BY MIKE CETERA
The East Aurora School District has unveiled a plan to open its first magnet school next year for 150 high-achieving students. The plan still must receive school board approval, but district proponents say opening a school specializing in math, science and technology will help an underserved population -- gifted students.
Clearly, administrators want to make East Aurora more attractive to its bright students. Some suggest students likely to attend these schools predominately come from "two-parent households with employed parents who have college or graduate degrees." Could it be the district is also attempting to make East more attractive to the very parents who will be asked to approve a referendum some day?
On their face, magnet schools look attractive. Why shouldn't the district offer more opportunities for its brightest students? Magnet schools, however, do have their detractors.
Magnets, by offering attractive alternatives and extending the privilege of choice to disadvantaged populations, draw fire as elitist institutions that challenge the myth of fairness in public school standardization.Another charge is that of tokenism. Some claim that magnets' selection processes (which vary among districts) draw only the best students and teachers. Consequently, magnets, with the veneer of accomplishing desegregation, actually leave most minority students worse off than before, offering the district an excuse not to implement more fundamental changes.
On the plus side, poorer students tend to perform better at magnet schools than at "regular" schools. That, however, doesn't always translate to better test scores.
If East opens a magnet school, perhaps it should take a look at successful programs like these to build upon.
I read the article about magnet schools and wonder if this is really right for this district. I think a charter school would be best to start with. While I think that gifted children need more from this district we have so many that might not pass the new testing this year that I think they should work on that. They also say that maybe later they will have their own school but this district has so many schools that they are over crowded they need to work on that. I found this on the number of parents with degrees for this district.
Educational Achievement: Marital Status:
(among people 25 years or older) (among people 15 years or older)
Less than 9th grade: 27.6% Never married: 33.3%
9th-12th grade (nongrad): 20.8% Married: 52%
High school graduate: 27% Separated: 2.5%
Some college: 13.5% Widowed: 4.6%
Associate degree: 3.2% Divorced: 7.5%
Bachelors degree: 5.6% Stability/Newcomer Appeal:
Graduate/Professional: 2.3% Same home 5+ years: 50.3%
High school or higher: 51.6% Social and economic indicators
based on 2000 Census sample data.
Bachelors or higher: 8%
Green = Above U.S. Avg Red
This magnet school idea has pluses and minuses. On the surface it looks wonderful. Provide outstanding services for our best students. The down side is that:
1) If you take all the students that are in the meets and exceeds catagories and place them in one school, every other school is now full of students that don't meet or exceed. That invites further sanctions from the state and feds. for having failing schools.
2) What do you think these classes are going to cost and where do you think the money is going to come from. If we spend extra money at the magnet school to make their class sizes smaller, the shortfall of cash is going to translate into larger class sizes and cuts at the other district schools.
So now we have 1 school with the best and brightest working in a new facilitie with the best teachers and the smallest class sizes. The remaining students of the district are in the older buildings, with not the best teachers, in classes that are overpopulated, full of the lowest performing students and the state and feds imposing sanctions for having to high a percentage of students in the does not meets catagory.
This plan looks good for the news sound bites but the community and board better take a hard look at the probable repercussions of such a move.
You or they are mislabeling this by calling it a gifted program. Look at who this will serve - students "must score at or above state standards." That is not anywhere close to any accepted definition of gifted.
Perhaps the best definition of gifted is the top 2 to 5 percentile as measured by standardized tests. (Or, to please the namby-pamby poncy crowd, the top 2 to 5 percentile of some skill.)
This so-called magnet school is not a gifted program. It's meant as a life preserver for the dwindling number of 131 parents who actually care about education.
I think that this may be a desperate attempt by certain administrators to try to discourage the "best and brightest" from moving out of the district, and perhaps to save their own jobs (in the case of Ms. Gonzalez).
My son went to Dieterich School from kindergarten through 5th grade. But when it was time for him to attend middle school, we moved into District 204 so my son could be in their "Project Arrow" program (a self-contained class of 12 or so kids within the middle school building, designed to serve the top 2% of students based upon test scores in math & language arts). My son thrived in the Project Arrow program, and graduated 14th in his class of 750+ at Waubonsie High School.
Moving our family out of D131 turned out to be the best decision we could have made. I would encourage parents of intellectually gifted kids to consider looking into the Project Arrow program, which is only offered locally in District 204 middle schools.