School Segregation Is Still A Major Problem. This Might Be A Model To Overcome It.
Lallinger | a Century Foundation feature
A recent study conducted to coincide with the seventieth anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling found that school segregation has increased over the past three decades, especially in urban areas. The researchers cited the proliferation of charter schools as one of two main reasons why segregation has exacerbated during this period, demonstrating an association between places with charter school growth and increases in segregation over the time period in question.
Yet public charter schools, and other types of public schools on the school choice continuum (such as magnet schools and some “innovation zone” schools), in theory, should have several advantages over traditional zoned district schools in combating segregation because of their ability to eschew constraints that otherwise often reproduce or exacerbate residential segregation in schools.
There are many examples of charter schools, magnet schools, and innovative district schools — such as those in TCF’s Bridges Collaborative — that use their built-in advantages to create and maintain socioeconomically and racially diverse schools; however, these schools are overshadowed by the many thousands that do not and thus may have a hand in moving the integration needle in the wrong direction. Many charter schools that have cropped up or proliferated in recent decades have made deliberate decisions to cater to specific populations of students through strategic recruiting or building placement. What’s more, some magnet schools across the United States have lost their focus on reducing minority group isolation — a goal many of them were originally funded by the U.S. Department of Education to pursue — and failed to create or maintain racial balance in the diverse communities where they typically exist.
If the United States is to make progress on beating back the current trend of rising segregation, public schools on the choice continuum will have to play a critical role.
How Choice Impacts School Segregation
The broader context of school choice, which itself can mean many different things in different places, is highly polarizing in today’s policy debates. In deeply conservative states, a wave of privatization is taking hold, as policymakers aim to make public education dollars available to students and families in private school settings through 529 accounts and school vouchers, such that billions of public dollars now flow to fund these initiatives. Destabilizing public education by driving money outside of the public system is not the answer to improving educational outcomes for all students, and certainly undermines what should be a universal American project to bring students of different backgrounds together, since private schools have little to no accountability for whom they serve and how they serve them. (See Appendix Figure A1 for the metro areas where private school most contributes to segregation.)
However, let’s focus only on public schools on the choice continuum, which include public charter schools, public magnet schools, and public district schools that are not bound by school enrollment zones, but are accountable to the public. Overall, charter schools and magnet schools serve approximately 10.8 percent of children in school, but as the research alluded to earlier demonstrates, they can have a large influence on segregation in the overall system. (Available data on the number of public district schools that do not rely on traditional attendance zone boundaries is not very accurate, so they are not included.)
The notion of choice within the public realm is also, at times, controversial. Proponents of public options such as public charter schools and magnet schools point to their potential to disrupt residential segregation and offer students different, more challenging, or more culturally relevant educational settings. Opponents lump such public options in with private models of choice, alleging that they represent the “privatization” of public education, and in some cases, also find ways not to serve all students.
Regardless of where one stands on the ability for parents in the public system to choose among a set of public options, two important points about choice should not be overlooked. First, unfettered choice — that is, a market system of public options unmoored from residential boundaries (such as has existed in New Orleans recently) — has been shown to maintain or exacerbate segregation, rather than lead to integration by inertia. In environments where parents have near-unlimited choice of where to send their children, however, guardrails such as clear communication and marketing, fair and simple enrollment procedures, priorities and/or multiple lotteries that give equitable access to underrepresented populations, and other measures can ensure that families with wealth, social capital, and privilege are competing on an even playing field with all other families for the most-desired seats. Second, because America’s local school funding system makes the funding of schools highly unequal across communities, America’s wealthy families have always had a de facto choice in where to send their children — by moving to neighborhoods with more opportunity. Allowing options within the public realm through charter and magnet schools offers low-income and middle-class families what wealthy families already have: educational choices.
Combating school segregation is popular with the American public. Recent polling shows that Americans see segregation as a big problem and consider diversity important for their children. In a TCF/Morning Consult poll from March of 2024, 61 percent of Americans agreed that race- and income-based segregation is an issue currently plaguing the country’s public schools.
Moreover, 73 percent of American parents consider the diversity of their child’s/children’s schools to be an important consideration in where they choose to raise them. Furthermore, public choice options as remedies to segregation remain very popular among the public. A Gallup poll found that 79 percent of Americans favor creating more regional magnet schools that offer specialized courses or curriculum as a proposal to reduce segregation in public schools.
And so, with combating school segregation a hot topic in the seventieth year of the Brown decision, and with public choice options being a relatively small but potent component of the public school system—at least as far as school segregation is concerned—the question that truly matters is: How can charter schools, magnet schools, and non-traditional district schools can be better harnessed to promote school integration rather than segregation? What is it that successful public choice schools do well in attracting and serving a diverse student body?
What Public Choice Schools Do Well
There are four salient characteristics that public charter schools, magnet schools, and non-traditional district schools that serve diverse populations model well. First, these schools make a clear commitment to creating a diverse learning environment because it is important to them. Second, they take advantage of racial and socioeconomic diversity in their geographies, deliberately drawing students from various communities. Third, they implement priorities, set asides, or run multiple lotteries to increase the likelihood of diversity. Finally, they utilize themes or specializations that appeal to a diverse constituency and draw a broad cross-section of students.
Commitment to Diversity …
The first and most important characteristic of schools of public choice that successfully draw diverse students is perhaps self-evident: these schools value diversity. School diversity has been shown to have many academic and non-academic benefits for students of all backgrounds, so it seems obvious that a school would prize diversity in its student body.
Some school communities that value diversity are afraid to talk about its importance because of common misconceptions about how U.S. Supreme Court case law applies to schools. The decision in Parents Involved In Community Schools v. Seattle Public School District significantly restricted the ways in which schools and districts could use an individual student’s race when determining admission to specific schools; however, it placed no restrictions whatsoever on a school or district making a commitment to a racially or socioeconomically diverse student body. It even allowed for several pathways to creating and maintaining a diverse student body.
On the contrary, schools that value diversity, commit to it, and state it publicly are much more likely to draw a diverse student body than schools that do not. These schools typically tout the demonstrated benefits of diversity and put significant thought into how to make a diverse student body feel welcomed and like they belong.
Strategic Siting & Recruitment Across Various Communities …
Residential segregation by race, although declining in the United States, is still often a barrier to integrated school environments. However, schools that are not bound by local zones and boundaries, such as charter schools, magnet schools, and some district schools, can take advantage of drawing from diverse communities that may be internally segregated, but not geographically distant from one another.
New charter schools, magnet schools, or boundaryless district schools can take advantage of strategic siting, placing themselves at the crossroads of various communities. This requires proactive planning and decision making on the part of local education agencies (LEAs), as well as a focus on school diversity, instead of just capacity and geography. While school planning departments are ubiquitous through American school systems, forecasting for future school needs, they rarely consider promoting racial and socioeconomic diversity as a primary criteria for new siting; in fact, they often feel political pressure to do just the opposite, such as siting a school in order to serve a specific community.
Not every charter, magnet, or innovative district school has the luxury of selecting where they plan to exist. Already established schools, however, can still be proactive in their recruitment and communication, ensuring they are a visible option for families in different communities, even if they are closer to certain communities than others.
Strategic Enrollment Practices …
Choice alone is not an antidote to segregation. Because families with privilege typically have more time, social capital, and capacity to navigate choice systems in ways that other families do not, they typically gain access to the most sought after schools in open choice systems.
Several enrollment mechanisms exist that enable schools and districts to promote socioeconomic and racial diversity in public choice systems. Creating priorities in enrollment lotteries for categories of students, such as low-income students or students in families experiencing homelessness, ensures such students receive spots by giving them a priority above all other students. Using weighted lotteries—for instance, a weight on certain factors that gives underrepresented students a higher chance of winning an enrollment lottery than other students—is another way of promoting diversity. Finally, using multiple lotteries for different categories of students, is yet another way to ensure specific ratios of different types of students.
The most effective mechanisms are ones that are tailored to specific situations, local populations, and diversity goals. Moreover, these mechanisms should not remain static, but rather responsive to conditions on the ground.
Attractive Themes …
Schools that successfully enroll diverse student bodies have an appeal that transcends race and class—often the appealing factor is a theme or specialization. These themes vary greatly across communities, and are most effective when they are tailored to a community’s desires, but common ones focus on the sciences, technology, the arts, or certain niche career themes or pedagogical approaches.
While magnet schools are perhaps best known for having themes (the themes are what make them “magnetic,” drawing students to them), charter schools and district schools often adopt themes for various reasons—to attract students, because their founders believe in a particular approach, or to appeal to stakeholders and authorizers.
Looking Ahead
In a context of increasing segregation, public schools on the choice continuum have a critical role to play in stemming the tide of a separate and unequal educational system. Charter schools, magnet schools, and boundaryless district schools can take steps to promote a diverse and integrated learning environment for all students.
The more schools and districts use these strategies, the greater likelihood they have of success. Another factor worth noting is that the provision of transportation can be a major factor in allowing a diverse community to take root and thrive, especially for schools that are located proximate to, but not directly embedded in, communities they draw from.
Ultimately, efforts to combat segregation must include public schools of choice, which can be major drivers of integration because of their built-in advantages to overcoming residential segregation. It is critical to distinguish these efforts from efforts to proliferate choice in the private system, which only drive precious resources out of public education and have no mechanisms for holding private entities accountable to equitable access to their institutions or a high-quality education for students, let alone a commitment to diversity.
In this seventieth year commemoration of the Brown v. Board case, as we recognize that segregation currently is trending in the wrong direction, it is important to highlight and lift up the public charter schools, magnet schools, and boundaryless district schools that are demonstrating that such schools can lead on providing a high-quality, diverse and integrated education for all students, and that often, they are best positioned to be able to lead the charge.
STEFAN LALLINGER is the Executive Director of Next100 and a Senior Fellow at The Century Foundation.
