Using income, instead of race, to identify disadvantaged students
Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that race cannot be used as a factor in assigning students to schools, family income is likely to play a big role in the Seattle district – in determining where students attend classes, in allocating resources to neighborhood schools serving disadvantaged kids, or both.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against Seattle Public Schools' use of race to determine assignments to over-subscribed high schools. But by setting race aside, the court's decision may serve to focus educators on the common denominator among children our public schools are failing to serve: poverty.
All are disappointed and frustrated that our public schools aren't better. Look at the achievement gap: Children from several ethnic groups – African American, Latino, Native American, and Pacific Islander – consistently score lower on achievement tests (all of them, the good, the bad, and the WASL) than their white and Asian-heritage classmates. Among kids from those ethnic groups and, notably, kids from low-income families, three or four children in 10 (depending on ethnicity) can't read at grade level by the end of the fourth grade (according to results from Seattle's Washington Assessment of Student Learning in 2006). They are on track to be high school dropouts. As such, they will suffer for a lifetime the indignities of poverty, burden our social services (half of the U.S. prison population reads only at a ninth-grade level or below), and test the compassion of our communities. We pay a very high price for what schools don't do.
In contrast, among white and Asian-American kids in Seattle Public Schools, nine out of 10 read at grade level by the fourth grade. This is the achievement gap.
Not surprisingly, since the court's ruling, a whole slew of pundits dive bombing from the right have used the persistence of this gap as evidence that race-based policies along the desegregation-integration-diversity continuum haven't produced improvements in educational outcomes as advertised. This argument ignores the growth of the African-American, Latino, and other minority-group middle classes over the past 40 years, social gains likely impossible without the intervention of our public schools. In this broad sense, the role of schools as a tool to ensure equality of opportunity and social mobility remains largely untouched by the Supreme Court's ruling. King County Council President Larry Gossett argued this point on the Seattle Times op-ed page Friday, July 6, quoting, as many have, Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion (though Kennedy sided with the majority against the Seattle plan) that a "compelling interest exists in avoiding racial isolation, an interest that a school district, in its discretion and expertise, may choose to pursue." Add Kennedy's views to the court minority of four who disagreed with Chief Justice John Roberts, and the door is not shut, Gossett argued.
Nevertheless, for the foreseeable future, race-based admissions policies can't be used. So given a commitment to the public school role in equal opportunity and social mobility, what next?
As always with education, there's no simple answer, but the Seattle School District has, broadly, two ways to increase efforts on behalf of low-income students who enter school academically behind, from the first day of kindergarten. The first, and a fairly direct, replacement for the race-based policy the Roberts court rejected would be school assignment preferences for the children from low-income families. The second would be significantly increasing the money spent in schools in low-income neighborhoods. The latter would require significant changes in the way the schools do business but might in the end be more effective.
Dramatically varying school quality among Seattle schools and schools throughout the region, as measured by student test scores, correlates closely with the income of families whose kids are enrolled. The higher the percentage of children qualifying for free- or reduced-price school lunches, with notable exceptions here and there, the lower the test scores. This has been a given since the Seattle Times laid out the data in the first of its annual school guides 10 years ago. The increasingly urgent question for education is how to serve low-income children, especially those enrolled in schools serving areas of concentrated poverty. How can these kids be brought up to middle-class achievement levels, at least in the basic skills of reading and math?
The question is part of a constant conversation in the education world. The answer you hear among parents, school administrators, and school board members is the good-hearted and wonderfully ambitious "make all schools good schools." In Seattle, the Southeast Initiative to pump $1 million-plus into Aki Kurose Middle School, Rainier Beach High School, and others, as part of a new assignment plan expected to be in place by 2008-09, grows from that unassailable sentiment: Every neighborhood deserves good schools. The new plan could limit transfers out of Southeast Seattle neighborhoods.
But shifting around $1 million in a $500 million annual operating budget is far short of what's needed to reach low-income kids who are behind in reading (without which no child learns much of anything else). But this could change. The Supreme Court's decision against racial preferences has opened up a conversation among school board members, led by Michael DeBell, about possible replacement factors, chief among them family income – poverty – so kids from low-income families would get preferences in school assignments. Among other things, such a policy likely would give these children an advantage in assignments to the highly regarded K-8 alternative schools.
Using family income as a criteria for school assignment preferences would also serve many minority families and, arguably, the most needy among them. Among Seattle's African-American enrollment, 70 percent are low-income; among Latinos, 64 percent; among Native Americans, 55 percent – compared to white enrollment, which is only 13 percent low-income. These figures are based on pupil qualification for free- or reduced-price school lunches.
Enrollment by ethnic group and family income
Seattle Public Schools, October 2006
Ethnic group | Ineligible for free or reduced-price lunch | Eligible for free or reduced-price lunch | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
White | 16,933 / 87.5% | 2,425 / 12.5% | 19,349 |
Black | 3,081 / 30.5% | 7,036 / 69.5% | 10,117 |
Asian | 5,393 / 52.6% | 4,856 / 47.4% | 10,249 |
Latino | 1,895 / 36.4% | 3,313 / 63.6% | 5,208 |
American Indian | 453 / 45.3% | 548 / 54.7% | 1,001 |
Total | 27,755 / 60.4% | 18,178 / 39.6% | 45,933 |
"I think that would be an appropriate move," said Charles Rolland, a former Seattle deputy mayor and an organizer for Community and Parents for Public Schools. "And it [income] would be a better predictor" of educational need. The Seattle School Board hasn't yet discussed income as a tiebreaker in its current redesign of the school assignment plan, because the district had been waiting for the Supreme Court decision, said Cheryl Chow, board president.
Portland and San Francisco both use family income among several factors as weights or as part of a "diversity index" (San Francisco) in their school-assignment lotteries. By comparison, plugging low-income into Seattle's list of assignment tiebreakers, right after sibling-in-the-school, would be relatively straightforward.
Problems will arise in implementation, though, just as they did when race was a tiebreaker. It takes empty or reserved seats to make a choice-based assignment system work with a minimum of conflict, and Seattle is short of space at the middle and high school levels.
But just by considering the use of family income in student assignment could spark a School Board debate and broader community discussion about what's needed (way beyond good intentions and $1 million to Southeast Seattle schools) to provide low-income children with the skills to succeed in school.
Fundamental district policies come into play here, raising challenging questions for school administrators and the School Board: For example, the district's weighted student funding formula already sends $1.10 to schools for every low-income child enrolled in grades 1-3, compared to $1 for every middle-class child. This rises to $1.37 if the low-income child comes from a non-English-speaking background. Since the weighted student formula is arguably the district's most successful strategy (and a nationally-recognized model) for intervention in schools where kids test low, should the weights be increased?
Thanks to the passage of Initiative 728, the district will receive from the state $450 per child next year, of which $179 will be allocated per-capita to schools. (The $271 per child not sent to schools per capita is used to fund sixth period in high schools, provide reading-instruction coaches for teachers, and other support services.) Should this equal distribution, which the district has used since I-728 was passed in 2001, be weighted in favor of low-income kids? Could some of that be sent to schools targeted for low-income children?
The most readily available source of funds for Seattle Public Schools is increased enrollment, particularly middle-class enrollment, which generates a lot of the money used by the weighted student formula on behalf of low-income and English language learning students. But enrollment growth is limited by a lack of space - classroom seats - at middle schools and high schools. The board may want to look at reopening Lincoln High School sooner rather than later. That might be accomplished by squeezing Nathan Hale High School students into the old Wilson Pacific Middle School, instead of using Lincoln as their temporary quarters until a Hale rebuild is finished in 2012.
These are some of the questions likely to arise if the School Board uses the Supreme Court decision to increase focus on the educational needs of children of poverty. There are many more, not least of which are school leadership, teaching quality, and just doing things differently - more time on task for reading and basic math - where kids from low-income families are involved.
Underlying this discussion, though, are fundamental principles about what we want our schools to be, principles that, for better or for worse, were highlighted by the Supreme Court decision: equal opportunity and social mobility. If doing a better job of serving low-income children advances those goals, then our schools will be serving to integrate into American life many who are now truly disadvantaged, even if we haven't picked them by skin color.
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Comments:
Posted Mon, Jul 9, 8:58 a.m. inappropriate
Time to Talk About Class: The Supreme Court decision forbidding the racial tiebreaker opens the door to a discussion of an issue even more painful than race: class. One of the fundamental purposes of schools is to give students the intellectual tools to exploit economic opportunities. The focus on race since Brown v. Board of Education and later civil rights legislation was in part an attempt to level the economic playing field for African-Americans and other minorities, and the strategy has partially succeeded, judging by the numbers of African-Americans in the middle-class. But the court's decision suggests that the strategy has reached a diminishing point of political returns.
Class can be used as a proxy for race, because income status is closely tied to race. But class may ultimately be perceived as a fairer measure by which to target resources, because it crosses racial boundaries. While black children may make up the bulk of low-income students, there are plenty of whites, Asians, Hispanics, and other minorities who would benefit. Class could even be used as a way to bridge the immigrant-citizen divide.
However, allocating resources based on income status could also prove just as explosive as race. Middle-class Seattle parents, already feeling pinched by rising housing costs and other stresses of urban life, could rebel if they perceive that resources are being shifted from better-off schools to schools with higher proportions of low-income students, even if the kids deserve the hand up instead of handout schools offer.
An income-based tiebreaker could force us to confront the growing income gap in Seattle and the nation as a whole. It would require a deeper discussion of the quiet expulsion of lower-income people from the city because of prohibitive housing costs and put a whole new meaning on the argument for diversity in schools. Johnny is not only served by sitting next to a black child, he is also served by sitting next to a poor child.
Posted Mon, Jul 9, 9:04 a.m. inappropriate
It should've be based on economic need from the start.: Inequality by fall along racial lines, but it is not intrinsically a racial issue. It is a question of economic disadvantage, and it is by addressing economic inequality that you will see improvements in areas such as education and the achievement gap.
If we are truly to live in a racially neutral society that you cannot use race as a deciding factor because no race is inherently better or worse of than another--it's not your skin color that creates disadvantage; it is economics.
While there are only 13% of whites that fall below the poverty level, it would be unjust and racist to deny them an opportunity to a better education simply because of their race.
In order to move beyond "racism" we need to treat people as people first. While the right has been using this court decision to further their racist agenda, the fact is the court rightly pointed out that you can't preference one race over the other simply based on race alone.
What we ought to do is ground our efforts in a mission that seeks equality and equal opportunity first. The greatest agent of inequality and injustice is economic, so it is about time that we develop a system that treats all kids in need the same.
Had this been the policy, the Ballard case wouldn't have even been an issue because the student in question could have been disqualified based on need alone. Not only would a need based system have prevented this case, but it would also guarantee that all kids, including the 13% of impoverished whites, would be included.
Posted Mon, Jul 9, 9:12 a.m. inappropriate
RE: Time to Talk About Class: An income-based tiebreaker could force us to confront the growing income gap in Seattle and the nation as a whole.
We have to confront this in Seattle, in the U.S., and globally. I have read several interesting articles that argue that a major cause of the conflict in the Middle East is not remotely religious but stems from economic inequality. Too many people pick race, religion, or gender as their "cause" and myopically view inequality as a function of race, religion, or gender when in truth economic inequality is the one common denominator. Racial or gender inequalities only occur in history when resources are unfairly distributed--race and gender are symptoms, not root causes.
You wrote that "the strategy has reached a diminishing point of political returns", and I wholeheartedly agree. It is a sign of great success that this is the case. But it is time that new visionaries and leaders pick up where people like MLK left off and lead us into the next chapter, and it is in this chapter that economic inequality, not race, is the great oppressor. Too many people try to rehash the battles of the past, and in so doing illustrate that they fundamentally misunderstand what they're fighting for.
Posted Mon, Jul 9, 9:46 a.m. inappropriate
RE: It should've be based on economic need from the start.: Gah! Typos galore!
Inequality by fall along racial lines = Inequality may fall along racial lines
If we are truly to live in a racially neutral society that you cannot use race as a deciding factor... = If we are truly to live in a racially neutral society then you cannot use race as a deciding factor
Posted Mon, Jul 9, 11:14 a.m. inappropriate
Seattle REALLY needs this conversation: This "quiet expulsion" of those of us with lesser means continues apace. Seattle is losing many of the educated poor - artists of all stripes - due directly to the cost-of-living, especially housing, in this town. I'm one of them. Successful in my field, I nonetheless can no longer afford to live in Seattle and have been compelled to leave.
Concentrating on issues of economic inequity - class, if you will - rather than racism carries the potential to cut like a scythe across the passive-aggressive facade of progressive Seattle and perhaps actually address some of the issues of all the poor who try to live and work in this area.
Posted Mon, Jul 9, 4:52 p.m. inappropriate
The Pollution Factor: In the older cities, such as Baltimore where I spent most of my life, the pollution factor is mostly ignored. Lower incomes increases the possiblity of living in housing with toxic exposures such as lead and proximity to industrial sources. Older schools often have problems with sources of pollution as well. Some are built on or by buried toxic waste because the land was cheaper to buy. I read an interesting piece about a meeting of health officials from a number of cities. The discussion turned to lead levels in the children. Aside from the frquency of those acutely poisoned, they were discussing the discovery that all children in their older inner cities had a minimum of 5 which means that ALL of them have been neurologically impaired to some degree. One school I knew of had 70% of the children taking Ritlin. Leaving the pollution factor out of the discussion is a grave error. Including it is political suicide. How are the corporate interests going to continue poisoning the poor once it is shown that it is permanently depriving their children of an equal opportunity?
Posted Tue, Jul 10, 5:24 a.m. inappropriate
Race, Income, and Neighborhood Community: Perhaps integration should be a factor in growth management decisions, not in school management.
The destruction of community building via attacks on community schools under the white sheet of 'integration' is perhaps the single worst policy of PC public/private corporate America. A community school is second only to family itself in bedrock cultural importance.
The attitude that 'racism is a white males' disease is not only an example of the cycle of abuse reinventing itself it is every bit as important a factor in the flight from the City.
The only thing we can do as a municipal culture is to work to insure a range of income level housing in the City. And, FWIW, you don't do that with tax subsidies, you do it with zoning and the encouragement of businesses that serve the middle and lower brackets, not the opposite.
The opposite is what growth management has become. This is just another example of the PC doublespeak that is eating not just our region, but the entire country. The motivation of some to use such a political environment to enrich their private selves at the expense of the treasury - not to mention the futures of every child in America - is more than despicable.
Okay, income based tie breakers may be better that racial ones, FWIW I think Kennedy, and the Court, positioned themselves about right on this no-win issue. But I think a general level of accountability towards our leaders, whether they be in municipal corporations or private, would go a lot farther than a focus on race in the schools.
Bussing may well be a complete failure as a strategy, no matter how you look at it. Personally, I only see one exception, that is what I would call the 'prodigy class' - we do have savants in our midst that would do better to associate with each other. But this group is small, certainly a smaller percentage than those admitted into the UW.
As one who is probably just below the savant level I have to tell you, living in the world is not such a bad thing. Too bad our electeds, and our private corporate leaders, can't do the same.
The real answer may well lie in a PC tool - that of harrassment law. While it is now used with as much duplcity as race or growth management an actual, letter of the law, implementation of its principles toward the duplcitious might just do the trick.
That is what feminism is all about, isn't it Hillary?
-Douglas Tooley
Tacoma, WA
Posted Thu, Jul 12, 7:22 p.m. inappropriate
I think my idea treats everyone equally.: My idea is mathematical and totally un-biased. As I posted on my blog at http://knotmyline.wordpress.com
"Have the National Science Foundation devise a random number formula using the year ending Dow average, the year ending estimated population of the US. and other random factors, that will generate two values: 1) A number to identify a specific school. 2) A number to identify a specific student.
Then the next school year that student attends that school - no exceptions - parents, schools, teachers, students and governments will simply have to deal with the fairness of it all. To assure that there is no bias built into this system, every year every student gets reassigned according to the results of that years formula. And the federal government would foot the cost for transportation of the students.
In fact this is so fair that no one will support it.
This might also be a good technique for selecting our government leaders. It would also mean we would not have to listen to all of the political noise we are subjected to daily in this country. Nah, no one will buy that either.