Is there help for North Division ?
By the numbers, Milwaukee North Division High School is one of the lowest performing comprehensive public high schools in America. Let’s start with a few numbers from the state Department of Public Instruction:
Daily attendance during the 2016-’17 school year: 62.3%. Graduation rate, as of the 2016-’17 school year: Graduating after four years in high school, 31.7%. For those at the end of their fifth year, 30.1%. At the end of their sixth year, 53.2%.
The state report card for the school, issued last fall, says 7.5% of juniors who took the ACT test required by the state were proficient in language arts. Proficient in math: 0%.
The percentage of students whose scores were “below basic,” the lowest category: 80% in language arts and 87.5% in math.
The average ACT test score for the school was 13.3.
Enrollment has fallen in each of the last four years and was listed at 354 as of the start of this school year. The building at 1011 W. Center St. is designed to handle well over 1,000.
The state report card score for the school, 22 on a scale of 100, ranked 333rd out of 335 schools of all kinds in Milwaukee County that received scores. Two small voucher schools had lower scores.
I admit I don’t know exactly how to compare North to the lowest performing schools elsewhere, but I’m familiar with the picture overall and I’m unaware of any school whose numbers are notably worse. I stand behind calling North “one of the lowest.”
So we’re going to do something about this, right? Not that I can see.
In fact, two major possibilities for changing what is going on In the North building have now been taken off the table.
Why?
Because both would have involved charter schools.
Strong opposition to charter schools, led by the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association, made the proposals so controversial that Milwaukee Collegiate
Academy, a school strongly associated with former Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent Howard Fuller, withdrew its proposal a few days ago.
It is also known that Milwaukee College Prep, which is authorized by the Milwaukee School Board to run four kindergarten through eighth-grade schools on the north side, considered locating its first high school in the North building but did not go ahead.
Fuller — himself a 1958 graduate of North — said he worked on the North possibility for more than six months. He met with numerous people, including some who are hardly allies.
The reactions he got, including from leaders in the MPS administration, were encouraging overall, he said.
MCA, now located at W. Capitol Drive and N. 29th St., has a difficult history in terms of academic success. Fuller says it has made progress in recent years and data support that. The school’s report card score of 53.9 was more than 30 points above North Division and higher than all but several MPS high schools.
The school, which is now chartered through Milwaukee city government, wants to expand and it proposed becoming an MPS-affiliated charter. Leaders appeared Feb. 27 before a committee that reviews charter applications before they are given to the school board. The committee’s assessment was generally positive.
The MCA proposal would have gone before a school board committee on March 13. But the teachers union, allied activists and current North teachers and students led demonstrations in recent days against the plan.
Fuller said he and other MCA leaders decided to withdraw.
“It was just going to be another one of those community wars from which no one benefits,” he said in an interview. He said he did not want to see a heated dispute pitting black people against black people. MCA, he said, will work on possibilities for expanding at its current site.
Amy Mizialko, vice president of MTEA, said the union was glad to see MCA drop out.
“We reject the premise of chartering, period,” she said. “It is a vehicle of privatization. ... We oppose anyone with a private charter proposal going into North Division.”
So what should happen at North? Mizialko said the students would do much better if the school was given adequate resources and strong support.
“There needs to be a campaign for North Division, there needs to be a promise made to North Division,” she said. “We should all be running with our arms open” to help.
The MPS administration does not appear eager to discuss the school or its future. I asked last week to find out if there were changes being considered for
North. After several days, I was given a four-sentence statement that didn’t illuminate much except to say that there were no plans before the school board now and MPS is working with community groups on ways to help North students.
I also asked to visit North last week. That was turned down.
The school board is wrestling mightily with what to do with charter schools, both those already connected with the system (now with almost 9,000 stu- dents) and those considering applying. It is expected to have a meeting on the subject soon.
On Feb. 27, it met in closed session with an attorney “for the purpose of reviewing current and developing new strategies” in negotiating charter contracts.
I appeared at the meeting and objected to the closed session — I suspected it actually would be a discussion of where to go on the subject of charter schools, which ought to be held in public. I got nowhere.
Getting nowhere may be a good summary of North Division.
The school faces huge challenges. The students overall come to school with many factors negatively affecting the likelihood of success. Very high poverty, trauma-filled personal lives, troubled neighborhoods — the list is lengthy.
Going back decades, a lot has been tried in the North building without success. The school was converted to three small high schools. An African-American immersion program was launched. Alternative schools were located in the building. There was talk of a health care specialty program.
Should MPS, the school board, the union, the community, and local and state political leadership effectively shrug its shoulders and not do much in light of the academic picture at the school? With two schools that have energy and momentum taking a pass on North largely because of hostile community politics, what’s next for North?
“I don’t know,” Fuller said. “It’s discouraging. But we can’t get discouraged.”
That leaves him more optimistic than I am.
Alan J. Borsuk is senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette Law School. Reach him at alan.borsuk@ marquette.edu.