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Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Looking ‘Beyond What’s On the Paper’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I recently attended a crowded meeting in north DeKalb, where parents spoke up on school crowding and how to fix it. The most logical solution, some say, is to redraw attendance boundaries so schools that currently have too few students will fill up, thus relieving overcrowded schools like Vanderlyn and Austin elementary schools.
Parents at Vanderlyn and Austin, however, made it clear they want to stay. One Vanderlyn Dad said he checked the test scores and parents would be fools to want to be anywhere but Vanderlyn or Austin. He said the other north DeKalb schools appear to be “also rans.”
This drew boos from parents, most likely from Chesnut and Kingsley. They say their schools are just as good. In fact, one very proud Kingsley Mom took to the mic, noting that Kingsley actually beat Austin in several categories. So there!
A Chesnut mother implored parents to give her school a chance. “We have to get over what’s on paper,” she said. She noted that children from homes where the parents are educated score high on standardized tests across Dunwoody, regardless of the school. Some schools, like Chesnut, have more students from homes were the parents are not as educated.
With test scores so important in driving a school’s reputation and a neighborhood’s property values, can parents look beyond what’s on the paper and support a school that has lower overall test scores than the neighboring school?
This is not just a DeKalb issue. Every metro Atlanta school district has wealthier neighborhoods and less wealthy ones. Are the teachers at the schools with high test scores really better? Or are the schools just lucky they don’t have any apartment complexes in their attendance zone?
BTW, I would like to apologize to the parents of Vanderlyn Elementary School. In writing about the overcrowding at their school for Thursday’s paper, I inadvertently referred to the school as Vanderbilt in the fourth paragraph. (Hey, one’s a precursor to the other, right?) Not the silliest mistake I’ve ever made in print, but it’s a contender for the Top 10. We corrected the story online, but by the time a reader discovered the error, the DeKalb and Northside editions had already gone to press. Thanks to the eagle-eyed reader who pointed out the mistake.
