Durham Public Schools Are Great! Just Don’t Look at Other Web Sites
Last night, I came across this post on bullcityrising.com about a new Web site called strongdurhamschools.com. The site’s aim, in its own words:
Strong Durham Schools is a project begun by members of Durham Allies for Responsive Education, a community group formed to support and strengthen the Durham public schools. Since DPS schools are often disparaged in the press and by the general public, one of our first areas of concern was to set the record straight. Many students are thriving in Durham Public Schools and go on to achieve great things academically and in life as a result of their education. Are there challenges within Durham Public Schools? Of course. There are challenges in ALL schools. We are here to say that your child can get a fantastic education in a Durham public school. Ours are.
As someone who grew up in Durham; attended Bethesda, Lowe’s Grove, and Jordan; is currently living in Durham; and is planning to switch in the near future from a starter home to a family home where I will presumably live for the next 20 years and raise a family, I have good reasons to be interested in a new Web site about the school system that my yet-to-be-conceived children might go to. So I checked out the site and clicked through a dozen or so testimonials from parents and students. In brief, every entry can be summed as, “My school is so great!”
Now, I’m ok with positive reviews of Durham Public Schools. Despite the system’s negative image, I did not feel like attending its schools put me at a disadvantage. I definitely felt like I received a solid/good education, and I was able to get into the college of my choice — UNC-Chapel Hill. Plenty of my classmates have gone on to great schools and great careers as doctors, lawyers, and engineers, just to name a few. So yes, I believe you can get a good education in Durham schools (of course, I also firmly believe that the quality of an education is as much up to the student as it is about the schools). However, here’s the part about Strong Durham Schools that I take issue with. On its About Us page, it says:
We decided early on to reject stories that do little more than feed the already negative stereotypes that so many in our area have about Durham Public Schools. To date, only two stories have been rejected on those grounds. There are plenty of other places to hear negative stories. We wanted to provide a place where community members could hear about the schools directly from the people involved, and not from “my hairdresser’s neighbor’s sister.”
To me, this policy robs the site of any credibility as a tool for parents trying to decide whether to send their kids to a Durham school. Imagine if you knew that a manufacturer’s online store only allowed positive customer reviews of its products. How much faith would you put in the evaluation of the products on that site? That’s the problem here. I didn’t see a single negative word uttered about the schools, even though the site’s administrators admit the school system has a negative image. The site has no credibility not because it has positive reviews about Durham schools, but because it refuses to show complaints about the schools (and that “there are challenges in ALL schools” bit sounds mighty defensive as well).
The “no negative comments” policy makes even less sense because the site’s administrators already admitted that 1) Durham schools has its share of challenges, and 2) there are many places where one can read about those problems. In the face of that, what good does it do to ban negative comments on your site? The way to make your site valuable to parents is to give them what they need to make an informed decision about where to send their kids. That means showing them the good and the bad, telling them, “Here’s what we do well; here’s what we don’t do well and why; and here’s what we’re doing to fix the problems.” As it stands now, the site comes off as blatantly and purely promotional, and its feel-good message quickly falls apart when one does a little research and goes to another Web site such as ncreportccards.org. I’d argue that no amount of positive personal stories will have as much swaying power on a parent as a simple statistical comparison, such as this end-of-course test scores comparison between a Durham high school that shall remain nameless and Chapel Hill High, a member of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro system:
Unnamed Durham high school
Chapel Hill High
The challenges for Strong Durham Schools are that 1) this information is not just negative stereotype or bad press; it’s straight-forward fact, and 2) such information is out there and easily obtainable. So if all you are doing on your site is telling people how great your schools are — even with these facts in front of you — it just makes you look like a liar, especially when you refuse to show any negative comments. Withholding information no longer works in this age of plentiful and easily accessible information. A better approach, I think, would be to allow both positive and negative comments and use the site to help explain why these numbers are what they are and what is being done to improve them. No parent expects a school system to be perfect, but no one appreciates being lied to either, especially when it comes to something that plays such a vital role in their children’s future.
I'm from NYC and am considering moving to Durham. My husband and I moved to a diverse suburb outside NYC's metro area, to raise our 3 children with a bit more housing space & greenery.
We understand the "stats" that sites like http://www.greatschools.org and http://www.ncreportcards.org offer. We also understand, from first hand experience, that these scores don't always show the whole picture. Our school district has an ethnic composition and economic base similar to the Durham Public Schools'. We also have a negative rep that many in Rockland County would say is deserved, given the "stats" shown on the NY State "Report Card" sites. What it doesn't show is that our School District is home to the largest non-English speaking and Special Education communities(large Hasidic/Orthodox community outside NYC) that definitely impacts the bell curve on educational performance. (Part 1)
So while the large percentage of non-English speaking (or English as second language) students in our district are challenged to score well on standardized tests and meet the NCLB "teach to the test" intiatives, there are a large and growing group of students, like my children, who are Junior National Honor Society members, and scoring above their grade level on the barrage of standardized tests taken throughout the school year. What these stats also hide are the racially segregated nature of the schools that serve these communities, as a result of homeowners (and the realtors who enable them) who choose to stay away from the "bad school districts" (i.e. large minority populations), undermining the value that a truly diverse school body offers the school and community. Likewise, politicians and school board members also know that most newcomers to the Nation have not yet earned the right to vote (school budget or general elections) and therefore do not have the political leverage to demand educational improvements, as is often done in other predominantly non-immigrant school districts. (Part 2)
But as you stated, each student's success is, ultimately, in their hands (and their parents). However, until those parents are given the means to vote on necessary funds to support educational efforts to address their specific community, they will have to make do with what is afforded to them (remember Brown v. Board of Ed?). While they wait patiently, the entitled "better school districts" can continue to garner their share of accolades, which result as much from the better funded, less populated schools, as it does from the additional academic tutoring/test taking that wealthier parents can afford to give to their children. In the end, it all boils down to the amount of money and time each family invests in their children. Take a guess which socio-economic bracket has the market cornered on both endeavors? (Part 3)
I taught at an East Durham Public Schools for 4 years. I loved the school, the staff and the children. Unfortunately, our wonderful Principal retired back in October of 2010. She was replaced by a woman that started getting rid of our staff family members including myself. She had only been there for two months when she decided that I had a problem with our black students. Mind you, I have black family members and my three best friends are three wonderful African American women. I went to the district with this information and the assistant superintendent just thanked me for my four years of service. I lost my livelihood, my insurance, my ability to provide for my children and my ability to pay for my mortgage. Racism goes both ways.