendent for the consortium.

In the consortium, two schools — Paint Branch and Springbrook high schools — have had a trend of more non-white students enroll, while the third, James Hubert Blake, has roughly retained constant ethnic demographics.

Rhonda Dillard, a Blake teacher who has 15 years of teaching with MCPS, said perceptions of the three schools inaccurately equate quality with racial makeup.

‘‘Certain schools are considered to be ‘ghetto’ or ‘dirty.’ They might be older, but each time I go, it’s pristine,” Dillard said. ‘‘Why is ghetto associated with schools with high diversity and high minority? ... Some of these minorities are in the high-income bracket and they’re still considered ghetto.”

The Study Circles suggested a variety of actions. To promote equity among the three schools, the participants recommended improving facilities, coordinating consistent discipline procedures and comparing resources available to each school.

Press coverage also formed a concern for the participants, who suggested the consortium appoint a press liaison to contact the media, according to Cynthia Price, a consortium parent.

‘‘We would designate a staff member to write for the media, perhaps as a Northeast Consortium media liaison,” she said. ‘‘I feel that sometimes when a school has an incident, that it is publicized ... that sticks in people’s minds.”

To combat misperceptions, suggestions included analyzing media coverage, targeting minority media outlets to reach out to minority families, and talking about the preferred choice process to younger students.

The final point, said Springbrook senior student Aaron Campbell, was important, because few students currently decide on their school by looking at its signature programs.

‘‘The way most parents think we choose our schools is based on the school’s specialization,” he said. ‘‘If you think about us, being teenagers, that’s not how we choose. Most of the time, we follow our friends.”

Currently, counselors speak to middle school students about the eighth-grade choice process. However, if the recommendations of the study circles are implemented, that could begin as early as sixth grade or even in elementary school. That would help students make their choices based on the original intent of the consortium process: that each high school has signature programs in specialized fields to cater to student interests.

Also, to ensure continued high performance at the schools, the work team suggested developing peer mediation programs at each school before the end of the next school year, and also hiring more counselors. For the long term, participants suggested greater outreach to non-English-speaking families, and also diversity sensitivity training sessions.

Such sessions might help avoid the double standard that Jemina Cornejo’s family experienced. Cornejo said her brother, an MCPS student, had been getting C’s. When their mother approached a counselor, the response was that that was a ‘‘good enough” grade.

‘‘[The counselor’s] response was she thought it was fine,” Cornejo said. ‘‘The counselor could speak only a little Spanish, and my mother couldn’t defend my brother.”

Although administrators from MCPS consortium offices were present, they did not comment on which suggestions might be implemented. However, Betty Strubel of the Office of School Performance expressed interest in forming an advisory committee of community members, and is accepting volunteers for that committee.

Study Circles coordinator John Landesman said he was happy with the outcome, which was to take the discussion of racial perceptions out of informal rumors and into frank dialogue.

‘‘One of the most important pieces is people are finally talking about an issue publicly that lots of people had been talking about privately,” he said.