What is a proper definition of "Balanced Enrollment"?

As PISD considers revising its 2009 feeder alignment plan, I have been struggling to understand the term "Balanced Enrollment" as it applies to our Senior High schools.  In talking with a few friends, I have found the term means different things to different people.

Here is the Board of Trustees' definition, as communicated by Missy Bender in the PISD video entitled, "District in Motion: Preparing for the Feeder Alignment Transition":

"Balanced enrollment over time is not equally distributed student enrollment across the district.  It's balanced enrollment at a campus over time."

Source:http://pisdtv.pisd.edu/communications/features/9P9s3yzeipsgdDKDWDNG
Approx. Time: 03:38

I always have trouble when someone uses a term to define itself.  In my profession, that is called recursion.  This implies an "endless loop" or, more succinctly, "confusion".  But at least Missy tells us what balanced enrollment is not.

Here are ideas I received as I discussed this with some PISD friends.  Each of six people has his own definition of "Balanced Enrollment":

1. Identical enrollments across each of three Senior High campuses 
2. Aligning the enrollment so that you balance it across the 3 schools as close to the optimal use of each of their respective functional capacities as reasonably possible over time. 
3. The assignment of students to a campus in proportion to the population of students in a given attendance zone.  If 25% of the students live in an attendance zone, then 25% of the total student population should attend the Senior High in that attendance zone. 
4. A state of constant enrollment amounts over time; a steady number of students over time.
5. No wide swings in enrollment from year to year within each senior high school.  Each school should have a number at which it tends to level out at.  No large disparity in student population among the 3 senior high schools. 
6. Schools within each feeder zone level off and remain stable - and represent the percentage of the population that lives in the zone.  It is not called "equal enrollments" for a reason.

So just based on this small sample, it is no wonder that there is some confusion about what "Balanced Enrollment"' really means.  Perhaps the underlying problem is that the term "Balanced Enrollment" is a pretty nebulous concept at best.  So bear with me as I analyze it below. 

"Balance" literally means "equal distribution of amount" ( http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/balance ).  So to me, a very literal person, "balanced enrollment" means "equal distribution of students".  So it follows that "balanced enrollment" would mean "identical enrollments across three Senior High campuses".  But this is exactly the opposite of the definition offered by the Board of Trustees. 

Do you see why I am struggling here? 

Now I ask you to comment below.  What is your definition of "Balanced Enrollment"?  All I ask is that you limit your comments to the context of our Plano ISD Senior High campuses.

Do our two new Trustees recommend building a fourth Senior High school?

Short answer: No.

Slightly longer answer: In the campaign running up to the May 2011 election, both David Stolle and Mike Friedman said  "No" to a fourth Senior High school.

Complete answer: A full transcript for the April 14th, 2011, Key Communicators Forum follows.  I report, you read, and then you decide.

Source - http://pisdtv.pisd.edu/communications/features/EufT1YIXvCWi9AnpVLL0 

Time - Approx. 50:00

Question:

Do you believe that the large class size at the Senior High schools is affecting the quality of education?  Would you consider building another Senior High school?  Why, or why not?


Friedman

We're broke.  Again, and I do not believe we should be looking at spending money on another High school. 

I think we have a lot of inefficiencies in the PISD school district.  We have a lot of schools that are under-served.  We need to go back and do an analysis on all the schools and see if we can fit students in one school or another.  We might have to close a school, possibly, and put students in, uh, or fill up other schools and then bring high schoolers back into the school that we closed down. 

So I think that we need to utilize every square foot we have currently in the PISD and absolutely not get more debt in this next two or three years.


Stolle

Paul's in the classroom right now.  I've been in the classroom, and I can tell you with 100% certainty that class size matters.  And, when you have a large class, it is much more difficult to teach. 

In a perfect world, yes, we would build another high school.  We have, I think, three of the six largest graduating classes in the state of Texas.  Our district is based on an economy of scale, so we have large classes.  We expect that. 

But I believe we're at the point that we could use another high school.  However, reality is that that high school is at least 10 years away, if not longer. 

So, as a Trustee, we can start now with planning that, planning for another new high school.  But it's not coming any time soon.

What we can do, however, is what the board started to do with an academy.  We can build academies throughout town.  However, before we start with one academy, we need to make sure we know where we're going, and that we have a plan so that we're able to use those academies successfully and efficiently.

What were the "Guiding Principles" again?

Several have asked, so I dug up the following from our work a couple of years back.

Guiding Principles Used in the Feeder Pattern Alignment
Source: http://pisdtv.pisd.edu/communications/features/9P9s3yzeipsgdDKDWDNG

1) No split secondary feeders
2) Two high schools feeding into each senior high
3) Balanced enrollment over time
4) Provide growth capacity in eastern part of district
5) Consideration of existing facility capacity

Some have argued that the decision-makers failed on some of these principles as the 2009 realignment plan was adopted in December 2009.  Why would they feel this way?  Let me know what you think below.

Are big high schools bad?

In the August 16th work session, Plano ISD Board President Tammy Richards discussed the effectiveness of "smaller class sizes".  I haven't read the complete transcript, but she seems to be conflating this with the concept of a "smaller campus".

The background here is a premise that a future Plano West Senior High campus size will become "too big", and more generally that all Plano ISD campuses are now "too big".  So then it follows that the district should look into options that would reduce our Senior High campuses to something more palatable, perhaps around 2000.

Ms. Richards cited work by the Gates Foundation on reducing campus sizes in large urban districts such as NYC, Chicago, and Oakland and applying the rationale to our district.  This may not be a fair comparison since Plano ISD is not a mature district and certainly not urban.  In addition, the results from years of study by the "Small Schools Movement" are quite mixed.

Recently the Gates Foundation has backtracked on its original premise that "smaller is better".  From the 2009 annual letter from Bill Gates:

Executive Summary: After spending $2 billion on experiments with reducing high school campus size, the Gates Foundation has concluded that small high schools are not the answer to improving public school education. So it is changing its strategy.

5-second summary: The key to a great education is not a small high school, it is a great teacher.

Key quotes from the article:

Many of the small schools that we invested in did not improve students' achievement in any significant way.

We had less success trying to change an existing school than helping to create a new school.

While we were pleased with these improvements, we are trying to raise college-ready graduation rates, and in most cases, we fell short.

If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.

Sources:

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/annual-letter/Documents/2009-bill-gates-annual-letter.pdf
http://blogs.sj-r.com/morningbell/index.php/2009/02/25/big-uh-oh-for-the-small-schools-movement/

Do we need to revise the current PISD feeder alignment plan?

I was chatting with a Robinson Dad today about the August 2, 2011 PISD Board of Trustees meeting, where we had a spirited discussion on "Senior High Enrollments".  We both agreed that the decision to table the vote for further study was in the best interests of our community, but we were stuck on the following questions:

What difference, if any, would an adjustment to the current feeder plan make to student learning or student achievement?  Would our student outcomes improve?

We decided these are exactly the questions we want our Trustees to answer before they launch into this endeavor.

One premise of the group asking for reconsideration of this issue is that "big senior high schools are bad".  This was not our family's personal experience with PESH, but it nonetheless intrigued me.  So I started to do research on this and so far am finding the results to be mixed.  Some of the research suggests that "classroom sizes" of between 15 and 22 may lead to improved student outcomes, but the actual "campus size" doesn't appear to be a factor.  Other research suggests that while smaller middle school campuses are effective in improving student outcomes, smaller high school campuses may not always show the same benefits.  I assure you that my research continues in this fascinating area.

My intuition tells me that if "large campus size" is a negative factor, then virtually every post-secondary public institution in the country (e.g. The Ohio State University, UT-Austin, The University of Illinois, etc.) would be turning out low-quality graduates.  For example, when our family searched for a college for our oldest child, we started with small liberal arts schools and expanded our search to larger public institutions because we learned that many had student-to-faculty ratios comparable to the smaller schools.

That said, it may not be fair to equate the college setting with that of PISD senior high schools.  This is probably the making of another blog post. 

One other question has to do with what is really triggering the desire to reopen the issue.  I asked this question several months ago via email with the Trustees.

Question:

As you are aware, the feeder realignment issue is still being discussed in the district.  I wanted to revisit it with each Trustee and ask for a yes/no answer on the following question.  Please respond at your convenience.

Many PISD stakeholders were involved in the feeder realignment hearings in the Fall of 2009.  Option 3, presented in November 2009, endured some heated debate, especially from some East-side parents.  When the final decision was handed down, some were relieved and some were upset.  Some who disagreed with the final decision has approached the board to ask for reconsideration on this issue.  If you are approached, would you consider reopening this issue in the near future?

Answer (from Trustee #1):

If new, compelling, and factual information is presented from credible experts to warrant such consideration, I am open-minded to reviewing the impact of such facts.

Answer (from Trustee #2):

I would listen to any parent’s reasoning for why any issue should be considered.  Is there new data or information that is now available?  Was there something missed previously?  The number one consideration has to be what is best for our students and community and what makes sense fiscally.  From my perspective, the adopted feeder alignment plan did not appropriately address the guiding principles of balanced enrollment and an end to split feeders. I don’t believe it would be necessary to reopen the whole feeder alignment issue to accomplish those goals.

So, my feeling here is if the Trustees can answer these basic questions in a compelling manner, then I will be the first person to get on board to help with any realignment work that is required.  If not, we should move forward with other critical work in our school district, and I'm also happy to help there as well.

PISD Board of Trustees to discuss "Senior High Enrollments"

An agenda item on "Senior High Enrollments" was added to the Tuesday, August 2, regular board meeting:

https://v3.boardbook.org/Public/PublicItemDownload.aspx?mk=50031016&fn=agenda.pdf

VIII.  Senior High Enrollments
Request Decision - Closure Required
Presenter: Doug Otto

Word on the street:

To All,

The new PISD Board will be voting this Tuesday August 2 to re-open the school boundary realignment issue.

Please see the attached Agenda (Page 3) “Senior High School Enrollments” which is code for telling the PISD staff to re-draw the boundaries lines again.

If you want to get in front of this issue and the new boundaries, I recommend you attend this Board meeting.

Please forward to everyone you know in PISD as this will impact everyone.

HERE WE GO AGAIN JUST LIKE TWO YEARS AGO!

Steve Macnoll
MACNOLL REALTY ADVISORS
4608 Charles Place, Plano, Texas 75093

Office/Mobile Phone: 972.814.4801
E-Mail: smacnoll@yahoo.com