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Enrollment at King K-8 School in Northeast Portland, which now houses a Mandarin language immersion program, jumped 12 percent since last year.

(Faith Cathcart/The Oregonian)

In the pitched debate over school choice versus racial equity, King K-8 school has been offered up as a poster child for schools withering from neighborhood indifference.

The school has a student body with significantly greater minority and low-income representation than the demographics of its gentrifying Northeast Portland neighborhood, a committee recommending changes to Portland Public Schools' enrollment policies found. Many white, middle-class families who have moved to the area have sent their children elsewhere rather than enroll at their local school – a perennial low performer, according to state ratings -- the Superintendent's Advisory Committee on Enrollment and Transfer noted.

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Editorial Agenda 2014



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But that's only part of the picture at King. The school has actually been a net winner in terms of students using the district's lottery system to transfer into the school, according to the past two years worth of data. Even more interesting is that the school's enrollment climbed 12 percent this year, drawing dozens of additional families from both inside and outside the neighborhood to King. How? Not by hamstringing families' ability to choose, but, rather, by rolling out a new Mandarin language immersion program that has been in high demand. These students bring with them more funding and family involvement, both of which will benefit the immersion and neighborhood programs at King.

That's important to remember as Superintendent Carole Smith considers

the district's enrollment and transfer policies. On Tuesday, Smith is scheduled to propose to the Portland School Board ways to boost educational opportunities for minority and low-income students

.

Unfortunately, some of SACET's recommendations are more focused on letting the district dictate who can transfer between schools than fixing what's wrong.

The committee's first proposal calls for ending the decade-old lottery that allows a student to transfer into another neighborhood school. While most students enroll at their neighborhood schools, about 500 to 600 students transfer through this option every year, according to the district. SACET argues that the lottery is used primarily by white families, whose transfers have hollowed out enrollment at some schools, primarily those with high minority and low-income student populations. By taking that option away, the committee contends that enrollment at the schools could stabilize.

But SACET's second proposal shows what the real goal is – controlling who gets to exercise choice. While the committee derides transfers through the lottery, it supports retaining the petition process – which minorities use more than the lottery – in which families can plead their case for a school transfer. The district approves roughly 600 petition requests a year from families that would like to keep siblings together, improve access to childcare or escape social and cultural isolation at their neighborhood school.

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are N. Christian Anderson III, Mark Hester, Helen Jung, Erik Lukens, and Len Reed.

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Ending the lottery while retaining the petition process is neither wise nor fair. The district created the lottery to provide a transparent, objective way to handle families' requests for a transfer. Dismantling it in favor of a far more subjective petition process exposes the district to accusations of unfair treatment and abuse by those whose cases don't win the district's sympathy. What kind of resources would the district need to add to handle the surge in personal appeals by families who no longer can try their luck in the lottery?

The committee's findings, which span not just the neighborhood lottery but the popular focus-option schools as well, sound almost like accusations of wrongdoing. White, middle-class families are using the lottery! They're applying to focus-option schools! They're transferring out of their neighborhood schools without saying why! Never mind that this was the system that Portland Public Schools set up and maintained for a decade. Rather than abandoning the lottery altogether, the district could consider simpler and narrower adjustments designed carefully to address genuine problems. For instance, the district could improve its dismal outreach to minority families about the lottery and focus-option schools for one thing.

There is no disputing the value of what the district is trying to do - provide strong educational opportunities to students regardless of income or race. However, the district need only look at King to see one way to attract and retain families to schools battling underenrollment. It's certainly not a cure-all, but families are hungry for curriculum options, whether it's language immersion or a focus on math and science, to help their kids find and reach their potential.

Ending the lottery, however, is an outsized response to school problems that require a more surgical approach. Taking away choice – or, rather, tightly controlling who gets to exercise it – can result in families making the ultimate choice to get out of the public-school system altogether.

-- The Oregonian editorial board