Racial disparity at issue in schools
By Phyllis Moore
Published in News on December 1, 2016 9:57 AM
Wayne County Public Schools is taking a look at its lottery system and how students are selected to attend its two newest schools, Wayne School of Engineering and Wayne Early/Middle College High School.
At issue - racial parity across the student body.
According to 2015 numbers, Wayne Early Middle's student population was 24 percent black, compared to 36 percent in the county; 35 percent white versus 40 percent in the county; and 29 percent Hispanic, compared to 21 percent for the county.
"One of the concerns that became evident to us as we were pulling data was the demographics at Wayne School of Engineering and the early middle college, which are supposed to match and replicate the district and started off that way," assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction Tamara Ishee said.
She broached the topic during a recent meeting of the school board's curriculum and instruction committee.
"In the case of WEMCH, they've actually come closer to the district demographic while maintaining their required 80 percent of their kids have to be the first college-going kid in their family," Ishee said.
When WEMCH opened in the fall of 2006 and the School of Engineering a year later, one of the important concerns was that the student body be "as close to the district demographic as possible," she said.
"Wayne School of Engineering, if you look at their 2007 demographics compared to the county, they were also very close but their demographics have changed dramatically from 2007 to 2015 to where they don't look anything like the county demographic," she said.
"I can tell you anecdotally I've been a couple times over at the Goldsboro High School campus, and it's been time for Wayne School of Engineering to go to lunch. And I've seen the entire student population march over to lunch. They don't look like our county."
The 2015 figures at the School of Engineering showed the makeup to be 15 percent black, 68 percent white and 3 percent Hispanic.
The way the process works, she said, starts with recruiting students from schools affected -- elementary school for the School of Engineering, middle and high schools for WEMCH. From the applications, each student's name is put into a hat, where they are drawn out randomly, Ms. Ishee said.
The application process could be a contributing factor in the statistical shift, she said.
"Applications may be a part of what is limiting students that are attending those schools and combined with our lottery process may be responsible for why the demographics don't look like the rest of the county," she said.
The applications, however, contain very limited identifiers -- name, address, birth date and social security number, as well as gender, but nothing about race. Students also submit report cards, attendance and discipline reports and an essay.
"We want to remove any barriers and be very conscious about what we're doing with our recruitment efforts, making sure we're hitting the whole county," she said. "It's impossible for me to say why (this) has happened."
The discussion was partially prompted by recent inquiries from the NAACP and the UNC Center Office of Civil Rights.
"In the last six months, we have had several FOI (freedom of information) requests," Ms. Ishee said. "They were quite broad in their complaints. But we also look at those records as we are passing them out.
"We started looking at data and looking at data going back. We looked at those records and what those demographics were. But it wasn't a secret before that. We were aware anecdotally. But when you're staring at data in your face, you have to fix it. Not because the NAACP asked for it but because you have to address it."
Since complying with the FOI requests, she pointed out, the information provided seemed satisfactory.
"No one's come back to us and said, 'Oh, you're doing something wrong in these schools,'" she said. "Nor did they say that before."
Ms. Ishee, hired by the district in 2015, vouched for the lottery system as it now stands.
"What I witnessed when I went to the School of Engineering lottery last winter, they had (names) in a box and slips of paper with the kid's name on it," she said. "A counselor or staff member put their hands in, drew out a name, then they pulled the application file, looked through the materials, if all of the materials were in there and there were no disqualifying features -- attendance, discipline, below grade level -- it ran.
"Our question is to look at some of those disqualifying features but also, let's get this out of our schools and get better representation."
The recommendation is to take the lottery out of the hands of the district and give it an outside agency, specifically SERVE, a research organization affiliated with UNC-Greensboro. The free service already works with many early colleges around the state, Ms. Ishee said.
Board member Rick Pridgen said he had no problem establishing a more fair way to do business.
"I think it would eliminate some of the public perception that we're rigging something up here, because there are people out there that talk that," he said. "I really don't have a problem going to an outside source to do your lottery.
"My question is, in looking at the 2015 figures for Wayne School of Engineering, now we're incorporating middle school where we were not before."
Ms. Ishee tried to dispel some of the rumors and perception issues.
"The lottery is run absolutely according to the recommendations," she said. "I think when parents apply and there's many more applicants than there are slots and a lottery is run, it's easy to say, 'My child didn't make it in the lottery.' It's not unheard of for a parent to say, 'That child got in because they knew someone.'"
The hope is to tweak the system in a way that is comfortable for everyone, Ms. Ishee said, with the ultimate goal to provide opportunities for students to attend these two schools, especially the first-time college-going members.
"We're not trying to hurt anybody. We want these schools to stay great. They're A and B schools, both of them," she said. "We want them to stay that way. But we want everybody to have a shot."
The discussion will continue, she said, with representation from both schools to hammer out details and then present findings at an upcoming school board meeting.