Worcester housing, racial lines, and schooling

 I really found this Worcester Business Journal piece interesting, as it delved into the neighborhood differences of our schools:

In Worcester, what ends up happening, McNicholas said, is public schools in the city’s lower-income areas, which disproportionately house its residents of color, end up disproportionately responsible for students with greater needs, whether because they are English Language Learners, have disabilities, or experience the myriad of challenges low-income students often have.

For reference, 2018 graduation data from the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education shows the four-year dropout rate in Worcester schools among English learner students was 10.2% and 6.3% for those considered high needs. For low-income students the dropout rate was 5.9%, and for Hispanic/Latino students, the largest nonwhite population group in Worcester schools, that rate was 7.9%. For white students, the dropout rate was 3.4%.

Put another way, a 2012 report from the Brookings Institution found, for students attending Worcester’s average top quintile school, 87% lived in owner-occupied housing. In the average bottom quintile school in Worcester, that number was 40%. Some schools, McNicholas said, don’t have a higher proportion of students who need greater assistance, allowing those schools to become high achieving easier.

“And then,” she said, “We have plenty of teachers who are really struggling to get through a lesson because they have to adapt to so many different levels of need within one classroom.”

And those challenges, McNicholas said, are absolutely more prevalent in Worcester’s lower-income – and more diverse – communities.

Because the Worcester Public Schools' budget is done through a district formula--and, in particular, staffing for English learners and special education follows need--we don't largely have the district disparities in funding weighted towards greater affluence. What we do have is affluence meaning less need with the above results, and also greater affluence leading to greater support through PTOs, or, in the case of Worcester Tech, the Skyline Technical Fund (and this is reminding me that those donations still aren't going through School Committee, which is legally required). 

There's a fair discussion to have about if enough greater resources are driven to student need, certainly. I'd also say we're overdue for a discussion of how we decide which students go where. We need to be willing to have some vision for that discussion, though.