July 13, 2004

DEFINING SCHOOL EXCELLENCE

By James Eugene*

The Roslyn (Long Island) School District has been much in the news lately and not for good things. At least two of its district employees, one the actual district superintendent, have been accused of embezzling more than $1 million each from the district. And because of these revelations, voters in the district initially rejected its school budget after years of placidly accepting whatever budget was placed before them for a vote. (For New York City dwellers, out of City school districts must actually have their budgets voted on by the local electorate.)

What is interesting is that in the first paragraph of almost every story on this topic is a line like this, "Roslyn is one of the country's best school districts with over 90% of its graduates going to college."

No article tells me why "Roslyn is one of the country's best school districts," the articles just say that it is. But we need to ask is it the teaching, the facilities, the students?

Maybe we need to look at Rosalyn itself. All of the following statistics are according to the 2000 census so inflate as you see fit. The village's population is overwhelmingly white and Asian (95%). The median family income was $101,622. Only 1.3% of all households were under the poverty level and I am willing to bet that all of that 1.3% consisted of seniors living on fixed incomes.

So if you have no students living in poverty, a family income over 6 figures, and a large tax base, what type of district do you expect?

Personally, I had friends who grew up in Roslyn. Their parents were all professionals and if they had problems with any subject, they received an after-school tutor.

Now if we took the Roslyn resources per pupil (over $25,000 per pupil) and translated that into New York City, along with moving every single parent out of poverty and into the sphere of the upper middle class, along with providing for educated parents, how do you think the New York City education system would do? No snide remarks about New York City inefficiency here, after all Roslyn's school district personnel was stealing the district blind for ten years!

I made similar points in a January 9, 2004 column called "Measuring Education." The fact is that we make the wrong comparisons with education and we continue to praise districts that begin with a natural advantage over urban districts. Roslyn is not a great school district. It is a district that performs appropriately based upon its demographics. (And the same would hold true for Great Neck, Scarsdale and other elite suburban school districts.) That does not make it great. It makes it "appropriate." I want to see the school district that outperforms its demographic (without specialty schools or skimming of students). Show me this district and I would say it should be studied to see why it succeeds.

Till then, defining how school excellence is achieved remains an elusive endeavor.

* James Eugene is the pseudonym of a veteran of NYC government affairs. Inside The Big Apple will appear exclusively on the Empire Page. If you want to send tips or column ideas to James Eugene, email them to jameseugene@empirepage.com.