Category: web-essay-2015-final

Introduction

Magnet schools in Connecticut are part of a movement to allow parents and students to choose their school. The school choice system is an alternative to the traditional neighborhood public school system, which divides students into schools based on their neighborhood of residence and has often led to racial and socioeconomic segregation of  public schools. “Choice” alternatives in the Hartford, CT area include district-wide open choice programs, interdistrict city-suburban transfer, charter schools, and interdistrict magnet schools. ¹ This essay will focus on racial diversity in interdistrict magnets, which have appealing alternatives themes and are open to all Connecticut children, regardless of their residence.

In Connecticut, the choice movement exploded after the landmark Sheff v. O’Neill ruling in 1996, in which the State Supreme Court ruled that the racial and socioeconomic segregation of Hartford’s school children violated the Connecticut Constitution. Though the goal of the Sheff movement is to integrate schools to have diverse student populations, the Hartford area magnet schools have remarkably different levels of minority populations. I am focusing on magnet schools in this essay because these schools are designed to have a specific racial balance in order to achieve the goal of desegregating Connecticut’s public schools, yet demographics play out differently depending on the school, and some schools are struggling to maintain their required desegregation standards. Interdistrict magnet schools are designed to attract students from all around the area and from all walks of life, but there are many factors that could affect which students end up applying to and attending the school, including both the school’s marketing strategies as well as qualities of the school. I hypothesize that two qualities that could have a major effect on student demographics are school location and school theme. In my analysis, I find that school theme has a bigger effect on demographics, with more minority students enrolling in schools focusing on college or career preparation while more white students enroll in niche-themed schools, with focuses such as STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) or the arts.

Desegregating Hartford’s schools: The controversy and the lack of transparency

Why does integration matter? In Connecticut today, there are 40,000 children attending chronically failing schools where most students are far below grade level. At these schools, nearly 90% of students are African American/black or Hispanic/Latino and come from low-income households, on average. ² Students of color bear the burden of Connecticut’s failing schools, in spite of the American ideal in which all children should have equal opportunity to learn and grow together.

However, in education reform, integration is a debated concept. According to the Sheff Movement, attending racially, economically, and culturally diverse schools leads to a “range of short and long term benefits for all racial groups. This includes gains in math, science, reading, and critical thinking skills and improvements in graduation rates.  Research also demonstrates that diverse schools are better equipped than high-poverty schools to counteract the negative effects of poverty.” ³ Moreover, in their book, Kahlenberg and Potter emphasize the importance of maintaining a focus on integration in education form; they quote Albert Shanker, founder of the charter school movement, saying, “children from socioeconomically deprived families do better academically when they are integrated with children of higher socioeconomic status and better-educated families,” and “when children converse, they learn from each other. Placing a child with a large vocabulary next to one with a smaller vocabulary can provide a gain to one without a loss to the other.” ⁴ They critique the recently popular charter school movement for moving away from this vision. Magnet schools, on the other hand, have maintained the goal of racial integration, so it is important to better understand why certain schools are more successful at this than others.

On the other hand, frustrated parents argue that the focus on integration forces schools to put their resources into attracting students from whiter, wealthier towns. ⁵ In order to uphold a “racially balanced” school, magnet school lotteries must give preference to applications from towns with greater white populations rather than to the areas heavily populated by minority students who have a far greater need for good schools. Darien Franco, 2011 graduate of Capital Preparatory Magnet School told me, “I think that the desegregation goal is a bit superficial because what I assume is the whole point is part of an effort to make sure everyone’s getting a similar, quality education. I think whoever wants/needs a spot the most should get it. Of course Hartford schools are going to have a high percentage of black/Latino kids, because that’s who lives in Hartford. I don’t see exactly how sending in non-black/Latino children to a school alleviates any particular issue, other than they’ll be more used to seeing them in everyday life.” ⁶ Proponents of the charter school movement agree; charter schools tend to be very segregated with almost entirely minority students in order to serve the most at-risk students.

As a result of Sheff v. O’Neill, in the past ten years, the state has spent $1.4 billion to renovate and build new magnet schools, which are designed as reduced isolation schools that draw students from the city and suburbs. ⁷ Magnet schools in the Hartford area have special themes designed to draw in students from both the city and suburbs, and they are required to have a student body that is 25%-75% racial minority students (newly defined as African American or Hispanic/Latino) in order to be funded by the state. They are also designed to have a 50-50 balance of Hartford and suburban students. While magnet schools are public schools open to all residents of Connecticut and appear to select students randomly based on a lottery, in truth, there are many subtle factors determining which students end up at different schools. Magnet schools have incentives to be academically successful and are required to maintain a racial balance, so they are never truly random in their selection of students.

One important factor in attracting a certain student body is the way schools communicate with parents and prospective students. In a seminar at Wesleyan University called “Choice: A Case Study in Education and Entrepreneurship,” students visited various “choice” school fairs and open houses. Our class observed many schools present themselves to parents and children in order to better understand how they choose to communicate. However, from the field notes collected at the school fairs and open houses we visited, racial and socioeconomic integration were rarely mentioned. School representatives rarely brought up integration or provided information on their school’s demographic statistics or goals, and parents did not usually ask about it either. ⁸ This is not because race and socioeconomic status don’t matter anymore; on the contrary, there is still a great deal of variation in racial balance even in Connecticut choice schools. It seems ironic that racial balance is rarely discussed at magnet school fairs and open houses, when it is the fundamental purpose of magnet schools and is required for the schools to be funded. Schools and parents are not actively discussing diversity and racial balance in schools, but there are clearly unspoken factors influencing the wide discrepancies in the percentage of minority students we observe among Hartford-area magnet schools.

Unwrapping Hartford magnet school demographics

The fact that there is little transparency or emphasis on racial balance in schools does not mean demographic factors are unrelated to parents’ choice of schools for their children. In their field notes from the Regional School Choice Office (RSCO) fair on February 7, 2015, Alix Liss and Sara Guernsey observe that “despite the fair being particularly minority heavy in attendance, the individuals looking at the specialized schools, whether performing arts or science based, were predominantly white.” ⁹ Does this hold true for actually enrollment in magnet schools? In order to find out, I assigned a theme to each Hartford-area magnet school and analyzed the demographics of each category. In order to create my categories, I drew on a list compiled by Mira Debs and Jack Dougherty, and looked at the website and mission statement of each school. Though some schools have more than one theme, for the sake of this analysis, I chose the theme I thought was most prominent. I have divided the schools into the following categories: STEM, college prep, career prep, alternative pedagogy, arts, global/international studies, liberal arts, character education, and early childhood only. Using data from the 2014-2015 CSDE Sheff Compliance report from October 1, 2014, I calculated the weighted average percent of black/Latino students in each category. ¹⁰ I found that large differences in demographics do exist among these schools. The following table shows all of the Hartford-area magnet schools, categories, and demographic data, including average percent of black/Latino students and average percent of students from Hartford, weighted based on the size of each school.

Table 1: Hartford-Area Magnet Schools, themes, and 2014-2015 demographic data. Demographic data compiled from CSDE Sheff Compliance Report.

The categories with the highest percentage of minority students were character education* (78.9%), college prep (74.4%), and career prep (71.1%), while the categories with the lowest percentage of minority students were early childhood* (54.3%), STEM (57.4%), arts (61.0%), and liberal arts* (62.3%) (I have marked categories with only one or two schools with an asterisk here and later in this essay; all other categories have at least four schools). The following graph shows these percentages.

Figure 1: Average percent black/Latino students in Hartford-area magnets schools by theme

The observation at the RSCO fair that white families migrated toward the more niche-themed schools makes sense considering the actual enrollment in these schools (although, it is interesting to observe that they cited those families as “predominantly white” even though the schools with the highest percentage of non-minority students are still all over 50% black and Latino). Of course, this data cannot explain whether the reason for these demographic differences is that certain types of schools appeal to certain demographics or that these schools are actively marketing to different demographics due to their philosophies or institutional goals.

However, one way schools might alter their applicant pool is through the location of their school. Because transportation is an issue for many parents and busing for interdistrict schools can be quite complicated and time-consuming, a school far outside the city in the suburbs may be less accessible to many families. In fact, using data on the number of Hartford resident students in each magnet school from the 2014-2015 CSDE Sheff Compliance Report, I calculated that magnet schools located in the city of Hartford have an average of 43.7% Hartford resident students enrolled, while only 34.1% of students are Hartford residents in schools located outside of Hartford (in towns such as East Hartford, Bloomfield, Avon, Enfield, Glastonbury, New Britain, Manchester, Rocky Hill, South Windsor, and West Hartford).

Creating a 50-50 balance of Hartford and suburban students is a main goal of magnet schools because Hartford is the second poorest city in the country, and the vast majority of Hartford is black or Latino, with only 15.8% of the city’s population whites of non-Latino background in the 2010 census. ¹¹ This caused the extreme segregation of Hartford public schools that fueled the Sheff movement. For race, though, the difference between magnet schools in Hartford and the suburbs is much less: schools in Hartford are on average 65.8% black/Latino, while schools located outside of the city are 62.7% black/Latino. Though a difference still exists, the fact that the numbers are pretty close probably indicates that schools located in the suburbs likely enroll more suburban black/Latino students than schools in Hartford. The following interactive map shows the location of Hartford-area magnet schools and their percentage of minority students:

Direct link to the map above

Another possible explanation is that many of Hartford’s suburbs also have a high percentage of racial minorities. However, when comparing demographics of magnet schools to the demographics of the suburbs in which they are located, there doesn’t appear to be much of a difference. I looked at the demographics of the three suburbs that have more than one magnet school: Avon, East Hartford, and Bloomfield. Though these three suburbs have highly different demographics (Avon is .98% black and 1.57% Latino, East Hartford is 18.83% black and 15.23% Latino, and Bloomfield is 66.06% black and 3.67% Latino), their magnet schools’ average minority populations are 64.6%, 60.2%, and 62.7% respectively, which does not reflect the differences in the towns’ populations.

Based on my analysis, I can conclude that theme of the school is more important than school location in determining the racial demographics of schools. However, when looking at the percentage of Hartford students in each school, location is much more important. Theme may be important too; looking at the table above, we can see that the themes with the highest percentage of minority students, character education*, college prep, and career prep, enroll 48.5%, 43.5%, and 43.1% Hartford students, respectively, while the themes with the lowest percentage of minority students, early childhood*, STEM, and arts, enroll 24.8%, 35.7%, and 39.4% Hartford students respectively (weighted averages based on total school enrollment). But the themes do not follow the exact same order in terms of their Hartford student population as they do minority student population.

Since location does seem to affect demographics at least to some degree, do schools with themes that enroll fewer minority students and fewer Hartford students tend to locate themselves further outside the city? In order to answer this question, I compiled the addresses of each magnet schools and used Google Maps to calculate their distance from Hartford (I used the location point that Google Maps automatically associates with “Hartford, CT,” which is in the center of the city, so even schools located in Hartford have a “distance from Hartford” that is based on this common centerpoint).

Table 2: Hartford-Area Magnet Schools, locations, and 2014-2015 demographic data. Demographic data compiled from CSDE Sheff Compliance Report.

Based on this analysis, there is not an obvious correlation between school location, theme, and demographics. For example, STEM schools, which on average enroll only 55.8% minority and 34.6% Hartford resident students, are only 4.3 miles from Hartford center, on average. On the other hand, career prep schools, which on average enroll 77.0% minority and 51.2% Hartford resident students, are 6.7 miles from Hartford center, on average. Therefore, there is no clear indication that different themed schools are choosing their location based on the type of students they attract or wish to attract. Of course, this analysis is limited in that it is based on a small number of schools and does not take into account the demographics of different suburbs. Moreover, because many magnet schools were founded relatively recently, many schools have changed location in the past few years or are currently in temporary locations while permanent sites are built.

In conclusion, though school representatives and parents rarely talk about demographics, there are clearly many factors that affect racial composition of schools. In this analysis, I found that theme is a key indicator, while location also has a smaller influence. Further analysis would be necessary to understand why theme affects the racial balance of schools. Clearly, though, as schools develop their themes in order to attract students from Hartford and its suburbs, it is important to keep in mind how different themes relate to school demographics.

Forty thousand students in Connecticut are enrolled in failing schools. Eighty-seven percent of those students are Black or Hispanic, and ninety percent are low-income. ¹ The historic Brown v. Board of Ed. case (1954) reaches its’ sixty first anniversary this year; it is difficult to realize many students are still segregated by socioeconomic class and race. Much of this segregation is evident in choice based schools, institutions geared toward providing educational opportunity to less advantaged students.   ² With an obligation to enroll 25-75% minority students, magnet schools are working to provide better education yet struggling to successfully integrate their classrooms. In this web essay, I aim to first understand how racial discrimination began in Connecticut schools and how it endures. Second, I will examine why classroom integration is important. Third, I will question whether choice based magnet schools, institutions initially created in an effort to provide greater opportunity to those who have less, are the best form of schooling to eradicate  school-based segregation. Last, I will work to understand what the most effective solutions to racial segregation might be.

Why does racial segregation exist, and how can it be explained in schools in Hartford, CT?

Today, Connecticut is populated primarily by white, middle to upper class educated individuals. Some 81.6% of the population is white, with 11.3% Black and 14.7% Latino. For the years between 2009-2013, on average, 89.2% of residents across the state graduated from high school. Some 36.5% graduated from some form of secondary college education.  ³ Even though Connecticut is white dominated, there are large pockets of minority individuals living throughout the state, especially in Bridgeport, Waterbury, New Haven, New Britain and East Hartford. Below is an interactive map application depicting the “racial breakdown of students since 1969, by district.”  One can use the map to better understand school-based racial segregation throughout the state.  ⁴

School-based segregation first began nationwide with Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 and continued with Brown v. Board of Ed.’s (1954) poorly executed reparations. There are several ‘reasons’ for the ongoing segregation in Connecticut schools and in many others nationwide. Some of these explanations include proximity to schools, extracurricular activities, clubs, and religious temples, housing opportunities, white flight, gentrification and zoning. There are many causes; in this essay, I will speak of a few. In their work entitled “Smarter Charter,” Richard Kahlenberg and Haley Potter write, “Parents of all incomes were likely to value a strong reading and math curriculum. Learning good study habits and self-discipline also…the overall ranking of preferences was fairly consistent across income brackets”. ⁵. Even with the commonality of education goals, many still prefer enrolling their school-aged children in institutions of learning where in terms of race, ethnicity and culture, the student body is like their own.  ⁶  People are motivated to live in communities with others like themselves as well. These areas of condensed poverty and wealth, and therefore further segregation, are depicted in the interactive map of Hartford below.  ⁷

As demonstrated through self-selection practices, information neighborhood parents receive when enrolling their children in schools and the lottery system, school choice is yet another reason for much of the existing school-based segregation (131). ⁸ Many choice-based institutions target varied cultural and ethnic groups. ⁹ When they do this, certain racial groups have a stronger presence in the enrollment lotteries than others. The resulting grades and classes within schools become homogeneous. This has certainly been the case at Capital Preparatory Magnet School in Hartford, CT, which was “originally created to give students living in high poverty areas the chance to receive exceptional education in areas where it’s most needed.” ¹⁰

In 1980, Connecticut instituted the Racial Imbalance Law, requiring schools to report their racial make-up to the state. This information included proximity of home from schools and how many students require free or reduced price lunch. Schools were forced to communicate with their districts when the number of minority students was not aligned with that of the majority race students.   ¹¹ This law failed, and so has the state government in eradicating school-based segregation. The law did however opened up a dialogue that had not been previously discussed; that conversation is centered heavily on integration, its importance and how it can change the future of education today. ¹²

Understanding Integration and its importance in Connecticut schools:

In 1989, Elizabeth Horton Sheff began a crusade against Connecticut on behalf of minority students in the state, demonstrating Black and Latino schools in urban areas were less privileged than those of the white suburban schools. In 1996, district lines were deemed unconstitutional and within the following year, “An Act Enhancing Educational Choices and Opportunities” was passed;  it encouraged racial integration through school choice. In 2008, a greater number of spots for students from all areas and racial backgrounds were to be made available in magnet schools.  ^{13 14}

As Sheff has helped to demonstrate, there are many benefits to racial integration in schools. Some include curtailing racism, providing a forum for mixed race friendships and increasing school-wide test scores in lesser performing schools. In her article entitled “What Will you Think of Me? Racial Integration, Peer Relationships and Achievement Among White Students and Students of Color,” Sabrina Zirkel writes, “Desegregated schools do produce more successful educational and professional outcomes for students of color. They do reduce prejudice and increase racial integration in the larger society. (58-59).”  ¹⁵  Marguerite Spencer, a Professor at University of St. Thomas, finds children studying in integrated schools have “[a] higher level of parental involvement, higher graduation rates, complete more years of education, earn higher degrees and major in more varied disciplines, gain greater access to professional jobs and have higher incomes ¹⁶.

There are a surprising number of individuals disinterested and unwilling to send their children to integrated schools. In fact, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act perpetuates school-based segregation, giving “upward of $70 billion to continue to reinforce patterns of racial and economic separation in American Schools.” ¹⁷ This is evidence racism is more alive than ever.

Are choice based schools the solution to limited diversity in schools?

Over the last decade, Connecticut state government has spent $1.4 billion on repairing those schools that are dilapidated and building new magnet schools. $140 million is spent on school upkeep each year. ¹⁸ One of the state’s goals has been to provide opportunities for 41% of Hartford’s minority students to enroll in integrated schools.  Magnet schools initially seemed like the most likely approach. In the 2010-2011 school year, there were 2,722 magnet schools operating nationwide with 2,055,133 students enrolled. Fifty-four of those were in Connecticut. Today, there are seventy magnet schools in Connecticut serving 31,689 students, 70% of which are of minorities, mostly Black and Hispanic. ¹⁹

Magnet schools are often formed with a focused mission like STEM, Fine and Performing Arts, International Baccalaureate and Career and Technical Education. The curriculums are created in this manner in order to provide direction while also building family involvement.  ^{20 21} These specialized programs were also created in an effort to attract white students to minority-majority schools, establishing a trend toward integration. Instead, as Boston University Professor Christine Rossell writes in her dissertation entitled “The Desegregation Efficiency of Magnet Schools,” “One possible explanation for why magnet schools [do] not have a more salutary effect on interracial exposure in the voluntary desegregation plans is that they may produce some white flight of their own.” (12)  ²² “White flight” speaks to the racism many white people maintain and their resulting move to areas in which they make up the majority population (47) ²³ Choice schools were created to provide opportunity to varied racial groups to converge to learn together, but classrooms in these institutions, especially in magnets, are still homogeneous. In order to understand why this is, an analysis of their assessment processes must be done.

Connecticut Magnet Schools are evaluated through a series of state designed questions each year. The first is “What characteristics define inter-district magnet schools and how do inter-district magnet schools differ from other public schools?” The second is, “what impact have inter-district magnet schools had on reducing the racial, ethnic, and economic isolation of Connecticut students?” The third is, “what impact have inter-district magnet schools had on reducing the racial, ethnic, and economic isolation of students within the magnet school itself?”  The fourth is “How does the performance of inter-district magnet school students compare with that of public school students state-wide?” And the final two are “how consistent are students, parents, and their public school professional staff in their perception of the effectiveness of their magnet schools, and what characteristics do the highly successful magnet school share?” (3-5)  ²⁴. With these questions, magnet schools are clearly evaluated each year but their assesments are lacking.  The questions themselves are fairly vague, keeping researchers from examining specific aspects of individual schools. Each inter-district magnet school does not maintain the same characteristics or the same students. Therefore, one school cannot be evaluated in the same exact way as another. Magnet schools are indeed effective in providing more opportunity than minority students would have previously had. They do not, however, provide the optimal education option of an integrated learning environment, especially when it comes to those students who are white or living with special needs.    ²⁵

What are the solutions to school-based segregation?

Since Brown v. Board of Ed., school-based segregation has become a larger problem than ever before. Much of this is due to the federal government’s limited implementation of relevant policy. No Child Left Behind was one reformation initiating efforts; testing alone though cannot close the achievement gap. Instead, as Gary Orfield suggests, districts need to first look at the factors outside schools that affect children in order to best understand why some schools have the demographics they do. Some of these include housing, day care, wages and health care. A parent’s ability to pay for housing in a middle to high income school district can dictate a child’s potential to enroll in a school with high levels of student success. Teachers must be provided with cultural sensitivity training so that they are equipped to instruct individuals of all backgrounds. Orfield also suggests universal pre-k, smaller class sizes, counseling and early grade reading classes will not only help to desegregate but will also help to close the achievement gap.  ^{26 27} No one kind of institution can solve the conflict of racial segregation in schools. As Rod Dreher suggests, the US and Connecticut  governments must make integration a priority, demanding a higher quality of teaching and a greater number of after school programs. Within the next ten years, white students will be in the minority. It is time individuals begin learning together with varied races now.   ²⁸

Conclusion:

With limited school-based integration, goals for institutions of learning to “promote an American identity, social cohesion and democratic leadership” are further out of reach than ever before. ²⁹

Racial segregation can be an enormous impediment to learning, especially for low income minority students. Segregation encourages stereotypes, increases racism and widens the achievement gap by limiting access to quality education for Blacks and hispanics.  Integration can help minorities more than it can the already racially privileged white students. It can assist in the efforts to raise scores on standardized tests, reduce violence, encourage parent involvement, create greater access to professional jobs and guarantee higher incomes. Integration and exposure to a variety of cultures and ethnicities can also help all students to eradicate racism and experience a life with greater perspective. ³⁰

Choice-based institutions, like magnet schools, are meant to be building universal change. They are creating more opportunity for minority students, but not together with their majority peers. In an effort to build an integrated education system for the future, we must first understand how racial segregation began in Connecticut, how it endures, why integration is important and what the best solutions are. If choice-based schools have not been an effective form of segregation eradication, can we truly think of them as the future of our multi-cultural education system? I don’t think we can. The United States and Connecticut governments must make integration a top priority, creating a system of change that includes a higher standard for teaching and a greater availability of before and after school enrichment programs to foster equal access for all students, no matter what race, together.