Using income, instead of race, to identify disadvantaged students

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.