This article originally appeared in WFAE reporter Ann Doss Helms' weekly education newsletter. To get the latest school news in your inbox first, sign up for our email newsletters here.
Last week’s report that Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools now has 102 schools with poverty levels of 75% or higher left a lot of us scratching our heads. That’s more than half the district’s 183 schools. Those numbers seem higher than what we’ve seen, for example, when state testing data comes out.
They are, in fact, different sets of numbers — or at least different ways of calculating the numbers. School poverty numbers are used in three major ways:
- Determining who qualifies for free or discounted school lunches. That’s why the U.S. Department of Agriculture is a major player in school poverty calculations.
- Distributing federal Title I money for high-poverty schools. That program was created in 1965 to compensate for the fact that children growing up in poverty often lack home support that helps other kids succeed.
- Breaking out test scores and graduation rates for economically disadvantaged students. That’s part of a push that started with No Child Left Behind in 2002 to present data that identifies groups of students — racial minorities, low-income kids and students with disabilities, for example — who are, in fact, being left behind.
For many years, the percentage of students who qualified for federal lunch subsidies served as the school poverty rate. Those numbers came from applications submitted by families, and there were always questions about accuracy. In 2010 the federal government started allowing high-poverty schools and districts to provide free meals to all students. That cut some bureaucracy … and undermined the system for tracking school poverty.
Last week I geeked out with Diane Dulaney, Curtis Sonneman and Alex Charles, who handle different aspects of poverty tracking for the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. They walked me through how the system works now.
Many ways to run the numbers
For the purposes of academic accountability and Title I distribution in schools where everyone gets a free lunch, the state started identifying students who are homeless, foster children or recipients of public aid, such as SNAP (food aid) and TANF (welfare). State reports show that in April 2022, 30.9% of CMS students and 37.6% of students statewide fell into the poverty category, based on lunch applications and/or the public aid calculation.
This year Medicaid recipients were added to the tally. That bumped CMS to 48.8% and North Carolina to 51.5% as of April.
You don’t need a calculator to see that this doesn’t add up to more than half of CMS schools having poverty levels of 75% or higher. So where did the numbers in last week’s Title I report come from?
Here’s where it gets really confusing. The switch to tracking recipients of public aid yielded significantly lower numbers than the old system of tracking lunch subsidies. That meant high-poverty schools where everyone got free lunches saw poverty levels plunge, at least on paper. So the U.S. Department of Education decided the public aid numbers should be multiplied by 1.6 to calculate poverty for the purposes of determining which schools get Title I money. Every school that hits 75% using that multiplier has to be served through Title I.
So: Without the multiplier, CMS has 14 schools at 75% poverty or higher. With it the number rises to 117, based on the April 2023 spreadsheet. CMS reported having 102 schools at that level, including two new elementary schools that will open in August. I’ve asked CMS for an explanation of that discrepancy but have not yet gotten that.
But wait! There’s more …
As school board Chair Elyse Dashew pointed out last week, it’s even more confusing when you consider that CMS has an entirely different way of rating socioeconomic status for student assignment purposes. That measure, which was designed by consultants during the district’s last major student assignment review in 2016, uses census data on family income, adult education levels, single-parent households, home ownership and English language proficiency to rate each census block at high, medium or low SES. And while “high poverty” means lots of kids come from disadvantaged households, “high SES” means the opposite.
One more twist: Eligibility for the district’s Bright Beginnings pre-kindergarten program, which is funded with Title I money, is based on academic need rather than family income.
“It can be very confusing to the public,” Dashew said.
Indeed. And it points to challenges ahead as the board launches a new look at student assignment. Poverty numbers are an attempt to quantify complex real-world truths: It matters whether kids have adults who can help with school work and advocate for them. It matters whether they have stable housing, safe neighborhoods, healthy meals and access to books. And when all those disadvantages are concentrated at certain schools, it stacks the odds against kids who most need a boost.
How to gauge post-diploma success
Meanwhile, the CMS board’s focus on a few key academic goals continues to generate a drumbeat of depressing results. Here’s one way to summarize last week’s report: The district fell far short of its goal for ensuring that the Class of 2023 is ready for college and careers, and now officials plan to lower the bar.
That’s accurate but incomplete. The district is tracking how many graduates received endorsements. And if you’re wondering what that means, that’s part of the problem.
“These endorsements are meaningless,” Superintendent Crystal Hill told the board. She started the job this month and wasn’t part of the board’s goal-setting.
The state offers diploma endorsements to recognize students who go beyond the minimum state requirements and have grade-point averages, ACT scores and coursework that shows they’re ready for higher education and/or careers.
Hill told the board that GPA, course selection and test scores all matter, and she plans to push high schools to help students understand that. But the endorsements themselves don’t motivate students, she said. And the ACT requirements don’t reflect what’s needed for success, she said. A reading score of 22 is required to earn a career, college or UNC system endorsement, but Hill said the UNC system accepts students with a score of 19.
As for lowering the bar, Hill said the targets — 70% earning endorsements this year and 75% next year — were based on a 2021 level of 61.2%. But it turned out some endorsements had been double-counted, so the correct level was 51.7%. And that was a year when graduates who normally would have taken the ACT in the spring of 2020 skipped it because of pandemic closures, so the state waived that requirement. In 2022, when conditions were back to normal, 36.7% of CMS graduates earned endorsements, and this year that rose to about 45%.
Hill plans to bring the board a more realistic target for 2024. But she and the board are now focused on refining the goals for a new five-year plan. They’re currently doing an online survey and holding community sessions to talk about what the new goals should be (find the survey and the schedule here). On Aug. 19 the board will hold a full-day retreat to start work on the new strategic plan.
This is why I’m baffled by Raleigh
The main season for introducing new bills has passed, but last Tuesday night some Republican representatives introduced a slate of sweeping education changes. They want to replace a half-page bill on how school officials can search a student’s person or property with 26 pages that would, in the words of the News & Observer’s Kyle Ingram, make it easier for parents to “access instructional materials, prosecute librarians and remove superintendents,” as well as requiring schools to inform parents if their children begin identifying as a different gender at school.
The bill was put on the agenda for the House Education Committee, then pulled shortly before the meeting began. Committee Chair John Torbett, a Gaston County Republican, told Ingram that members want more time to review the bill.
So is this a political sideshow with little chance of passage, or a serious late-breaking attempt to reshape education? From here in Charlotte, it’s awfully hard to tell.
A big change for Iredell-Statesville schools
Assistant Superintendent Boen Nutting retires Aug. 1 after 30 years of working in public education in the Charlotte region. She became the public face of Iredell-Statesville Schools when she was named communications director in 2018, which put her in the hot seat during the COVID-19 pandemic and the political turmoil that ensued. As a reporter, I found her responsive and knowledgeable, which is a plus for any public body. She told me her post-retirement plans include teaching a class in education administration and exploring new ventures in the Mooresville area.
MeckEd has a new leader
MeckEd has hired Kellie Cartwright from United Way of Central Carolinas to be its new CEO, starting Aug. 1. Ross Danis, who held the post since 2015, stepped down this spring.
MeckEd originated as the Charlotte Education Foundation in 1991, created by the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce to support CMS. It’s been through various evolutions in mission and leadership — fundraiser, data-cruncher, advocacy group and public engagement partner with CMS in the 2016 superintendent search. MeckEd currently focuses on providing after-school programs for middle schools and support to help high school students move into careers.
Jennifer Roberts, the former Charlotte mayor and county commission chair, currently heads the MeckEd board. We spoke in April and she said the arrival of a new leader may signal time to rethink the mission again. “I do feel like the support for public education is less than it has been,” she said, “and that’s really distressing.”
