As Montgomery County schools consider ways to reduce the achievement and opportunity gaps by race and income, it might take a page from the Washington, D.C. public schools — not often thought of as a model for Montgomery.<\/p>\n
Washington D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray has approved a new school boundary policy that includes an important equity provision to give at-risk students a chance to attend more affluent schools.\u00a0 As the Washington Post<\/em> noted in an article<\/a> Friday:<\/p>\n \u201cThe plan sets aside at least 10 percent of seats in every elementary school for out-of-boundary students, along with 15 percent of middle school seats and 20 percent of high school seats.\u00a0 The plan says that at risk students should have a preference in the lottery for 25 percent of all out-of-boundary seats in any given year in more affluent schools.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAt risk\u201d students are defined<\/a> as those who are \u201cin foster care, homeless, in families receiving Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), in families receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP), or are high school students who are more than one year over-age for their grade.\u201d<\/p>\n (D.C. Mayoral candidate Muriel Bowser says she has concerns that the overall plan does not do enough to promote educational equality and reform.\u00a0 In an article<\/a> outlining her concerns, there was no mention of the set aside plan).<\/p>\n As I argued in an earlier blog post<\/a>, there is compelling evidence that policies of socioeconomic integration can produce better outcomes for low-income students, and that middle-class students can benefit as well from being in a diverse environment.<\/p>\n Longtime Montgomery County School Board member Chris Barclay, in a thoughtful response<\/a> to my post, suggested, with important caveats, that he agrees with the thrust of the objective.\u00a0 \u201cEconomic diversity is a laudable goal for our schools, and eliminating economic isolation will be good for all students,\u201d he writes.\u00a0 He later notes that there is \u201cevidence that low-income students in lower-poverty schools do better than low-income students in high-poverty schools.\u00a0 No arguments there.\u201d<\/p>\n But Mr. Barclay emphatically suggests that socioeconomic integration programs, and education policies in general, must recognize \u201cthe impact of race on ourselves and the way we see the world.\u201d\u00a0 He suggests, \u201cRacism is a factor in education that cannot be eradicated by a silver bullet or putting our heads in the sands.\u201d\u00a0 When we talk about the results of a \u00a02010 Century Foundation study of Montgomery County schools by Heather Schwartz on the benefits of economically disadvantaged students attending affluent schools, he says, we must recognize that \u201cthe high-poverty students in low-poverty schools are almost definitely Black and Hispanic going to predominantly White and Asian schools.\u201d<\/p>\n I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Barclay on the continuing significance race in American society.\u00a0 \u00a0One need look no farther than housing patterns.\u00a0 Researchers find that even middle-income African Americans live in neighborhoods with higher poverty rates than low-income whites.\u00a0\u00a0 As a result, minority students are much more likely to attend high-poverty schools than white students, as the Economic Policy Institute\u2019s Emma Garcia and Elaine Weiss find<\/a>.\u00a0 While only 5 percent of white kindergartners attend high-poverty elementary schools, 57% of black kindergartners do.\u00a0 Likewise, in Heather Schwartz\u2019s Century Foundation study<\/a> of Montgomery County schools, 72% of students from families in public housing were African American.<\/p>\n I also agree with Mr. Barclay that we need to focus on \u201cchanging behaviors and actions of the adults.\u201d\u00a0 Integration doesn\u2019t work just by plunking kids of different backgrounds together.\u00a0 Adults need professional development to help them capitalize on racial, ethnic, and economic diversity in the classroom to allow all children to reach their potential.<\/p>\n So why do I nevertheless emphasize integration by socioeconomic status?\u00a0 First, the social science evidence suggests that a socioeconomic mix is the key to raising academic achievement.\u00a0 Evidence suggests that a school that is beautifully integrated by race but is 100% poor is likely to struggle.\u00a0 Second, as a matter of constitutional law, integration plans that emphasize socioeconomic are far less legally vulnerable than plans assigning students by race.<\/p>\n Mr. Barclay concludes by arguing that poverty concentrations should be addressed through housing policy rather than schooling.\u00a0 \u201cChanging the dynamic of the geographic concentrations of poverty in Montgomery County is not a function that the school system can address,\u201d he argues.\u00a0 I agree that housing policies \u2013 like Montgomery\u2019s inclusionary zoning plans \u2013 are critical.\u00a0 But today one-quarter of students attend schools other than the closest public school, so there is a great deal school districts can do to promote integration through public school choice.<\/p>\n Montgomery County prides itself on having the best schools in in the Washington D.C. area.\u00a0 To preserve that place, however, the County must grapple with rising economic segregation, as Mayor Gray is beginning to in D.C. \u00a0The achievement gap by race and class is not inevitable; it is the product of inequalities of opportunity.\u00a0 And a part of the solution involves giving more low-income students a chance to attend high-quality, middle-class schools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As Montgomery County schools consider ways to reduce the achievement and opportunity gaps by race and income, it might take a page from the Washington, D.C. public schools — not often thought of as a model for Montgomery. Washington D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray has approved a new school boundary policy that includes an important equity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152,"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions\/152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mocoedblog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}