Two things I left out of yesterday's post

1. Lance Burri seems to be on vacation. He's not just ignoring me.

2. I want to remind everyone of a point that I have made previously when I write about the costs of education, and how to improve teaching and learning in general. I mentioned several Southeastern Wisconsin school districts in the post, and for those of you not familiar with the area, let me go back to two of them and explain the demographics a little more.

Nicolet and Delaven-Darien are at almost polar opposites in the region: Nicolet is tops in per-student spending, per-student property tax revenue, and test scores. Delavan-Darien is near the bottom--49th in spending, 42nd in per-student property tax collections, and near the bottom on test scores. In other ways, they are very similar: Nicolet has 27% minority enrollment and Delavan-Darien has 30%. This means that race is not or should not be a factor in how and why these two districts are so far apart in terms of performance. Nicolet is suburban and Delavan-Darien rural, but otherwise, the difference seems mainly to lie in poverty--both in the poverty of the school district and in the poverty of the students (Delavan-Darien has 35% elligible for free or reduced lunch; Nicolet just 11%).

I've made the argument in terms of urban Milwaukee that true positive change in overall educational outcomes will only come with a reinvestment in the city and a serious attempt to redress decades of neglect and centuries of oppression and abuse. Here we see the same kind of rich-poor dynamic played out with similar (racial) populations, and again, I think that the needs of the community need to be addressed in the Delevan-Darien school district before the test scores will start to look more like the ones in Nicolet. I'm not an expert on what goes on in that district, as its two counties away, but I would venture to guess that the "other 82%" for those students is not spent in book-filled literary households where a college (or college-prep) education is of the highest priority.

If there is anyone who could speak more intelligently about rural districts like Delavan-Darien, I'd love to hear from you in the comments, to see if you think the social-justice model of community redevelopment is as key to improving rural poor districts as urban poor ones.