Time to get real about ‘open’ enrollment: what works, what’s a workaround?
I was proud that, as the most recent school performance scores were released, the state honored Harriet Tubman Charter School for both “equity” in its admissions practices and for achieving “top gains” in its academic performance.
The twin designations mean that Tubman students of all ethnicities, economic backgrounds, and special-need status are making strong academic gains at the same rate. The designations were especially meaningful to me, as principal, because Tubman, alone among this year’s crop of honorees, is both a formerly failing school and one with an open-enrollment or come-one-come-all admissions policy.
And yet, newspaper columnist Jarvis DeBerry saw fit to criticize Tubman as one of the equity honorees “being rewarded for gatekeeping.” DeBerry’s columns are often worth reading, but on this occasion his criticism reveals a misunderstanding of a much larger issue that should be the focus of district-wide discussion and debate, a debate rooted in hard facts.
I agree that exclusionary enrollment practices in any school that is designated open-enrollment blunt the meaning of the “equity” honor and become a source of confusion to parents. These exclusionary practices make the term “open-enrollment” meaningless, and they aren’t fair because they give preference to the middle class. In our district, “open-enrollment” should be easily defined, but it’s not.
I believe there are exclusionary practices in the district, but DeBerry’s placement of Harriet Tubman in that category is wrong. First, let’s take a closer look at Tubman: To characterize the school as seeking to exclude kids whose backgrounds make them harder to educate is simply not true.
At Tubman, 97 percent of our kids are economically disadvantaged, 95 percent are non-white, and 20 percent qualify for special education services. We were an early adopter of the OneApp enrollment process, and, without exception, we embrace open-enrollment both conceptually and in practice.
Where DeBerry goes wrong is in his conclusion that our practice of giving preference to our pre-k students seeking admission to our kindergarten is exclusionary.
Three facts are worth bearing in mind:
One is that every New Orleans public school that offers pre-k gives preference to those students when it comes to kindergarten CONTINUE READING: Time to get real about ‘open’ enrollment: what works, what’s a workaround? | The Lens
