Who Has Highest and Lowest F/RL Students?
I got asked this question by someone who wanted a list of the 20 highest and 20 lowest schools for free and reduced lunch students. (I couldn't just find this information at the district's website so I compiled the list from OSPI data for 2012-2013.)
I wasn't especially surprised at who made the list nor where these schools are located.
I was surprised at who is number one overall (meaning all schools) for highest numbers - bet you can't guess (no peeking first).
There was a three-way tie for lowest. Again, without looking, take a guess.
I wasn't especially surprised at who made the list nor where these schools are located.
I was surprised at who is number one overall (meaning all schools) for highest numbers - bet you can't guess (no peeking first).
There was a three-way tie for lowest. Again, without looking, take a guess.
Comments
Only in Seattle.
One percent
Highest: Northgate Elementary
my guess
is fed by the Pinehurst neighborhood, low income housing behind home depot and the trailer park on 125th, but still there are million dollar houses only 1000 feet away.
One percent
Highest: Dearborn park
just guessing
Highest: DEARBORN PARK
Another guess
Bryant and Loyal Heights are in the top twenty for lowest but not number one.
And yes, Dearborn Park is in the highest but also not number one.
Lowest - Laurelhurst
yet another guess
Highest: Hawthorne
--- swk
--- swk
Highest: West Seattle Elementary or Bailey Gatzert
- WS Parent
-sleeper
20 years ago all the kids went to Ingraham High School, now the new crop goes to Bush, Lakeside or SAS.
Parents who can, avoid Viewlands,Broadview-Thompson and Ingraham. If you subtract Ingraham's IB students the FRL % numbers are significantly higher.
I'm really surprised the low income status of the 3 schools have not had a bigger negative impact on home prices in the area. Another person commented, there are million dollar homes in ear shot of these school. That's true, yet they are very poor schools. This should be very embarrassing to Seattle.
I'm not sure of the solution, but know I can not take on anymore property taxation. How about a luxury tax on private schools?
SPS Parent.
But I mean the highest and lowest from ALL schools in the district for number ones.
I note that for middle and high school, the numbers drop a lot. That's not because there are really that many fewer F/RL but far fewer kids sign up.
Elementary schools generally have a smaller draw area than middle or high schools, so I'd expect to see the extremes, high and low, at the elementary level. APP has also been placed in schools that would otherwise be relatively high FRL.
reader
-North-end Mom
Offended
Parents of private school students are the most likely to be paying property taxes, which support all public school students. Without private schools, there would be even more capacity problems in SPS. If you want to harp on something, try focusing the lack of an income tax in Washington State. Parents choosing private schools are not the problem.
irked
Lowest: Laurelhurst, Montlake, Bryant
Momof2
I would support a luxury tax on private school, but at this point inequality is so out of control I would support a luxury tax on many things.
-sleeper
I'm not naming the school so the game can continue, though I'm not sure why you can't just list them. The inequities I'm seeing aren't funny.
Confused
reader
I'm confused, Confused. Sure, I can put up the whole thing but I just thought I'd ask what people thought it might be. It's not a game; just a question.
Reader, you're right. It's only Tuesday (and I'll hate to see what Friday is like).
Lowest (number of f/rl) in secondary: Roosevelt
Highest: Cleveland
Lowest k-5 or k-8: TOPS
Highest: Orca
Lowest - View Ridge, TOPS.
NE/Hale Parent
- south end parent
--
- south end parent
- south end parent
I'm pretty sure the UW housing kids are assigned to Sand Point, not View Ridge.
- North-end Mom
-- South End Parent
I would think an option school for secondary would have the lowest FRL. Center School maybe. It is amazing how much just the filling out of that form is a barrier- almost all the options schools have far lower FRL than the areas they draw from. I have wondered for a long time how to really help with this.
-sleeper
I pay $6,800 a year in property taxes. I spend around 2-3 k a year maintaining my property so I can keep the assessed value up resulting in keeping my taxes high! I don't need a lecture on taxes.
Having a large percentage of students not attending public schools does hurt the common good.
We lose the common experience of education, we lose economy of scale and we create nu-needed competition for resources.
Do we have multiple water systems? Multiple sewer systems? Power systems?
There are reasons to share the real experience and cost of these systems.
I bet you would care if sewage started flooding your house, or you water turned black?
People get involved when they are directly effected by a problem. So, if the people with lots of money placed their children in their local public school I'm willing to bet many of the funding problems would be solved or at least greatly diminished.
All I hear from private schools parents is, "I'm so glad we don't have to deal with public school".
--Michael
Lowest: Lawton or Bryant
-West Seattle Parent
For elementary schools, the highest is Bailey Gatzert at 93%. Only two north-end schools are in the top 20 highest - Northgate (82%) and Olympic Hills (77%).
For secondary schools (after World School), it's Aki Kurose at 84% and Rainier Beach at 81%.
The lowest percentage of F/RL in the district is a three-way tie at 6.8% for View Ridge, Montlake and Thornton Creek. (Yes, it is Sand Point that has taken in more F/RL - I think they are at something like 40%+).
The lowest secondary is HIMS at 10% with Roosevelt at 14%.
Former Falcon
1) What intuitive, gut, or fact-based rationales are people here relying on to make their guesses? How many are subconsciously biased? and
2) How does TOPS, an option school, maintain such a diverse population (and what other option schools are diverse?)
Seattle World School--no data available (97%)
Bailey Gatzert--89% (93%)
Aki--82% (84%)
RBHS--73% (81%)
View Ridge--6% (6.8%)
Montlake--7% (6.8%)
Thornton Creek--8% (6.8%)
Hamilton--11% (10%)
Roosevelt--16%(14%)
I'm wondering a couple things: 1) Why do the state and district data not match? 2) Why is there not data available from 2013-14??
Would love to hear folks' thoughts about these questions...
Curious
just kidding. : )
I don't know much about TOPS' geozone. I know Thornton Creek had higher frl numbers when it had a larger geozone, but the district shrunk the geozone to help with crowding at view ridge and Wedgwood, so now it looks more like those communities.
-sleeper
nitpicker
-two cents
"...Most private school students (80 percent) attend religiously-affiliated schools," according to a Council for Private Education Report.
http://www.capenet.org/facts.html
Private schools include those like Hamlin Robinson, which serves students with dyslexia. Are they hurting the "common good?"
irked
-two cents
OSPI has APP@Lincoln at 0.8% for 2012-2013 and 1.5% for 2013-2014. Unless I am missing something, that makes APP@Lincoln by far the lowest.
KMG-365
Two cents
wondering
Former Falcon
That said, I would not support busing students around.
KMG, as I said, I got my stats from OSPI. Double-checked and you are right. Not sure how I missed that. (I didn't look at Lowell.)
So the school with the least amount of F/RL IS APP at Lincoln.
An immersion charter school in West Seattle would have a wait list - just like Pathfinder and K-5 STEM.
Former Falcon
It's a vicious circle, but SPS will never attrack private school students back under the current state of the district. Sure many might like a STEM or IB program, but why would they risk it.
--Michael
-sleeper
-sleeper
-- south end parent
Putting APP at TM was no accident by the district. I believe it was intentional, and MGJ essentially said as much when she said she wanted to move APP into high FRL schools so that the more wealthy APP parents could pay for "extra" things like art and music. She said this at a board meeting after her initial idea which was to put 50% APP at TM and 50% at Hawthorne.
And, APP parents pointed out to many in the district that the FRL kids at TM would likely be hurt by losing their designation as a high FRL school. Not only do they lose things like Title 1, they also lose the counselors that are so important to a high FRL child. Some of those kids desperately need the help of someone who can get them things clothes and food on the weekend.
I agree that considering income levels is a good idea when creating boundaries, but each option should be considered carefully to make sure another, potentially worse, problem isn't being created.
-pasty
In a few years, Cedar Park Elementary may rival Bailey Gatzert. Cedar Park opens as an assignment school in 2017. SPS has drawn the attendance area so that it takes the poorest neighborhoods from both the current John Rogers and Olympic Hills attendance areas (the highest poverty areas in North Seattle) and reassigns them to Cedar Park.
-North-end Mom
And Pasty is right about those unintended consequences. TM is great example of what can happen if a superintendent and staff push something, the consequences get explained to the Board (usually by school staff or parents) and the Board sides with staff.
NE Mom, is also right on MGJ raising that F/RL rate. Why did the Board allow that much of a jump (again, with consequences).
KT
HP
Former Falcon
The population in the Northgate attendance area is 49% FRL but the school is 80% FRL. Redrawing boundaries will only change school demographics if we give up option schools and don't allow any school choice. At that point, parents will move to private, move to another neighborhood (or city) or move to charter schools.
Building low income housing in Magnolia, Queen Anne, Montlake, Ballard, Fremont and Laurelhurst would make a difference. Or maybe we need new economic policies so that so many of our families are not poor.
APP at Lincoln - 598 students gr 1-5
9 FRL students
2 African American
450 Causasian
Bailey Gatzert - 390 students gr K-5
364 FRL students
206 African American
16 Caucasian
I think you'd be hard pressed to find a private school in Seattle with as much socioeconomic and racial imbalance as APP at Lincoln.
Sign me -
Sad
Potential gain for PTA: $200,000
Potential loss of Title 1: $200,000
So MGJ cynically shifted costs which should be borne by city, state, federal budgets onto the shoulders of citizens trying desperately to supply ALL their students, rich or poor, with counselors and art?
What are we becoming?
How do we permit this in a wealthy economy like that of the United States?
When shall we meet at JSCEE and Olympia with our petitions, signs, threats of boycotts and voting blocs?
When?
Where did you find the FRL percentage for the Northgate neighborhood? I'm not disputing it, just curious where you found the 49 percent figure.
Thanks.
North-end Mom
by HistoryLink.org
http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=3939
-more reading
This whole thread has me thinking again about whether SPS can our should try to attract private school students. The whole of SPS is about 40% FRL, but the whole of seattle students including private school students is more like 30%. As we have learned with capacity, you can't run programs on the rasor's edge. If the whole system is right on the edge of being too impoverished (and I have read 40% is that number- not 50%.), there are obviously going to be hotspots, and no amount of tweaking at the edges can actually change that.
I know there is an impulse to just say "to heck with you" to private school parents and then focus on the middle class families who can't afford private school but are not doing "enough" of what we want them to, but cynically this is what the GOP has been doing for years to distract people from agitating for policies that would actually help (don't trouble yourself over boring sounding capital gains taxes that would actually redistribute wealth- look over there at those obnoxious Whole Foods shoppers whining about the 1%! Aren't they awful?!). I think the school district has taken advantage of this human impulse when ignoring data driven ideas from unpopular committees (FACMAC). There are things we could do to probably lower the frl rate overall, and many of those programs do not require self containment like app to work. STEM, Montessori, and IB are all attractive programs and aren't as expensive as immersion. Advanced learning programs for kids who just come in more prepared, recognizing that some will, might help- just along the lines of walk to math and formal reading groups.
My dad, who integrated schools in the south, would never have accepted this line of thinking. My town started bussing at basically his Herculean insistence on the early 80's. The slightly poorer town next door was given federal money for social infrastructure (community health clinic, community centers), and the one big private school happened to shut down in a scandal. 30 years later that town is thriving and somewhat diverse, and my town is much more segregated, with all the white kids going to (awful, extremely religious) private schools. the public schools are over 90% minority and impoverished. I know there are lots of possible reasons for this, but it convinces me that when it comes to convincing parents to do things related to their kids' educations, you have to use carrots, not sticks. You can get a "jump" on people, and make the numbers look good for a year or two, but unless you are actually trying to meet their needs, they'll leave, one way or the other.
-sleeper
-more numbers
For years families have petitioned Seattle Schools AND TOPS to adopt inclusion programming for students with disabilities who have high needs in general education. For years, students with these needs have not been allowed to attend TOPS. TOPS should be an option available to ALL.
reader
If our private schools were closed, the APP program would become the top 20% program. That's what it would take to retain the current students. Look at Lakeside. Alone, it gets more National Merit Semifinalists than all of APP combined, about the same number as all of SPS. Then there's a quite a significant number of National Merit Semifinalists from the other privates too. The total far exceeds the total in public schools. We can talk about how advanced our public school kids are, how deserving of top notch educations, how deserving of special segregation - but when it really comes down to it, they don't retain the same "academically talented" students by any measure. Seriously. If APP is really taking the top 2% nationally, then half of APP students should be National Merit Semifinalists - which is the top 0.5%. The fact that this doesn't happen - demonstrates this point.
Realist
Realist
I found the demographic information in this document. (page 74)
There's lots more information available on the Enrollment Data page.
HP
Realist
-HCC High School Parent
-Shocked
SPS Tutor
1) one of the reasons it remains diverse is that if every child in the geozone chose to go to TOPs, the school would still only be about half full. The geozone is small compared to the size of the school, so there is there space for kids from outside the geozone. I would have expected the FRL number to decline in the last 4 years or so, since the district has cut way back on transportation, but that does not seem to be the case.
2) Reader, I agree with you about the need for TOPs to embrace children with disabilities. You'd think that with a social justice focus, they'd be all over that, but historically it has been only certain kinds of social justice that they want to pursue. I'd really like if my youngest child, who is disabled, were able to attend school there with her siblings, but as things are now it would not be a good fit for her. They should at a minimum have an ACCESS program. I will say they are improving slowly - there is a middle school SM4 class, and the kids from that class take elective classes with the other students (about 2 hours per day), but it would be nice to see more inclusion, especially in the younger grades.
Mom of 4
Sad
And you know this how?
Are you actually shocked that kids who qualify for free meals rarely meet both of these requirements? Because I'm pretty sure we're all aware of how kids living in poverty do in school. Moving bodies around to hide the problem isn't going to help actual children.
The four schools that send the most students to APP@Lincoln have populations that are 1 to 2% Black and have FRL rates between 5 and 15%. These families are not enrolling their children in HCC to escape poor black classmates.
As for NMSF rates, you'd expect any student's performance to be better when they have small classrooms, better curriculum, less time wasted on testing and stability in their school environment.
Lakeside Parent (and public)
Why is this even being discussed in the context of FRL? BTW FRL doesn't mean stupid!
Pixie
Perhaps, as sleeper suggested, the "minority stars" (really, she called academically high achieving African Americans that?) are recruited and paid for at private schools. But I think it speaks more to African American families making different choices for their children than choosing to be the 3rd black kid out of 600 at APP at Lincoln. Not exactly a welcoming place, even if you are a "minority star".
Sad
I know you know that people posting here don't equate FRL with "stupid." That's not a helpful thing to say.
It is clear from study after study that poverty greatly increases the chances that kids are not going to be able to work to their ability in school. They tend to start school behind and tend to never catch up. That is not the same as saying kids are "stupid."
This is why we need to quit blaming teachers for low test scores and start doing things that actually helps these kids.
-pasty
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/how-mercer-middle-school-soared-after-struggling/
http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2011/12/seattles-math-secret-revealed.html
-more reading
That document Lynn posted about who stays and who goes in elementary enrollment areas is very illuminating.
-sleeper
Not too shabby.
None of whom are anywhere close to FRL.
-HCC High School Parent
LP
HIMSmom
Realist
IQ=\academic achievement. It is a correlated, but the last time I checked the SAT was a more biased test than IQ tests so is primarily correlated with parental wealth. Not shocking, then, that private schools do quite well on that metric, as well as wealthier public school students. There are reams and reams of papers on why students with this iq do best in self contained programs (not necessarily acceleration, but that is free, so that is what we do in sps!), and why this is the standard of practice.
I wish there were more FRL students in the program. I know it is harder to score well if you live in an unstable situation and are not well supported at home. And I know some FRL families come and look at the program and don't see how it's worth it with the logistical challenges and instability, so they stay in their home schools. That's a fair point, but to fix that would be to "help" evil app families, which obviously does not go over well.
-sleeper
I don't know how the idea HCC kids predominates at Lakeside. They don't.
AR
- their parents are less likely to know about the program
- the application progress isn't the easiest thing to navigate
- instability in HCC locations
- HCC is mostly white and middle class, so they're leaving all their friends behind
- they're less likely to get the sort of early academic enrichment (e.g. being read to every day as an infant) prior to kindergarten that helps kids pass tests.
If we're going to compare Lakeside and SPS HCC, let's remember that Lakeside is incredibly expensive for a Seattle private school. Not many families in SPS, HCC or not, can afford that kind of tuition for private high school. At Lakeside, tuition is $30K/hr. There are some scholarships, but not too much. For comparison, the annual tuition at Seattle Prep is $17K. At Holy Names, it's $14K. There's also some financial aid at these schools. (I'm not saying that $17K/year is cheap, but it's less than Lakeside. There are probably plenty of families at Prep who were priced out of Lakeside.)
The PSAT score is the gatekeeper. Not the SAT.
Let me repeat that: National Merit Finalist status is based off PSAT scores! The early test! (so why the F*&* would anyone with a chance boycott the PSAT? You should take it a year ahead for practice and then take it for real - that's the type of advice they get in private schools).
If a student passes the PSAT threshold score for NMS qualification, THEN they get to fill out a long application form. With essays, activities, transcripts, etc.
Guess what????
Schools with only a few students for each counselor (private schools) help shepherd kids through the system better than schools with only a few counselors who are far more focused on getting older kids into college.
So don't turn every single freaking thing into an anti-APP rant. National Merit status is only a very small part based on the PSAT score. It's useless to argue about the validity of any program based on # of finalists - it's much more correlated to guidance/college counseling available to high scorers than to anything else.
Signed: fact checker
The lists in the newspapers are semifinalists' names. Finalists & merit award winners are not reported to the press in the same way. (Usually they are reported through press releases from the award sponsoring agencies.)
-NM Parent