Column--the impact of lopsided enrollment

Talk about possible redistricting of Iowa City Schools has been pretty disappointing so far.

Some parents are outraged by the idea that their elementary communities might face an influx of students with greater educational needs.

Why should my kid change schools just to help other kids, they ask. What will happen to test scores when more at-risk students show up at our schoolhouse door?

You can't blame mama and papa bears for wanting to protect their cubs' education. But they're wrong to think baby bear will suffer overmuch if the district does what it's supposed to - honor its mission to help all our kids learn.

It's good that hundreds of parents, teachers and residents are weighing in on the school district's proposal to change school boundaries. If more would take a broad, community-based view of redistricting, we'd be getting somewhere.

Just over a quarter of the district's students received free or reduced lunch last year, but those kids' distribution among district buildings is shamefully lopsided.

Half or more of the students at seven of Iowa City's 24 schools met that common indicator of poverty; other schools house only a few.

You probably know that low socioeconomic status is linked to poor student performance at all levels. But also consider this: Researchers also have found that schoolwide concentrations of poverty affect a student's performance whether or not they live in poverty themselves.

Negative effects for all students increase the more concentrated those populations in poverty become. A 1993 U.S. Department of Education's Prospects report marks the tipping point at 50 percent - which seven Iowa City schools reach under current boundaries.

Researchers found that non-poor students in schools where at least 50 percent of the students lived in poverty scored at the same level as poor students in schools with fewer than 20 percent of students in poverty. Changing school boundaries so that no school population exceeds 20 percentage points higher than the district average would put every school building well under that 50 percent mark.

It also would mean most schools' enrollments would change - something that would be inconvenient for some higher-performing kids at higher-performing schools.

But it will mean the world for the educational opportunities of a lot of other kids in the district. That's what school officials should remember when parents cry foul.

Jennifer Hemmingsen's column appears on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Comments: (319) 339-3154 or jennifer.hemmingsen@gazcomm.com