Courier-Journal suddenly sounding a lot more like us about busing

BIPPS got a fair amount of criticism from one of the reporters at the Louisville Courier-Journal last summer when we released our FALLING BEHIND, Blacks Falling Through Gaps in Louisville’s Schools, 2020 Update report. Aside from not publishing anything about our report, the reporter actually said in a Tweet on June 9, 2020:

“This blames, with minimal proof, JCPS’ achievement gaps on how it assigns kids to schools….”

 Actually, our report didn’t put things so assertively.

For example, our report’s executive summary discusses how Black students in Portland Elementary School, which is solidly in the black West End of Louisville, were getting higher test scores than Blacks bused elsewhere, offering a speculation (not an outright assertion) that:

 “Busing a student away from the Portland area might actually be doing harm, not good.”

 Our report continued:

 “The situation only seems to get worse as students work their way through to the upper grades. A majority of JCPS high schools posted only single-digit math proficiency rates for black students in 2019 testing. These dreadfully disappointing statistics certainly don’t provide confidence that decades of busing have really helped.”

Our basic position was not that busing was the root cause of the achievement gaps, but rather that since busing had been operating for four plus decades in Jefferson County and the gaps still remained highly problematic, it didn’t look like busing was helping.

Anyway, that was the picture back in June last year. The Courier’s reporter was pretty much unwilling to consider criticism of the busing program.

Now flash forward to February 7, 2021 and check out the front-page headline in the Sunday print edition of the Courier-Journal:

No kidding? Now the Courier itself is openly claiming the busing plan hurt Blacks in Louisville! Imagine that!

Want some more irony – one of the reporters who created the “Myth” article is the same one who Tweeted out denials about our report last summer.

Go figure. Maybe she had second thoughts about what we published in June 2020.

Anyway, the Courier put in a lot of time and money over the past six months to create this new series on busing (an online version that might only be available to Courier subscribers is here). Our initial read is that while we see some issues with the article, much of it seems decently researched and the article is worth a review. Certainly, some of the quotes from JCPS superintendent Marty Pollio are very important and revealing and needed to see the light of day (or the black of newsprint).

So, even though it has been only about seven months since we released our latest Blacks Falling Through Gaps report, we’ll be spending some more time on the busing in Louisville issue – again.

And, we’re glad the Courier’s reporters have finally started to sort this out for themselves. We only wish the paper had started this effort a lot sooner, like maybe when we issued our first, brief report about Blacks Still Falling in the ‘GAP’ in Louisville’s Schools way back in June of 2012.

Just think about where black kids in Louisville might be now if the school system had started to really work on improvements way back then instead of just getting started now. If Louisville had faced up to its busing myth back then, how much hurt to the Black communities in Louisville might have been avoided?