d:\doc\web\98\06\dist2.txt
Date sent:        17 Jun 1998 09:37:31 -0700
From:             "Mike McKeown" <Mike_McKeown@qm.salk.edu>
Subject:          Do you know?
To:               arthurhu@halcyon.com


                      Subject:                              Time:  9:31 AM
  OFFICE MEMO         Do you know?                          Date:  6/17/98


Arthur-


You are the person with the most knowledge of ethnic distributions and test
scores.


San Diego just hired Anthony Alvarado from school district 2 in NY City.  This
district is located in Manhattan.  The demographics are variously described as
"the slums of lower Manhattan as well as in the more affluent Upper East
Side,"  (SD Union-Tribune) and "the district, which sprawls from working class
immigrant neighborhoods in Chinatown to the Upper East Side" (NY Times).  The
reason this distinction is important is that part of Alvarado's appeal is that
he is credited with raising his district from 10th (out of 32 districts) to
2nd in reading scores.  (I think this really means fraction of kids passing
some test at the minimal competency level, not average score).  Now tenth
isn't bad to start with, and, if over a ten year period the demographics of
the district changed (ie the occupants of the slums/working class district
changed to a more academically oriented population), then the scores might go
up without doing anything.


Do you have any data or information on the extent to which there has been a
large influx of eg Chinese into district 2 in NY?  I checked the NY school
district web site for test scores and found them school by school, along with
school by school ethnicity data, but couldn't find a summary of the ethnic
make-up, or SES of district 2 as a whole.


Thanks for any info.  Sorry if this rambles.


Mike