We won’t if we fail to develop and nurture the best minds in our schools today. The fact is, too many of the brightest children in Virginia who are raised in poor areas never reach their full potential because they are not given the help they need to blossom.

There is a profound and widening excellence gap: a measurable difference between lower-income and higher-income students who reach and remain at “advanced” levels of academic performance. It’s not just that rich kids test “advanced” at a higher rate; the problem is that kids who test “advanced” and are poor tend to backslide the longer they stay in the public schools, don’t graduate at the same rate as other smart kids and don’t go on to graduate school in comparable percentages.

The message: Being smart is not enough to succeed if you are also poor.

Growth in Hispanic enrollment brings new challenges
Richmond Times Dispatch
April 19, 2015

On the surface, E.S.H. Greene Elementary School hasn’t changed much in a decade.

Ten years ago, the enrollment was 97 percent minority, placing the South Richmond school among the more segregated in central Virginia.

This year, its enrollment is 98 percent minority — still among the most segregated in the area.

But as housing patterns in central Virginia have shifted, so, too, has the face of segregation in some area schools.

At Greene, tucked into a modest South Richmond neighborhood near the McGuire VA Medical Center, the change has meant an influx of Hispanic students. In a decade, a school that was once 85 percent black has become 81 percent Hispanic.

While opting out is not a recent development in West Virginia, attitudes toward testing have changed since the introduction of new assessments and federal mandates that schools must assess at least 95 percent of students to meet adequate yearly progress goals.

Are public schools still segregated?

If you've been reading the Richmond Times-Dispatch in the past week, you know there have been several articles pointing to the fact that many neighborhoods, and hence public schools, are still largely segregated by race and socioeconomic status.  De facto segregation will be the focus of the paper's 56th Public Square dialogue on Thursday. 

One recent article notes that the lack of affordable housing in many parts of the Richmond metro area is one factor driving the concentration of people living in poverty into distinct geographic areas, which also has the effect of continued segregation.   The map below makes this concentration visible.


Columnist Michael Paul Williams also has a helpful article noting the intentionality of other forces driving segregation historically that still have impacts today. 

All these factors were discussed during the recent international conference Healing History: Memory, Legacy and Social Change, which took place here in Richmond.  (CEPI was pleased to be among the local sponsors for the conference.  Please feel free to visit the conference website.)  One of the breakout sessions in the conference looked very specifically at the challenges of promoting school diversity and the important role that communication between housing and education policy makers can have.  Here's the description of the panel:

Coordinating housing & education policy to promote school diversity
Panelists: Genevieve Segal-Hawley, Phil Tegeler, Orsolya Orsós, Nada Dimovic, Sharon Fairburn, Donald Coleman, Scott Thomas, Laura Lafayette, Robert Adams, Kim Bridge, Grant Rissler, Yvonne W Brandon, Mark Dorosin, Susan Williams, Velma Ballard

Housing and school integration can have a strong mutually reinforcing effect – research indicates that children who attend economically and racially integrated schools have improved achievement and long term education outcomes, and are more likely to grow up and live in integrated communities and neighborhoods, and send their own children to integrated schools. But in spite of the obvious “reciprocal relationship” between housing and school policy, government housing and education agencies have rarely collaborated to promote the societal goals of racial and economic integration.Working together, government housing and education planners can address the underlying conditions of segregation and poverty concentration that are a major contributor to unequal neighborhood and school conditions. We will bring together national housing and education experts with key state and local education and housing policymakers to explore the potential for – and barriers to – a more coordinated approach to housing and school integration in Richmond and beyond.


The conversation for the breakout session is actually part of an ongoing working group in the Richmond area that is looking for ways to bridge the gap between education policy makers who decide school zones and housing policy makers who inform the distribution of affordable housing.  Check out a blog on the challenges in the Richmond area.  This policy brief on the topic from the Poverty and Race Research Action Council is a good intro to the challenges.  Other potentially useful insights can be found in the following:

• Impacts of Affordable Housing on Education:  A Research Summary; Center for Housing Policy
• Does School Policy Affect Housing Choices? Evidence From the End of Desegregation in Charlotte–Mecklenburg by David Liebowitz of Harvard University and Lindsay Page of the University of Pittsburgh, published in the American Educational Research Journal

For those interested in getting involved or learning more, a June 19th conference sponsored by Housing Virginia and VCU's Center for Urban and Regional Analysis is in the works to delve further into the topic and explore potential paths forward. 

In line with these topics, we also excerpt below a policy brief on the history of charter schools in the commonwealth.  Along with magnet schools and open-enrollment policies, increased school choice holds potential for delinking geography from which school one attends.  Of course school choice if not structured to incentivize diversity can also facilitate increased ethnic or socioeconomic sorting.   

Because of this potential for socioeconomic sorting with increased school choice, in this week's poll snapshot we look back to our 2002 poll where we asked whether the public thought implementation of school vouchers could result in government funds being used for discrimination.
  

Sincerely,
CEPI

Several interesting differences are worth pointing out.  First, a definitive majority (57%) agreed strongly or somewhat that vouchers could be used for discrimination.  But the differences between whites and blacks, as well as between party identifiers, are striking.  Whites were less likely to strongly agree (24%) than were blacks (40%), perhaps indicating a difference of experience with government funded discrimination. 

Larger divides, however, existed between Republicans (only 9% strongly agreed) and Democrats (43% strongly agreed).  Independents were about midway between the two on that measure.  About the same proportion of all three party identification groups somewhat agreed.  But the gap in strong agreement (or conversely strong disagreement) points potentially to a different paradigm used by significant portions of each party when it comes to the dangers of government policy leading to discrimination.  

(To read the full results of the poll, visit our website. Question 25 is cited above  - topline results are on page 17 of the 2002 poll with demographic breakouts on page 43.)

One proposed solution to segregation into neighborhood schools has been charter schools.  Here is an excerpt from our 2007 issue brief on the history of charters in the commonwealth.

"Charter Schools: A Commonwealth Chronology

Virginia’s charter school statute is arguably the product of a variety of failed predecessors. During the 1994 Session of the General Assembly, a “Commonwealth Charter School” measure, HB 875 (Van Yahres (D) —receiving bipartisan support—would have authorized the creation of these special public schools, to be operated pursuant to performance-based contracts between the Board of Education and local school boards. Reflecting the then-current emphasis on site-based management for public
schools, the measure included, among other things, specific provisions (i) prohibiting the conversion of private schools to Commonwealth Charter Schools; (ii) requiring a two-thirds affirmative vote of licensed school personnel and of parents of at least 30 percent of the students in average daily membership in the relevant school (iii) addressing school improvement plans that include performance-based objectives; (iv) providing for local school board approval of applications and authorizing the Board of Education to review and ultimately approve these schools; and (v) providing for “flexible site-based operation and management.” The House Committee on Education unanimously voted to carry the measure over for the 1995 Session; however, ultimately the Committee took no action and the bill did not resurface in 1995.

Meeting the same fate in 1994-1995 was HB 1042 (Hamilton (R)), also addressing “Commonwealth Charter Schools.” Although similarly titled, this measure contained very different provisions, including (i) required local school boards receipt and review of charter school applications; (ii) appeals of charter denials to the Board of Education; and (iii) Board of Education comparison of charter school student performance with other public school
student performance. The measure was carried over, and never acted upon.

The 1995 Session did, however, hear new measures addressing charter schools. The House Committee on Education failed to report HB 2535
(Katzen (R)). Distinguishing features included release from compliance with the Standards of Accreditation, waiver of state licensure requirements for
instructional and administrative personnel, and delegation of local board authority over personnel matters to the charter school. The measure’s Senate counterpart, SB 1037 (Bell (R)), was “left” in the Senate Committee on Education and Health. Finally, the House Education Committee did not act on HB 1625 (Hamilton (R)), a virtual, if not exact, duplicate of 1994’s HB 1042; the Senate version, SB 562 (Bell (R)), also remained in Senate Education and Health.

But exploration of the charter school concept did receive legislative approval in 1995. Perhaps wearied by the seemingly perennial introduction of disparate charter vehicles, the 1995 Session adopted twin resolutions,
HJR 551 (Councill (D)) and SJR 334 (Schewel (D)), creating a nine-member joint subcommittee to study charter schools. At that time, 12 states had enacted legislation authorizing these alternative public schools. The subcommittee was specifically charged to examine not only charter school statutes in other states, but specific data regarding the actual operations of charter schools across the country—numbers of students, charter revocations, curricula, and accountability requirements. Also to be explored were funding issues, standard statutory requirements, and Virginia’s unique state constitutional provisions that might affect the development of charter schools legislation in the Commonwealth."