Today Elizabeth Horton Sheff and Jim Boucher wrote an op-ed entitled, “State Must Do More to Ensure Education Equity” in the CT Mirror. They recommend interdistrict magnet schools and Open Choice as the main school choice programs that the state should use to continue school desegregation efforts in the Hartford area. As you can see from the chart below, many of the state’s magnet schools have created numerically diverse schools by race, ethnicity, and a (limited) measure of socioeconomic status.
Much less attention has been paid to whether or not the other school choice programs in CT, such as charter and technical schools, are racially and economically diverse. These schools are mentioned in the Sheff agreement as possible ways to create diverse schools in addition to magnet schools and Open Choice. Nevertheless, the State continues to expand many segregated charter schools in Hartford and other places around the state even though the State of CT has been ordered by the Court to desegregate public schools (at least in the Hartford area).
CT Voices for Children’s report “Choice Watch” (Cotto and Feder 2014) demonstrated that most of the state’s publicly funded, privately managed charter schools are hyper-segregated by race and ethnicity, but not necessarily by free and reduced priced meal eligibility. (FRPM is a very rough indicator of family income.)
In comparison, the majority of the state’s technical high schools and interdistrict magnet schools could be considered numerically desegregated by race and ethnicity according to the older Sheff desegregation standard. (There is now an updated desegregation standard for Sheff schools in the Hartford area.)
With the exception of technical schools, both charter schools and interdistrict magnet schools are required to reduce racial, ethnic, and economic isolation. This requirement for school choice programs is not a suggestion, it’s Connecticut law.
For example, Connecticut General Statutes Section 10-66bb states: “(h) The Commissioner of Education may at any time place a charter school on probation if (1) the school has failed to (A) adequately demonstrate student progress, as determined by the commissioner, (B) comply with the terms of its charter or with applicable laws and regulations, (C) achieve measurable progress in reducing racial, ethnic and economic isolation…”
Sometimes numbers are helpful to explain an issue, but a picture can be better. Over the past few months, Trinity college students, faculty, and community partners have been working on creating data visualizations for social data such as school demographic and location info.
Below is one example of our work (Veronica Armendariz, Trinity ’16 & R.Cotto). The chart shows all charter (blue), technical (green), and interdistrict magnet (red) schools in CT in 2011-12. You can place your cursor over each dot to see the school name and % of children of color (racial/ethnic minority) and % eligible for free/reduced price meals.
The interdistrict magnet schools are clustered in the 50% to 75% children of color range. The percentage of children eligible for FRPM follows closely in many instances.
Interdistrict magnet schools have state or state agency conducted lotteries, desegregation standards, transportation grants for out of district students, and other incentives to remain diverse. In the case of magnet schools, state policy and public funds help maintain numerically diverse schools.
More than half of the state’s charter schools enroll nearly all children of color. However, the schools have much lower percentages of children eligible for FRPM. This suggests that these charter schools are hyper-segregated by race/ethnicity, but enrolling a larger share of middle and working class Black and/or Latino children when compared to their local school districts.
Charter schools have rules to reduce racial, ethnic, and economic isolation, but little to no State enforcement of this rule in the form of reduced operating grants, probation, or losing the state charter for not complying, and only in-district students are guaranteed transportation by the local school district. (Towns/districts can provide transportation for students going to a charter school in another town if they select to do that.) In this case, state policy and public funds help maintain mostly segregated schools, largely reinforcing the segregated housing/school lines of the last 100 years.
Note: There are exceptions to this trend and I’ll talk about that in a later post.
Technical schools are very spread out over this scatterplot. Although they are located in cities, suburbs, and rural towns, they are more difficult to categorize. Prince Tech (Hartford) and Bullard Havens (Bridgeport) have more than 90% children of color, which is close to the district average. But Windham Tech is about 67% white children, although Windham Public Schools is more than 67% Latino.
Technical schools are a “colorblind” form of school choice that also requires an application to attend. They are supposed to be “regional” schools to a certain extent and the law requires that districts provide transportation to the schools. The State Board of Education oversees technical high schools, but there are no requirements towards diversity of the student body. So sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t, and other times, they become enclaves for more advantaged students, like in Windham.
Notice anything unusual or interesting in the data visualization? Share or discuss in the comments section.