Walt Gardner: Can socioeconomic mixing fix schools?

Once viewed largely as a strategy to avoid legal challenges to the use of race for integrating schools, socioeconomic factors are getting a fresh look in California and elsewhere as the next focus for providing equitable opportunities for learning.

While the impetus for this approach existed before the recent Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling in the Seattle and Louisville cases, it was limited to about 40 school districts, with some 2.5 million students. Now, however, the lessons learned from these pioneers are taking on greater relevance for schools in California and those across the country.

In 2000, the Wake County School Board in North Carolina voted to implement a plan to assure that no school in the district would have more than 40 percent of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, and no school would have more than 25 percent of its students performing below grade level. Based on the evidence to date, the plan is working to raise achievement of all students and narrow the gap between groups.

Low-income and minority students in Wake County have achieved better academic results than those in other North Carolina districts that have failed to break up pockets of poverty. In 2005, for example, more than 80 percent of black elementary students were reading at or above grade level, up from 57 percent in 1998.

But before concluding that the Wake County model, which takes in Raleigh and its extended suburbs, is applicable to districts in California, it's important to bear in mind that a set of unusual conditions have made the task of socioeconomic integration possible there. The school district is countywide, making it relatively easy to combine students from the city and the suburbs. Wake County also has a 32-year history of busing, so that parents are accustomed to long rides to schools. Finally, the local economy is prosperous, with no signs of cooling in sight.

In the absence of any of Wake County's factors, it's unclear how the strategy would fare in California. Research has shown that schools must be at least 50 percent middle class in order to produce the expected benefits. This is known as the tipping point because educational quality begins to decline when a school becomes more than half low income. What would happen, therefore, if a particular district had a large low-income Hispanic or white population? Where would those students, whose enrollment is necessary to carry out socioeconomic integration, come from?

According to the Children's Defense Fund, nearly 18 percent of the nation's children live in poverty, and the number is rapidly growing. Contrary to popular belief, the phenomenon is not limited to urban areas. Thirty rural counties in 11 states have poverty rates higher than those in the poorest inner cities. Exacerbating the problem are undocumented immigrants, half of whose children live in low-income neighborhoods, compared with 35 percent of children of native-born families.

But even if the demographics were ideal, there is always the possibility that attempts to promote socioeconomic integration would exacerbate the flight of middle-class families to private and religious schools. According to Robert Reich, former labor secretary, the top 20 percent of families by income and education nationwide are already in the process of seceding from public schools. If socioeconomic integration of schools were adopted as policy, more of these same families might be tempted to follow suit. In that case, the number of middle-class students would be insufficient to create the desired socioeconomic balance.

If studies going back more than 40 years are any consolation, a school's socioeconomic composition -- second only to a family's socioeconomic status -- is the most reliable predictor of academic achievement. Allowing low-income students to choose to attend high quality middle-class schools has the potential to make a significant difference in their performance without detracting from the performance of other students. That's good enough reason alone to give the new integration a chance.

About the writer:

• Walt Gardner taught for 28 years in the Los Angeles Unified School District and was a lecturer in the UCLA Graduate School of Education.