Just For Fun--Davis Drive Real Estate Sales

Most of us probably think of Davis Drive families as fairly wealthy and many of us think they are elitists who don't think their school should be 'burdened' by high needs children. I have even heard a staff member from WCPSS say in response to a comment about DDE's high achievement, "Well, there's a reason why Davis Drive is a School of Excellence". The dedicated teachers and parents? No, this staff member was referring to Davis Drive's low F&R percentage. At 9.8% (2007-08 school year), it is one of the lowest in the county. And since non-economically disadvantaged students pass the EOGs at a rate significantly higher than economically disadvantaged students, it follows that Davis Drive's overall test scores will be higher. But does this necessarily mean that Davis Drive deserves the image that it has?

First of all, although Davis Drive's F&R is well below the county average of 31.6%, the school's percentage of ESL and LEP (Limited English Proficiency) students are slightly above the county average. And while Davis Drive has a much smaller percentage of black students than the WCPSS average for elementary schools, the percentage of asian students is much greater. So while the racial makeup of the school is probably not what WCPSS would like to see, it is nonetheless a racially diverse school.

Second, does the fact that a school has a very low F&R mean that the rest of the population is high income or wealthy? When Davis Drive parents protested reassignment last year, we saw footage of beautiful homes and manicured lawns. I'm sure that many of us made assumptions about how much those houses cost and the types of families who live in them. But were we correct?

I was meeting with a group of Davis Drive parents last month when I mentioned that I was thinking about researching home prices in some of the ITB magnet base nodes. I wanted to show that many of those reaping the benefits of magnets weren't in low income neighborhoods . One of the women had already done that research for one of the neighborhoods assigned to Davis Drive for the opposite reason--to show that Davis Drive wasn't composed of elite, expensive subdivisions like the image suggests. So I thank her for giving me the idea for my research and for the google documents spreadsheet setup. :-)

While the homes in these Davis Drive nodes are not inexpensive by any means, they are also not as expensive as some people might think. And especially not as expensive as homes in western ITB as noted in my previous posts on Underwood, Joyner & Martin. I've included all of DDE's nodes except for the 2 low income nodes that are bused in.

One other stat that I noted to myself: Of the 87 homes that sold in the Davis Drive nodes in the last year, only 14 of them were more than the lowest median price for the Joyner and Underwood base nodes. Underwood's node 92 had a median Single Family Home sales price of $386K.

More Magnet Questions

In my last entry I mentioned something that has bothered me: the number of non-F&R families who are given magnets as their base schools. Their children not only get to take advantage of the special programs that the rest of us are denied, but they get to walk to school or ride their neighborhood bus. WCPSS lets us believe that magnets are located in high poverty neighborhoods, but that isn't always the case. So just who is getting magnet schools as their base? Two examples that should shock you are the base populations of Joyner and Underwood, both elementary magnets.

To be fair, both schools do have low income nodes assigned to them. Joyner is located in an interesting area that is a mix of apartment complexes, condos and single family homes. Across the street from Joyner is a new development of homes starting in the $700Ks (The Oaks at Fallon Park) while behind Joyner is a large apartment complex where a lot of the low income kids live. Underwood, on the other hand, has to bus in their low income kids from downtown because there aren't a significant number near the school.

At one point in time, both of these schools (and their surrounding areas) may have struggled. But as you will see in the following tables, neither school is located in a high poverty area as we are typically led to believe. So why are they still magnets? Even more frustrating is the fact that in last year's reassignment plan, it was noted that Underwood has too low of an F&R for a magnet (29%) but they couldn't figure out how to raise it. If you can't raise a magnet's F&R above 29%, then perhaps its time to rethink its magnet status.




Both of these tables are abbreviated versions. The full tables, including information for each property that sold are available at: Joyner
and Underwood

Magnet Review Time

Holy cow its been a long time since I last updated! I've still been plugging away doing my research and speaking with lots of other frustrated parents around the county. Aside from the upcoming reassignment plan, the big news is the magnet review. As many of you may have read, the BOE has given preliminary approval for 2 new magnet schools--Brentwood and Smith. Both schools were approaching 70% F&R last year so it's about time that they do something for them.

So while that is good news, the BOE still has to do their review of current magnet programs to decide which aren't living up to the goals of the magnet program. Something that bothered me during our magnet years was the number of non-F&R families who are given magnet schools as their base. Also troubling is the low F&R at some of the magnet schools. So I put together a chart showing the base percentage at each magnet as well as the F&R.

Some caveats: these figures are for the 2007-08 school year and I am missing the figures for some magnet schools. Also, Douglas and Brooks had some base nodes moved out to make room for magnet applicants. So their numbers should be different this year. The other magnets should remain about the same.



Most troubling to me is Daniels Middle School with a base population of 80% and an F&R of only 30.3%. Compare that to East Millbrook or East Garner and I've got to seriously question why Daniels is still a magnet school. The same could be said for Broughton as well.

So What Are Your Chances?

I posted the criteria for getting selected for a magnet program in the last post. But what does that mean for you?

Even without knowing the F&R% of your particular node, we can still see which base schools give you the best chance of being accepted to a magnet. According to WCPSS, 31.6% of all elementary students participate in the Free & Reduced Lunch Program. I rounded that up to 32% then considered 27% to be 5% points below the average. After siblings are placed, the earliest you can be accepted into an elementary magnet based on your current base school is:

Round One--4 Schools
Base or Magnet students at Root, Olds, Forestville,and Lincoln Heights.

Rounds Two and Three--15 Schools
**Must live in a node 27% or less F&R, base school must be 27% or less F&R, and crowding factor must be greater than 100%
Baileywick
Brassfield
Cedar Fork
Davis Drive
Forest Pines
Hunter (magnet, not sure they have any base nodes under 27% F&R)
Lacy
Oak Grove
Partnership (magnet, not sure they have any base nodes under 27% F&R)
Pleasant Union
Turner Creek
Wake Forest
Weatherstone
West Lake
Wiley (magnet at 27.7%--not sure how WCPSS would treat this)

Round Four--6 Schools
**Must live in a node with 27% or less F&R, base school must be 27% or less F&R, and crowding factor must be greater than 85%
Ballentine
Brier Creek
Highcroft
Jones Dairy
Morrisville
Salem

Round Five--26 Schools
**No requirement for F&R of your node, base school crowding factor must be at least 85%, and no more than 40% F&R
Adams
Apex
Brooks (magnet)
Combs (magnet)
Dillard Drive
Douglas (magnet)
Durant Road
Farmington Woods
Fuller (magnet)
Fuquay-Varina
Green
Harris Creek
Hilburn Drive
Holly Ridge
Jeffrey's Grove
Joyner (magnet)
North Ridge
Northwoods
Penny Road
Rolesville
Swift Creek
Timber Drive
Underwood (magnet)
Washington (magnet)
Wildwood Forest
Yates Mill

Lottery for the Remaining 10% of Seats--45 Schools
**Comments after each school indicate why it wasn't considered in the first 5 rounds.
Aversboro (53.3% F&R)
Baucom (82.3% crowding, but only 12.1% F&R)
Barwell Road (57.9% F&R)
Brentwood (65.8% F&R, 24.3% Level 1 or 2)
Briarcliff (40.9% F&R, but 112.5% crowding)
Bugg (magnet, 44.4% F&R, but 129.4% crowding)
Carpenter (73.2% crowding, but only 14.7% F&R)
Carver (61.8% F&R, 71.6% crowding)
Cary (40.9% F&R, but 120.6% crowding)
Conn (magnet, 44.8% F&R, but 117.4% crowding)
Creech Road (62.4% F&R, but 109.8 crowding)
East Garner (59% F&R, 52.4% crowding)
Fox Road (52.9% F&R)
Green Hope (82.9% crowding, but only 5.9% F&R)
Hodge Road (58.6% F&R)
Holly Springs (78.7% crowding, but only 17.3% F&R)
Heritage (79.1% crowding, but only 24.4% F&R)
Holly Grove (82.3% crowding, but only 16.9% F&R)
Kingswood (41.4% F&R, but 120.8 crowding)
Knightdale (62% F&R, 83% crowding)
Leesville Road (76.7% crowding, but only 12% F&R)
Leadmine (41.7% F&R, but 101.1% crowding)
Lockhart (45.8% F&R, 75.7% crowding)
Lynn Road (41.7 % F&R, 74.3% crowding)
Middle Creek (77.4% crowding, but only 20.5% F&R)
Millbrook (magnet, 55.5% F&R, but 107.6% crowding)
North Forest Pines (66% crowding, but only 21.6% F&R)
Olive Chapel (81.7% crowding, but only 4.9% F&R)
Poe (47.2% F&R, but 111.7% crowding)
Powell (57.7% F&R, but 115.1% crowding)
Rand Road (82.7% crowding, but only 25.6% F&R)
Reedy Creek (83.6% crowding)
River Bend (57.5% F&R)
Sanford Creek (64.9% crowding)
Smith (70.8% F&R, but 106.8% crowding)
Stough (46.4% F&R)
Vance (75.5% crowding, but only 20.4% F&R)
Vandora Springs (52.2% F&R)
Wakefield (82.4% crowding, but only 25.6% F&R)
Wakelon (78.9% crowding, 63.5% F&R)
Wendell (46.8% F&R, but 105.6 crowding)
Wilburn (79.4% crowding, 53.5% F&R)
Willow Springs (82.8% crowding)
York (49.2% F&R, but 103.7% crowding)
Zebulon (equity magnet, 75.2% crowding, 56.6% F&R)

How Does F&R % Affect EOG Passing Rates? Updated

As I was updating my spreadsheets with EOG passing rates from the 2006-07 NC Report Cards, I noticed that I made a mistake the first time I posted these figures. I used the F&R percentages from 2006-07 but the EOG passing rates from 2005-06. So I redid the tables with the F&R and EOG rates from the same years. Not much changed--the results still show that the Non-Economically Disadvantaged (NED) children's EOG scores went down as F&R went up while the Economically Disadvantaged (ED) children's scores didn't seem to follow any pattern.

Updated F&R Numbers

I've been MIA for a while and hopefully that will change starting with this post. Now that the F&R figures are out for the current year, I'm updating my list of schools that are over 50% F&R. The table below shows the schools currently over 50% along with their F&R% from last year. All schools are elementary unless there is an MS after the name.

Another Look

The data in my last post seemed to show that Economically Disadvantaged (ED) elementary students aren't affected as strongly by rising F&R rates as Non-ED elementary students are. Actually, it didn't seem to indicate that F&R rates made much difference at all on the passing rates of ED students, which honestly surprised me. I decided to look at the same information in another way to see if it yielded different results.


Remember that the Wake County average for elementary students passing both the reading and math EOGs are 45.9% for ED students and 83.9 for NED. The passing rates for elementary ED students ran from a low of 19.7% at Poe to a high of 76.9% at Cedar Fork. For elementary NED students, they ranged from a low of 50% at Brentwood to a high of >95% at Washington, Apex and Dillard Drive.

Again, I am not a statistician and I'm not intending to prove or disprove anything. I do not know what the answers are nor how I would change the diversity policy. What I do know is that I am not willing to simply shuffle children around to make F&R numbers look good and call it a success. Academic achievement of all children should be the number one goal of WCPSS and we need to seriously question whether or not this particular policy is raising achievement.

Does the Diversity Policy Make a Difference?

Surrounding lower income children with higher income children is supposed to help them achieve. It makes perfect sense, really. Children from higher income families often have higher expectations placed on them by parents and teachers alike. Being surrounded by children who have more expected of them will rub off on the low income/low achieving children. Those from bad home environments can see a different way of life that may inspire them to work towards a higher goal. I have always believed this theory because it makes logical sense to me and because I really want it to be true. I want to believe that something so relatively simple can make a positive difference in these childrens' lives.

As I mentioned in my first blog entry, the distance that some of the low income children are bused has been a concern of mine. After spending four years sending my children to a magnet school that is 11 miles from our home, my husband and I made the very difficult decision to leave. The distance, and more importantly, the amount of time we spend taking our children to and from school has gotten to be too much to bear. We have no bus service offered to us, although for the past 2 years we have been 'illegally' using an express bus stop that is about 7.5 miles away from home. Using that stop brought our commute time down from almost 2 hours a day to about 1 hour and 40 minutes a day.

I realize that the low income nodes assigned far from home are given bus service to and from school, but what about parent/teacher conferences, volunteering, attending special programs or even picking up a sick child from school? Most of us take these things for granted but when you attend school that far from home it becomes a real issue. When you don't have a car and/or work a job with inflexible hours it is more than an inconvenience, it is a burden. When the assignment plans are announced each year, the public is given the opportunity to make comments online. Anybody can request to see those comments, which I did this past year. One comment in particular really put things in perspective for me. A single mother who was also a student at NCSU requested that her child not be assigned to the proppsed school, which was fairly far away. She stated that if her child missed the bus or needed to be picked up for some reason, she could not afford the cab fare to get to the school. Like I said, most of us take it for granted that we can get to our childrens' school if we need to. What about those who can't? Does WCPSS take this into consideration when they assign children so far from home?

WCPSS and some groups claim that busing these children to higher income schools is for their benefit, but I've yet to see any proof of this. Wake does not track the performance of these children before and after they are moved so all we have to go on is the good hearted belief that this will work. So I decided to do a little research on my own to see what I could come up with. I do not have information to track the performance of students who are bused a long way vs those that aren't, but we can look at the theory that lower income children perform better in higher income environments.

I freely admit that I am not a statistician, nor am I a professional researcher. I relied upon data from WCPSS and the NC School Report Cards. Performance on the End Of Grade tests (EOGs) is really the only reliable statistic that I had available to me, and I looked at the rates at which both Economically Disadvantaged (ED) and Non Economically Disadvantaged(NED)students passed both the reading and math EOGs. I have only looked at the scores for elementary age students so far, and only at grades 3-5 since EOGs are not given to K-2 students. 5 new elementary schools opened for the 2006-07 school year and therefore did not have scores available.


The state average for Economically Disadvantaged students passing
BOTH the math and reading EOGs is 45.1%. Wake County average is 45.9% with individual schools ranging from 19.7% to 76.9%



The state average for Non Economically Disadvantaged students passing both tests is 75.4%. Wake's average is 83.9%, with individual schools ranging from 50% to more than 95%.

Exceeding the Limit.

We all know that WCPSS's diversity policy calls for no schools to have more than 40% of their students receiving free and reduced lunch. Most people know that we have some schools that exceed that upper limit. What most people do not know is how far out of compliance some of the schools are or where they are located. These figures are not publicized by WCPSS and it is never reported by the local or national media. Wake County receives accolades for its diversity policy but it is never held up to any scrutiny.

In the 2006-07 school year WCPSS had 16 elementary schools with more than 50% F&R.

Vandora Springs	51.8%
Powell	52.6	Gifted/Talented Magnet
Fox Road	53.8
Zebulon	54.8	Gifted/Talented Equity Magnet*
Aversboro	56.4
River Bend	56.9
Knightdale	58.1
Millbrook	58.3	International Baccalaureate Magnet
Barwell Road	59.3
Wilburn	60.9
Creech Road	61.8
Hodge Road	64.0
Carver	64.9
Brentwood	66.7
Smith	69.4
Wakelon	71.4

*Equity magnets do not allow applications. Equity magnets were put in place to keep middle class families from fleeing those schools.

Note that these are the figures for this past school year, before Judge Manning's ruling. His ruling may make it harder for the school system to distribute F&R students evenly, but they weren't doing so well at it in the first place. I will update with the figures for the 2007-08 school year when they are released.