Socioeconomic School Integration

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Socioeconomic School Integration

• Race, Class and Education Gaining New Insights
• Center for Children and Childhood Studies
• Rutgers University Camden Campus
• May 5, 2006

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Districts Pursuing Socioeconomic Integration

• Wake County, (Raleigh) North Carolina. No
  school should have more than 40 of students
  eligible for free or reduced price lunch or 25
  performing below grade level.
• Cambridge, Massachusetts. All schools should
  fall within or 10 percentage points of
  district average for free and reduced price lunch
  (40).
• La Crosse, Wisconsin. All schools should have
  between 15 and 45 of students eligible for free
  lunch.

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Other Districts Pursuing Socioeconomic Integration

• Manchester, CT Maplewood, NJ Coweta County, GA
  St. Lucie County, FL, San Francisco, CA
  Greenville, SC Brandywine, DE Rochester, NY
  San Jose, CA.
• 20,000 students in 1999. Roughly 500,000
  students today.

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Percentage of Schools that are Consistently High
Performing, by Socioeconomic Status
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Student's NAEP Math Scores, by Type of School
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David Rusk Study of Madison-Dane County, WI (2002)

• Among fourth grade students
• For every 1 percent increase in middle-class
  classmates, low income students improved 0.64
  percentage point in reading and 0.72 percentage
  point in math.
• Any given low income student attending an 85
  middle class school rather than a 45 middle
  class school saw a 20 to 32 percentage point
  improvement in that low-income pupils test
  scores.

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Ten Factors that Make for Good Schools

• An adequate financial base (as measured against
  student needs) to provide small class size,
  modern equipment, and the like. Middle income
  schools, on average, spend as much as twice what
  low income schools spend per pupil. All Together
  Now (Brookings Press, 2001) p.64

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Ten Factors that Make for Good Schools

• A place where money is spent wisely, on the
  classroom rather than on bureaucracy. In middle
  class areas, pressure is less intense to make
  education a jobs program, so bureaucracies are
  less likely to be bloated. 65-66

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Ten Factors that Make for Good Schools

• An orderly environment. Middle class schools
  report disorder problems half as often as low
  income schools. 58

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Ten Factors that Make for Good Schools

• A stable student and teacher population. Middle
  class schools see half as much student mobility
  as higher poverty schools, and teacher mobility
  is one-fourth as high. 60,68

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Ten Factors that Make for Good Schools

• A good principal and well-qualified teachers
  trained in the subject they are teaching.
  Teachers in middle class schools are more likely
  to be licensed, less likely to teach out of their
  field of expertise, less likely to have low
  teacher test scores, less likely to be
  inexperienced, and more likely to have greater
  formal education. Even when paid comparable
  salaries, teachers consider it a promotion to
  move from poor to middle class schools, and the
  best teachers usually transfer into middle income
  schools at the first opportunity. 67-71

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Ten Factors that Make for Good Schools

• A meaty curriculum and high expectations.
  Curriculum in middle class schools is more
  challenging and expectations are higher. The
  grade of C in a middle income school is the same
  as a grade of A in low income schools, as
  measured by standardized tests results. Middle
  class schools are more likely to offer AP classes
  and high level math. 72-74

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Ten Factors that Make for Good Schools

• Active parental involvement. In middle class
  schools, parents are four times as likely to be
  members of the PTA and much more likely to
  participate in fundraising. 62-64

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Ten Factors that Make for Good Schools

• Motivated peers who value achievement and
  encourage it among classmates. Peers in middle
  income schools are more academically engaged,
  more likely to do homework, less likely to watch
  TV, less likely to cut class and more likely to
  graduate all of which have been found to
  influence the behavior of classmates. 51-8

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Ten Factors that Make for Good Schools

• High achieving peers, whose knowledge is shared
  informally with classmates all day long. In
  middle class schools, peers come to schools with
  twice the vocabulary of lower income children, so
  any given child is more likely to expand his
  vocabulary through informal interaction. p. 50

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Ten Factors that Make for Good Schools

• Well connected peers who will help provide access
  to jobs down the line. Children attending middle
  class schools are given access to informal
  connections that serve children well in finding
  jobs after graduation. 61

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Why the Shift from Race to Class?

• Legal clouds hanging over the use of race in
  student assignment. (Alito) Class mixing has a
  positive racial dividend.
• Academic achievement more directly related to
  economic mix in a school than the racial mix.

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Importance of Class

• Research Academic benefits of integration not
  from proximity to whiteness but middle-class
  environment
• Racial Desegregation in Charlotte vs. Boston
• Behaviors Associated with Class more than Race
  Discipline problems acting white actually a
  class phenomenon parental involvement etc.

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2004-2005 North Carolina High School End of
Course Exams Composite
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Socioeconomic Integration Doesnt Hurt
Middle-Class

• Numbers Matter. Numerical majority sets the
  tone.
• Middle-Class children on average are less
  sensitive to changes in school environment than
  low-income students.
• Social and moral benefits of diversity

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How to Pursue Socioeconomic Integration

• Redrawing school boundaries
• Siting new schools in economically mixed areas
• Magnet schools
• Controlled Public School Choice

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For More Information

• Richard D. Kahlenberg, All Together Now Creating
  Middle Class Schools through Public School Choice
  (Brookings Press, 2001 paperback, 2003).
• Divided We Fail Coming Together through Public
  School Choice Report of The Century Foundation
  Task Force on the Common School (Lowell Weicker,
  Chair) (Century Foundation Press, 2002).

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Contact Information

• Richard D. Kahlenberg
• Senior Fellow
• The Century Foundation
• 1333 H Street, N.W. 10th Floor
• Washington, D.C. 20005
• kahlenberg_at_tcf.org
• www.equaleducation.org