In 2016, the Cincinnati Public School Board decided that there was a problem with Fairview Elementary in Clifton. The problem was not it’s performance. In fact, Fairview was probably the best performing public elementary school in the entire district. The problem, according to the School Board, was that the school was too White. So the decision was made to change the school’s enrollment process in a way that would admit more Black children.
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Overview of the Situation
Cincinnati Public Schools has what’s known as “magnet” schools which take applications from kids outside of the school’s neighborhood. This allows people to avoid having to send their kids to crappy neighborhood schools. The magnet schools saw a lot of success because they took admissions on first come, first serve basis. Admissions were so competitive, that dedicated parents would camp out in line to get a spot for their children in the school. There was a strong correlation between being a dedicated parent and having intelligent and upstanding children. This culminated in the schools being filled with high quality parents and high-quality kids. Thus, a high-quality school! Fairview Elementary was a prime of example of the success of the magnet school admissions process.
Well, it just so happened that the racial composition of the Fairview parents that were doing the camping out was predominately White. Fairview is unique in that it is a German-Language school that does mandatory German classes for all it’s students. The school has been around since 1888 and it has always been an appealing schooling option for Cincinnati’s large German-ethnic population.
This was not an issue with the leftist School board initially because for many years, the schools had racial quotas. The quotas stated that the schools had to be 50% White and 50% Black. But in 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that assigning racial quotas to public schools violated the 14th amendment. So, after 2007, the admissions for these dedicated parents were now uncapped. As a result, the number of White students in Fairview began to increase. By 2013, White children made up 66% of the population. Oh the horror!
The woke leftists who control our inner-city politics loathe nothing more than White people having nice things. So in 2015, the Cincinnati School Board, led by Erica Copeland-Dansby, finally had enough and decided to do away with the first come first serve admissions process. They replaced it with a lottery system that would allow everyone to apply online and then randomly select the students to fill the schools. The reasoning provided by Copeland was that they wanted to make admissions more “equitable.” The school board argued that some [Black] parents did not have the time to wait in line for the admissions process. Therefore the only “fair” process would be one that selects at random.
There are other magnet schools in the Cincinnati Public School district that this new policy affected. But the ones located in the inner-city all suck other than Fairview. It was clear that this policy change was specifically directed at Fairview because of it’s racial composition and it’s great performance. The leftists who controlled the School board wanted black children to have more access to this good school. However, the Fairview dirt is not magic and setting foot into the school will not make a kid proficient, nor will it ensure that it remains a good school. It was the dedicated parents that made the school what it was. By making the admissions random, you remove this crucial component of the school’s success. Years have passed since that decision was made and the changes to the demographics and performance of Fairview are shocking.
Results of the New Lottery System
Enrollment
Below are the charts of Fairview’s total enrollment and enrollment by ethnicity over time. The total population has begun to fall since the admissions lottery was implemented in 2015. In 2015, there were 803 students. Now there are 660. An 18% decline. Consistent population decline is not a sign of a healthy school.
The White population increased following the 2008 Supreme Court decision to end racial quotas, then collapsed after the school board implemented the admissions lottery. It is safe to say that the School Board is seeing their desired outcomes. This is an illuminating example of how government policy can dramatically alter outcomes.
Performance
Below are the charts pertaining to Fairview’s overall performance and performance by ethnicity. They show the percent of students that were proficient or above. We can see that the percentages have been trending downwards since 2015. In 2014, 88% of students were proficient or above. By 2023, that percentage fell to 78%.
Not all of this decline can be attributed to the admissions process changes. Testing became more strict around 2015 due to implementation of “Common Core.” This resulted in a drop in scores across all students. Also, COVID lockdowns in 2019 had a detrimental effect on all students’ scores in the following years.
However, the performance by ethnicity chart clearly shows that Black students are performing much worse than the White students. In 2023, 96% of White students were proficient or above while only 52% of Black students were. A 44-point gap! This indicates that some of the decline in overall performance must be attributed to the fact that there are now more black students in the school.
It should be noted that these performance numbers are not as bad as the rest of the Cincinnati Public School District, which is utterly failing. In fact, the Blacks at Fairview perform significantly better than Black kids in the rest of the District. In Fairview, Black children were 52% proficient compared to 29% for black children in the rest of the district. Perhaps these children are benefiting from being injected into an existing good school, as the School Board had hoped. However, it still remains that based on the performance numbers, Fairview went from an exceptional school, to a decent school trending downwards. Why are these Black children still performing 40 points below their White peers even though they have been injected into a good school. The leftists would tell you it’s systemic racism, but that is a topic for another blog post.
Death of Public Schools
This is what has happened to Fairview school after less than 10 years of this policy. If these trends continue, Fairview will descend into mediocrity or failure like the District’s other schools. The situation at Fairview is a microcosm of how DEI and collectivist ideology are destroying the entire country. All over the country you can find examples of once great institutions that have become mediocre due to DEI policies. They become infected with the woke mind virus and begin to strive for equitable outcomes by admitting people who are unqualified. At least these institutions have an opportunity to choose who they admit.
In the case of Fairview, Cincinnati Public Schools has taken equity to it’s final stage by making admissions purely random and removing all competition from the process. The school is still riding it’s pre-lottery reputation and getting a lot of applications from those good parents who would have camped out in the past. But enrollment and performance scores are falling. So it is only a matter of time before these parents start to pull the plug and look for German classes elsewhere.
Thank God the Ohio State Legislature is still dominated by conservatives. Because of them, parents have an option to participate in the voucher program. They can essentially get their tax money back to spend on private schooling. Public schools are naturally pissed about this. Well they can go to hell. When our public schools are attacking their best performers like Fairview in the name of racial equity, they deserve to go under. At this point, sending your kids to inner-city public schools is doing your child a serious disservice.
