Socioeconomic Factors Replacing Race in School Assignments

An article in Education Week addressed school districts replacing race-based school assignment plans with income-based plans, in light of Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, which reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

Parents sued the district for assigning students based on race, a policy they said violated their rights to equal protection of the laws. Although the district claimed it used race only as a tie-breaker, the court declared the practice unconstitutional.

More school districts are opting to “integrate” schools based on income. An excerpt:

“Many experts believe the composition of a school’s student body affects achievement. If black and Hispanic students, who are more likely to be poor, go to the same schools as their better-off white peers, the thinking goes, they’ll all do better and aspire to higher education. But since the Supreme Court essentially blocked a race-conscious path to racial diversity, some integration advocates are looking to socioeconomic status to reach the same goal.

“Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a Washington-based research and public-policy organization, is a champion of socioeconomic integration of schools. He argues that educating students of different social and economic levels in the same classrooms is a powerful tool for increasing achievement.

“‘In most cases, low-income students in school districts with socioeconomic programs are doing better than low-income students in segregated school districts,’ he said in an interview.

“Socioeconomic integration is a better approach, Mr. Kahlenberg argues, than two of the four turnaround strategies—replacing principals and staff members and moving to charter school governance—that the U.S. Department of Education requires districts that receive federal economic-stimulus funds to choose from for low-performing schools.”

Kahlenberg echoes the idea that middle-class values rub off, that low-income parents will watch and learn from higher-income parents. He also believes children from low-income homes will learn better if surrounded by higher-income children. Is it true? Yes, according to “Does Segregation Still Matter? The Impact of Student Composition on Academic Achievement in High School.” (74 pages in PDF)

The researchers found that for all students in their study, regardless of race, social class, or academic background, they learn more on average attending schools with high social class students than low social class students.

While this may be the case, it must be balanced with liberty. For now, Americans are free to take up residence in any state and any neighborhood. Most want to send their children to the closest school. As the government coerces them to send children to schools outside the neighborhood, they either deal with it, move, send kids to private or parochial schools, or homeschool them.

There’s a limit to what the government can do about academic gaps among children and academic performance levels across schools. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) declared unconstitutional laws that established separate schools based on race. That a school is majority black in 2010 does not mean someone’s rights are being violated. Brown restricted the government from setting up separate schools based on race; it didn’t require the government to eliminate segregated schools. This is a major misunderstanding of the Brown case. Self-segregation is a different animal than government-mandated segregation.

Courts subsequently interpreted Brown to require the government to proactively eliminate segregated schools. When schools assign students based on race, they’re violating the spirit of Brown. Unfortunately, too many people fail to grasp the concept, including those with authority and power.

(Top image source: Andy Manis for Education Week)