New Research: Economically Integrated Schools Have Higher Test Scores and Smaller Gaps
New research from Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy points to the positive impact for children when school districts use family income to integrate schools economically—as a proxy for racial integration that has been no longer permitted by the U.S. Supreme Court (except in cases where districts are under the old court orders for de jure segregation). The researchers explore academic results in the Wake County School District after an economic integration program was launched in 2000. Wake County Schools serve metropolitan Raleigh, North Carolina.
Duke Today explains that school districts in North Carolina “stopped using race-based assignment plans in the late 1990s after a series of court cases struck down the practice in various settings around the country.” In his 1997 decision in the Louisville-Seattle case calledParents Involved, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts declared, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” School districts could no longer balance school enrollments by assigning students based on their race. Although the decision made it very difficult for school districts to reduce racial segregation, a handful of school districts including Wake County have experimented with integration by family income as a proxy for race.
According to Duke Today‘s report on the new study which is published in an academic journal,Urban Education (and paywalled), “In 2000, Wake implemented a new assignment policy based on income and achievement, in which no school would consist of more than 40 percent students receiving free or reduced lunch, nor more than 25 percent of students performing below grade level.” Duke Today adds, “In 2010, the Wake County school board voted to stop New Research: Economically Integrated Schools Have Higher Test Scores and Smaller Gaps | janresseger: