Mariana Suárez-Rebling 
Professor Mira Debs
EDST 245: Public Schools and Public Policy
05/03/17

Bilingualism’s Cry for Attention

how bilingualism can help curb the current wave of nationalism

Introduction

Am I French? Am I American? Am I Mexican? These are questions that I have been asked by others and asked myself countless times. My parents are Mexican, my sister and I are first generation American and we both attended the Lycée Français de New York. My school was taught entirely in French – other than our daily English class- and allowed students to obtain both American and French High School diplomas. Our school consisted of 1,300 students from pre-k to 12th grade; 30% were French citizens, 30% were French dual citizens, 30% were at least half American and only around 10% had both parents who were from neither the U.S nor France. I was a part of that minority. Everyone wondered why two Mexican parents had decided to send their daughters to a French school, while having no French background or remote knowledge of the language. Why had my parents not simply sent me to an American school?

My parents chose to send me to a school in which only a handful of my classmates knew what the word “integer” meant before SAT prep started Sophomore year. We had done of advanced math but it had all been held in French. None of my French standardized test scores mattered to American colleges, and most of my friends went back to Europe after graduation. I was obligated to take the TOEFL exam. Yet, my parents found these issues trivial compared to the benefits of my bilingual education experience. They valued diversity more than most of our skeptical American family friends did, and rightly so. People seemed to make different assumptions about my nationality based on the environment we were in: I was French-Mexican when with my American friends, Mexican-American  in school, Mexican to the Americans and American to the Mexicans. Despite the confusion, I could communicate both verbally and culturally with a much wider variety of people than most of my friends could from a very young age. I learned to embrace diversity in a way that opened my eyes to a very different perspective on the world. But why does this matter today? Many of the anti-globalist problems present in our world today stem from nationalistic and racist views on immigration, inclusion and violence. This wave of nationalism has led to a resurgence of ignorance to the benefits of multiculturalism. Though these problems are in no way easily nor rapidly solvable, a productive step in the right direction is bilingual education.

The History of Bilingualism  

In the late seventeenth century in the United States, bilingual education was common practice. When the first colonists were arriving to the United States, most were still teaching their children in their native language, especially Germans. A shift then occurred in the late 1800s: the rise in nativism and large wave of new immigrants at the turn of the century. This shift mixed with the start of World War I led to bilingual education being replaced by efforts to make schools feel more anti-foreign. (8)

In the late twentieth century, many parents, particularly immigrants, were opposed to sending their children to bilingual schools. This stemmed from a stigma against non-assimilated individuals in society. According to a book written in the 1970s by Barry McLaughlin, Second-language acquisition in childhood, “various ethnic groups strive to maintain their identity by raising their children bilingual.” (18) In this case, however, bilingualism means that the child only speaks the non-English language at home, never outside. The book explains that this is due to bilingualism being “a social problem because language is so intimately a part of one’s identity. The distrust shown by many people and governments toward bilingual individuals stems largely from the feeling that they are not loyal citizens because they can speak another language.” (p.2). This belief was developed after a long period of war, which involved the US developing its military more than ever, and segregation. This state of war, increased nationalism and decreased multicultural education. (18)

The combination of these things lead to a nation-wide distrust towards those who weren’t patriotic in every respect including language.  As Barry McLaughlin’s book states, “This hostility toward bilingualism has nothing to do with language as such. The hostility is directed not at language but at culture. The bilingual represents an alien way of thinking and alien values” (p.3). This provides insight into the mentality of people in the 70s, whose insights were influenced by nationalism and lack of exposure, leading to racist thoughts. McLaughlin, though unintentionally, also seems to further the idea that being introduced to a different language- and by extension its culture- at a young age produces more open-minded individuals who don’t view the “bilingual” as having an “alien way of thinking” but rather as a person having a different opinion or view. (18)

Benefits of bilingual/bicultural education:

Our world has become significantly smaller thanks to social media. Bilingualism has become increasingly possible with this potential for instant communication. The graph below, taken from “The DANA Foundation” website under the “Cognitive Benefits of Being Bilingual” article published in 2012, shows us that from 1980-2007, there was a substantial increase in the percentage of people in the US who spoke a language that wasn’t English at home. (9)

Today, a larger portion of the world’s population is bilingual or  multilingual than monolingual. Research has proven that there are certain benefits that have come up time and time again for kids who learn a second language. Harvard’s associate professor at the Graduate School of Education said that “Bilingualism is an experience that shapes our brain for a lifetime”. The main advantages identified so far include attention, school performance and health benefits. (1)

Attention

People who speak two languages often outperform monolinguals on general measures of academic performance. “[Bilinguals] can pay focused attention without being distracted and also improve in the ability to switch from one task to another,” says Professor Antonella Sorace – a linguistics and english language expert. (9) According to the DANA Foundation, this is due to the cognitive developments that occur, which allow for individuals to “inhibit one language while using another.” (6)

The graph represents the difference between a monolingual and bilingual individual to have sustained attention.

School Performance:

This graph provides visual evidence in favor of the idea that the brain developments that take place due to bilingualism have strong benefits towards one’s academic performance. This is due to the “thinking skills”,  mathematical understandings , logic and focus as is demonstrated in the graph. Furthermore, bilingual children, when switching between languages, must follow social cues in order to know which language to speak to whom. This need for accentuated social understanding leads to hyper-developed fundamental social and emotional skills with kids starting at around 3 years old. On top of these social abilities, kids who speak more than one language have been proven to be better English readers than native English speakers due to their puzzle-solving talent. (4) (11)

Health Benefits:

The health benefits of an individual who is bilingual are the most tangible of the advantages. Due to developments in the brain that take place during the learning of a second language, one’s memory is deeply strengthened. This increase in memory, has been proven to delay dementia in patients who have a predisposition to the illness. Doctor’s have found that, though the average age of dementia patients during their first doctor’s appointment is 71.4 years old, that of bilingual patients is 75.8. This might not stop the dementia from occurring but it allows for an incredible delay that provides a longer period of health and normality in a patient’s life. (4), (6), (7)

Policies:

There have been several policies in the past that have tried to establish some momentum in furthering bilingual education. Today, it seems that despite the time that has passed, we may be moving in circles.(12) In 1923, thirty-four states passed laws mandating English as the language of instruction in public schools. This ended any possibility of establishing a curriculum in which English Language Learners (ELL) would be able to learn the core courses in their native languages ( mostly catered towards Spanish speakers), while taking English classes. (14)

In 1963, due to the large number of Cuban immigrants to Miami, elementary schools began offering bilingual education programs for Spanish-speaking students. In the 1970s, states were funding bilingual education programs. Many passed laws allowing schools to teach in languages other than English. (13) (15)

In 1974 the case Lau v. Nichols, a class-action suit brought on behalf of Chinese students from San Francisco, went to the Supreme Court. (16) Most students were not receiving the special instruction that they required due to their inability to speak English. The Court decided that these students “were not receiving equal educational opportunity because they did not understand the language of instruction and the schools were not doing anything to assist them.” (17)

There has never been a mandate requiring bilingual education. The courts and federal legislation–including Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in federally assisted programs and activities”, and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974, which “defines a denial of educational opportunity as the failure of an educational agency to take appropriate action to overcome language barriers that impede equal participation” are contributors to the progress that has been made in favor of students who are not fluent in English. (4)

Conclusion:

Today, though president Trump hasn’t established specific policies referring to bilingual education, he has spoken extensively about his feelings toward immigrants and his plan to “make America great again”. As his slogan has been analysed time and time again as meaning “make America white again”, there have been predictions that he will not further the pre-existing programs. There have also been concerns about him entirely stopping the ones that already exist. (6)

After researching all of the beneficial aspects of bilingualism, it has become increasingly clear that speaking multiple languages can have positive consequences for everyone, not simply those who speak the languages. Certain benefits identified include strengthened memory, delayed dementia, increased attention span, and academic excellence. However, these are no more important than the more social-based gains, which include cultural understanding, inclusivity and the ability to communicate with a larger group universally.

Due to these social benefits that could occur, the Supreme Court should continue to uphold the rights of non-native English speakers. This should happen for various reasons. FIrst, for the sake of humanity; it must be reminded that regardless of their fluency in English, immigrants are still people and contribute extremely positively to the community. Second, the United States is a country built on immigrants from all continents and backgrounds who unified in order to create a country built on liberty and equality. Third, the United States should make it easier for the motivated, innovative people who chose to move to this country in order to make change. For these creations to take place on US soil is good for the country.

Furthermore, congress should pass a policy to quell these nationalist sentiment by encouraging bilingual education. Education is supposed to enrich an individual both intellectually and socially. Becoming a more well-rounded individual and being more culturally aware are things that will benefit a student far beyond his/her school days. These are things that can create an even smaller world and can  allow the violence to lessen. Having gone to a foreign, bilingual school has presented me with the largest diversity of friends, languages and cultures than I could’ve ever imagined. This has created an inclusive nature within me that was developed from the time I was 3 and has kept developing every day since. More kids could develop the same strength.

References:

1. Web. <http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/11/29/497943749/6-potential-brain-benefits-of-bilingual-educatio>.
2. Web. <http://www.nabe.org>.
3. Web. <http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/10/26/498291619/the-return-of-bilingual-education-in-california>.
4. Web. <http://www.aft.org/ae/fall2015/goldenberg_wagner>.
5. Web. <https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/05/the-case-against-bilingual-education/305426/>.
6. Web. <https://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/importance-bilingual-education>.

, Huffington Post ed.Print.

(7)Web. <http://www.ascd.org/publications/curriculum_handbook/413/chapters/Bilingual_Education@_Effective_Programming_for_Language-Minority_Students.aspx>.

(8)Web. <http://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/education/education-terms-and-concepts/bilingualism>.

(9) Web. <http://dana.org/Cerebrum/2012/The_Cognitive_Benefits_of_Being_Bilingual/>.

(10) Academic Press New York San Francisco London. “the Bilingual Child: Research and Analysis of Existing Educational Themes.” (1976)Print.

(11) Afendras. Le Bilinguisme Chez l’enfant.Print.

(12) Carey, S. T. Bilingualism, Biculturalism & Education.Print.

(13) Cohen, Andrew D. A Sociolinguistic Approach to Bilingual Education: Experiments in the American Southwest.Print.

(14) Department of Government Funded Programs and Board of Education of the City of Chicago. “Bilingual- Bicultural Education.” Print.

(15) Educational Testing Service. “Bilingual Education.” Print.

(16) Georgetown University Press, Washington DC. “Current Issues in Bilingual Education.” Print.

(17) Lewis. Bilingualism and Bilingual Education.Print.

(18) McLaughlin, Barry. “Second-LAnguage Acquisition in Childhood.” Print.

(19) Mokhtar Farhadian, Rohani Abdullah, Mariani Mansor, Ma’arof Redzuan, Neda Gazanizadand and Vijay Kumar. Theory of Mind in Bilingual and Monolingual Preschool Children.Print.

(20) Padilla, Raymond V. “Ethnoperspectives in Bilingual Education Research: Theory in Bilingual Education.” Print.

(21) Washburn, David E. “Ethnic Studies Bilingual/bicultural Education and Multicultural Teacher Education in the United States.” Print.

Daniel Vernick, May 2017 

Fighting for a Future: The Massachusetts ‘No on 2’ Campaign and Its Impact on Public Education Advocacy

Executive Summary

The efforts of the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA), the main teacher union in MA and the central organizer of the 2016 anti-charter campaign, were instrumental to the success of the No on question 2 campaign. The campaign was a success due to its grassroots field operation, effective messaging, and community-based support, and can serve as a model for the public education movement in Massachusetts and across the country.

Introduction

In 2009, the MTA compromised on a deal in the MA legislature to raise the cap on charter schools. They did so because if the bill failed, it would go to a ballot measure – and, in a national atmosphere in which support for charters was rising among both Republicans and Democrats as well as championed by the Obama administration, the union leaders were convinced that such a ballot measure would pass and leave lasting damage on Massachusetts’ public schools. This changed with the election of Barbara Madeloni as MTA President. Madeloni believed in an forcefully progressive approach, a strategy that ended up working. Fast forward to 2016, and Madeloni decided to embrace the anti-charter campaign. According to the polls, which showed a landslide victory for the pro-charter side, many said she should invest union resources elsewhere. Question 2 ended up being defeated 62-38. The result was not only a landslide in public support away from charters but also a landslide of questions for pro-charter advocates, whose strategies largely failed. The result rejuvenated public education advocates and provides a route of resistance against the charter lobby that once seemed too powerful to resist, which is particularly relevant in the Trump-DeVos era.

Background

When Madeloni was elected, the MA legislature in 2014 was again about to raise the charter cap. Madeloni “urged her rank and file” to resist lifting the cap, which succeeded and showed the potential for grassroots organizing among public education advocates. The potential for a referendum was viewed as negotiating tool by the pro-charter side because it would allow for such a dramatic expansion in charters.[1] MA State Senate ended up passing the Rise Act, which tied charter cap increases to an increase in local education funding for 7 years and would cost 203-212 million per year.[2] The House decided not to compromise with the Senate on the bill and instead leave charters up to the voters, setting off the 2016 ballot campaign.

Madeloni’s willingness to take such a controversial issue head-on and success at mobilizing her membership was crucial. The result was that “teachers came out in force to talk to their neighbors,” and most people place high trust in teachers. One teacher said that their “neighbors looked to [teachers] as authorities on the issues involved in the ballot question, and greeted them warmly when approached to discuss” the anti-charter campaign[3] – a starkly different reaction than most political canvassers receive.

There are currently 78 charters in MA.[4] The current charter cap allows for 120, with 4-5 approved each year. The cap also includes a limit on the percentage of school budget spent on charters, preventing districts from spending more than 9% of their budget–and 18% in low-performing districts–on charters. In cities such as Boston, Lowell, and Springfield, the financial limit has resulted in waiting lists. In 2010, a “smart cap” was instituted. This prioritizes charter applications from CMOs “with a proven track record that seek to expand in low-performing districts.” Still, the charter cap has limited charters in many cities, with tens of thousands of students on waitlists.[5] Question 2 would allow an additional 12 charters per year for an unlimited number of years.

Top in the Nation: Massachusetts Charter Schools

The pro-charter campaign centered on the fact that MA charters are some of the highest performing in the nation and have avoided the scandals than plauge those in other states. A recent Brookings report claims that MA urban charters have positive student outcomes and increase the performance of low-performing students. The MA charter application process “is one of the most rigorous in the country,” which is shown by the closure of 17 charter schools “deemed ineffective or mismanaged” since 1997.[6]

DESE reviews all applications for MA charters. This centralized system allows for universal standards to hold charters accountable and is starkly different from other states, allowing for high performance.[7] Attending a Boston charter for one year results in a substantial increase in test performance and eliminates 1/3 of the “racial achievement gap.”[8] Competition among charters is part of the reason why MA charters are high-performing, and therefore the anti-charter side argued that drastically decreasing competition would have negative effects on charter quality.

Figure 1

Figure 2

“Great Schools” or “Save Our Public Schools”: Campaign Messaging and Arguments

Charter supporters planned a three part strategy. First was the legislative effort, then a ballot question, and the third alternative was a lawsuit using an elite Boston law firm to “file a class-action suit to lift the charter cap” because “it unconstitutionally denies children access to an adequate education.”[9] Great Schools MA was the umbrella pro-charter campaign committee. Families for Excellent Schools (FES) was the primary organization under the umbrella. FES is a “powerful pro-charter force in NYC,” and opened a branch in MA solely to lobby for question 2. FES is funded by Wall Street donors, many of whom would benefit financially from increased charters. It claims to be grassroots and parent-based, but the reality is that “a small group of charter school chains, politically connected Wall Street financiers, and powerful education officials have controlled FES since its founding.”[10] In New York, FES organized public displays of pro-charter activism, such as 30,000 people marching across the Brooklyn Bridge; “theirs is a powerful spectacle, until one looks too closely and notices that the guys on the walkie talkies are all white and that the parents were told that they had to attend.”[11] MA Secretary of Education James Peyser was on the board of FES as well as a “managing partner of New School Venture Fund,” which is “among the first and largest investors in charter schools and the first to support multi-site” CMOs. Therefore he had a direct interest in passing question 2. Furthermore, as Executive Director of the Pioneer Institute, Peyser also “helped craft a strategy for the charter expansion forces” in MA.[12] FES failed due to its vague messaging that shied away from explicitly stating its goal of pushing charters, instead beginning its work in Boston with a “lavishly choreographed rally” at Faneuil Hall. The rally did not mention charter schools at all.[13]

There were also Massachusetts-based groups under the Great Schools MA umbrella. Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) and the MA Charter Public School Association both poured in money. DFER’s first ominous sign occurred in the September 9th Democratic primary for a State Senate seat in Cambridge and Somerville. The race pitted anti-charter State Senator Pat Jehlen against pro-charter Cambridge City Councilor Leland Cheung. Cheung was closely connected with DFER, who funded his campaign. In response, MTA contributed a smaller amount to Jehlen’s campaign. Jehlen challenged DFER President Liam Kerr to a debate, stating that Kerr is her real opponent. Kerr agreed, and the election became a referendum on charter schools. Cheung ended up losing with just 20% of the vote to Jehlen’s 80%. DFER and the pro-charter lobby claimed that this vote was an outlier that did not represent the opinion of MA voters. Yet they made very similar statements after losing question 2; there is a clear trend and roadmap to oppose charters. These are not isolated losses, but rather a growing fundamental distrust of charter schools that will further manifest itself in the coming years.

Figure 3

The pro-charter campaign kept switching tactics, unable to settle on a central message that worked. Its chaotic messaging contrasted with the No campaign’s straightforward and concrete central message of district school funds being funneled to charters. That argument was reinforced by the hundreds of School Committees across MA that passed resolutions opposing question 2 because they knew firsthand how much money was lost to charters. As polls showed the yes side losing, the Yes side began to directly contradict the No side’s argument, “airing ads saying that charter schools would provide more money for public education.”[14] Another central pro-charter campaign argument was the waitlist, which changed during the campaign due to the MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) releasing a waitlist number that was artificially high. State Auditor Suzanne Bump said that “DESE had overstated the waitlist by an indeterminable amount by rolling over entries from prior years who may no longer be interested.”[15] Not everyone on a waitlist actually wants to go to that school; often students are placed on multiple waitlists so that parents retain a variety of options.[16] Normal public schools also have waiting lists, particularly in places like Boston. These waitlists are unable to “be as expansive as charter waitlists, since they’re only held till January” and do not roll over.[17] Since MA was ranked first in student achievement, and also because 96% of public school students in MA attend normal public schools, voters were generally positive toward the MA education system.[18] MA Parent Teacher Association and MA Municipal Association both officially opposed question 2.[19] These are well-respected and nonpartisan organizations that send a message of bipartisan opposition.

According to a Brookings study, charters in low-income and high-minority urban areas “have large, positive effects on educational outcomes” that are better than in district schools, and those effects are “particularly large for disadvantaged [and] SPED students” (see figures 1-3).[20] Another recent study showed that Boston charters that opened new schools after the cap was raised in 2010 “were able to maintain their strong results.”[21] On the other hand, students in rural and suburban charters “do the same or worse” than students in district schools.[22] The charter cap does not currently affect expansion of schools in suburban and rural areas, as they have not reached the cap.

The pro-charter side’s argument centered on ensuring that all students have access to a quality education. They argued that the referendum would modestly increase charters, and one ad even ended with “Yes on 2: for stronger public schools.”[23] Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, a traditional charter supporter and former member of the board of a Boston charter,[24] opposed the ballot question due to the “pace and scope” of charters that the referendum would allow for. He called the referendum “a looming death spiral aimed squarely at the most vulnerable children in our city.”[25] Sweeney, the Boston finance chief, agreed and thought that 12 new charters per year could “nearly eliminate the Boston Public Schools.”[26] If only 3 new charters were approved each year in Boston over the next decade, the Boston funds going to charters would increase from 5 to 20 percent. Charter advocates responded by saying that Boston has to “be responsible for getting its own fiscal house in order,” and that the city will have to close schools.[27] Nonpartisan city officials and financial watchdogs agreed with the No on 2’s argument that the increase in charters would drain dangerous amounts of money from public schools.  

In Lowell, the cost of charters rose by 8.6 million over the past 9 years, but the state funding has stayed flat. Disproving another central Yes on 2 argument, “the charter school waitlist in Lowell…is dwarfed by the number of kids waiting to get into district schools.”[29] Lowell ended up voting against charters by 56.8 to 43.2.[30] The No side’s arguments spread far beyond education advocates to reach the average voter.

The No campaign “successfully connected charter school expansion to dark money and to a market-based ideological agenda,” revealing the Wall Street businessmen, conservatives, and New Yorkers that they argued were pouring money to dictate what’s best for Massachusetts. Since 2010, cities such as Boston, Fall River, and Lawrence have had an increase of 83% in charter spending but only 15% increase in state education aid. This results in money taken from other portions of the city budget, and the cities affected already have some of the highest poverty rates in the Commonwealth.[31] Due to overhead costs such as building maintenance and transportation, schools may “not be able to adjust to the loss of revenue” to charters.[32] Moody’s Investors Service agreed that passage of question 2 would be “credit negative” for the cities of Boston, Springfield, Lawrence, and Fall River.[33] The yes campaign responded by denying these concerns, stating that charters have “zero impact on district school finances.”[34] After question 2’s failure, Moody’s said that that result is “credit positive” for MA cities.[35]

The Yes side’s financial dominance allowed it to air an unprecedented amount of ads for a ballot campaign. One frequently aired ad consisted of Governor Baker saying, “Imagine if your kid was trapped in a failing school,” reaching for the emotions of white suburban voters to do what’s right for Black and Latino children in inner cities, whose images flash across the screen. Another ad said that it’s critical to raise the cap in order to remove what it claimed to be 37,000 students off charter waiting lists in MA. Great Schools MA’s TV ads “contain several themes from the pro-charter playbook,” and therefore the failure of this messaging means that it can also fail in future campaigns. For instance, the Boston Globe op-ed supporting question 2 emphasized students “languishing on waitlists.”[36] Good aspects of the traditional system “were generally portrayed as exceptions in a failing system,” which is false in Massachusetts’s top in the nation system. Since MA students rank first in the nation, voters are likely to oppose any drastic changes to the current system; the No campaign’s portrayal of the Yes side as extremist led many traditionally pro-charter politicians to take what they perceived to be the safer option and oppose question 2, thus shifting public opinion.

The most senior education officials in America backed the pro-charter narrative, with Secretary of Education John King, Arne Duncan, as well as Congressman Stephen Lynch, and Speaker DeLeo in MA. They joined together to attempt to unite the Democrats in an ad titled “Real Democrats are YES on Question 2.”[37] The No side included many politicians and officials who had traditionally been pro-charter. Mayor Walsh’s opposition to question 2 sent a clear message that opposing drastic expansion of charters does not mean one has to oppose charters themselves. Walsh opposed question 2 due to the deep budgetary implications it would have on Boston Public Schools. Mobilizing pro-charter politicians to oppose question 2 by depicting it as radical was a critical strategy; “more charter supporters recognize that Question 2 is the wrong solution” due to the dramatic increase of charters allowed as well as the lack of local control.[38]

In 2015, 412 million was taken from the 243 school districts and given to charters.[39] The No campaign successfully encouraged conversations with friends and neighbors about how much will be lost to charters if the number of charters dramatically increases. They emphasized the fact that 12 new charters per year would in 10 years nearly triple the number of MA charters. Furthermore, the dropping of the limit on the amount that a district could lose to charters could effectively eliminate public education in certain cities.[40]

A Skewed Budget: Financial Aspects of the Referendum Campaign

The Yes side spent $23.6 million to the No side’s $14.1 million,[41] making it the most expensive referendum campaign in MA history. The top 5 yes campaign donors were FES, followed by Alice Walton, the group Strong Economy for Growth, Jim Walton, and Michael Bloomberg. In contrast, the no campaign’s top donors were MTA, NEA, AFT, and AFL-CIO.[42] Local teacher unions in cities and towns affected by charters, such as Boston, Lowell, and Lawrence, also donated thousands.[43] Massachusetts corporations MassMutual Financial, State Street Bank, EMC Corporation, and Vertex Pharmaceuticals all contributed to Great Schools MA.[44] Wealthy out-of-state donors also poured money into the pro-charter effort; Arkansas residents and Walmart heirs Alice and Jim Walton donated $1.8 million while Michael Bloomberg gave $490,000.[45] FES poured 17 million to the Yes campaign but is not required to disclose donors and is registered in New York.[46] For “average voters…the outsized role being played by rich New Yorkers was utterly incomprehensible.”[47] $778,000 was also donated by bankers that manage MA pension funds to question 2.[48] The No campaign successfully crafted a narrative that conveyed the fact that wealthy, white out-of-state donors thought they knew what type of education was best for Massachusetts’ inner-city children. New England NAACP president and No on 2 campaign chair Juan Cofield said that “this is a truly unprecedented financial push by the charter industry to buy our election with untraceable money.”[49] The MA Charter Public School Association said that the out-of-state money from financial executives is essential to combating the financial power of teacher unions, despite the fact that the No side had nearly half the money of the Yes campaign.

The well-funded campaigns produced many TV ads and direct mail, which resulted in many more voters paying attention and thus more likely to make an informed choice. Opposition to charters became more than a niche issue. Undecided voters realized that there was “something fishy” about the Yes on 2 campaign’s seemingly constant back-to-back TV ads. This suspicion was confounded by additional deceptive tactics; for instance, one of the five pro-charter campaign committees was called, “Advancing Obama’s Legacy on Charter Schools Ballot Committee,” tying the yes campaign to Obama despite the fact that he did not weigh in on either side.[50]

Leading the Opposition: The Role of Teacher Unions in the Campaign

For the past few decades, teacher unions had been on the defensive about charters. But throughout the campaign, unions–particularly the MTA under Barbara Madeloni–were on the offensive. It was reported that $778,000 was donated to Great Schools MA by “executives from eight financial firms that hold management contracts with the state pension fund,” which is led by strong charter-supporter and popular Republican Governor Charlie Baker.[51] MTA and AFT-MA filed with the SEC to call for federal and state investigation into hedge fund managers’ donations to the yes campaign. Those executives cannot donate to Baker’s campaign due to campaign finance regulations, but they are able to donate to the pro-charter campaign and thus gain favor with him. Campaign finance experts said that this is a way for executives to “legally circumvent pay-to-play rules.”[52] Madeloni was on offense in a statement, saying, “it is appalling that ads starring [Baker] are being financed by donations from Wall Street fund managers who have an interest in currying favor with the administration.”[53] Baker called it a “distraction.”[54] While the investigation did not go anywhere, it obtained negative media coverage for the pro-charter campaign and contributed to the public perception of the Yes side being funded by wealthy donors disconnected from Massachusetts communities.

NEA President Lily Garcia said, “This is really important for us.” NEA’s 3 million members make it the largest union in America, and thus its backing carries substantial weight. Politico wrote before the election that the failure of question 2 would be “a significant symbolic coup for teachers unions.”[55] Failure of question 2 would also “deter other states from considering [charter] expansions amid signs the anti-charter side is gaining momentum.” The union’s first victory came in the form of the Democratic Party platform at the 2016 convention, which, at the personal request from AFT President Randi Weingarten, was amended to be more anti-charter than ever.[56] The grassroots no on 2 campaign was driven by local teacher unions, which are present in every district and are run and staffed almost entirely by teachers in that district. For instance, Belmont Education Association (BEA) handed out anti-charter flyers containing the BEA logo at major Belmont events. Parents’ “conversation with local teachers played a central role in building opposition.” One voter said that teachers in her town of Brookline “are the ones who really made up my mind.”[57] A variety of other unions, from AFSCME to CWA, joined the teacher unions to form a broad labor coalition under the SOPS umbrella, expanding the grassroots reach of the anti-charter effort.

The pro-charter side claimed that teachers were pressured by the union to oppose question 2. One teacher said that on the first day of her job, all teachers met in the auditorium. The local union president then gave a speech about the No campaign, and slips of paper were passed out to sign up for the No campaign.[58] Others argue that it’s a “lazy script” to simply attribute defeat of question 2 to teacher unions. In reality, “the vote…represents a political realignment” on the charter issue due to progressives firmly united against them.[59] People on the ground understood this, though those out-of-state were disconnected and thus “stunned when Elizabeth Warren announced she was No on 2,” failing to understand the degree of the realignment.

From the Bottom Up: Grassroots Organizing and the Leadup to the Question 2 Vote

Save Our Public Schools (SOPS) was the No campaign’s umbrella organization, which itself is a more direct branding than the vague name Great Schools MA. Organizations under the umbrella included MA Teachers Association, AFT Massachusetts, New England NAACP, Citizens for Public Schools, MA AFL-CIO, and other community groups.[60] The role of unions as running the No campaign, a narrative promulgated by the Yes campaign and mainstream media, is “exaggerated.” Teacher unions “were only one component of a broad-based and diverse No coalition.” Unpaid volunteers “did a staggering amount of work.” For instance, parents in Boston alone were organized into the group Quality Education for Every Student, which ran “highly organized” canvasses and phone banks consistently throughout the summer and through election day.[61] Anti-charter volunteers contacted 378,000 households in Boston while the Yes campaign contacted 150,000 in Greater Boston.[62] Average people took it upon themselves to help out the No campaign; for instance, parents made videos that went viral on social media, and volunteers “turned their homes into makeshift call centers” to phone bank. Many students also contributed by canvassing, phone banking, and using the infrastructure built during their 2016 budget walkout.[63] “The coalition extended well beyond teacher unions”[64] to include civil rights groups and social justice organizations. All of these groups “fanned out across the state every weekend” to spread the word. The No campaign canvassed 1.5 million voters–a stunning figure for a referendum campaign–and the final tally was 2 million votes against the measure. Therefore grassroots campaigning truly did make a large difference, and the victory indicates “the potential of substantial pushback against the corporate agenda from coordinated grassroots organizing.”[65]

The Yes campaign had far fewer people canvassing, phone banking, and spreading the word via social media.[66] Their “grassroots” field operation was actually made up almost entirely of people who were paid to knock doors, make phone calls, hold signs, and poll watch. Many were not even from MA. The campaign attempted to portray an image of being driven by support from low-income, inner-city people of color. A few parents of color, whose children went to Boston charter schools, spoke at highly choreographed Yes on 2 rallies to portray an image of African-American support. In the end, it was impossible to create support where it didn’t exist. The rallies and support for the No on 2 campaign were less scripted and more genuine.

215 School Committees passed resolutions opposing question 2, highlighting the loss of funds to their district schools and thus reinforcing the No campaign’s central argument. They also emphasized the lack of ELL and SPED resources in charters, which leave district schools to take on the burden of financing those more expensive students. Because the resolutions were passed consistently from the spring through the November election, they provided the No campaign with a “strong sense of momentum” that was publicized in order to control the media narrative.[67] Each local school board resolution resulted in media coverage in each city and town, and allowed local canvassers and phone bankers to gain traction. Use of school boards could be an impactful strategy in the success of future campaigns.

Racial Aspects and the African-American Mobilization Against Question 2

Black and Latino parents organized in their communities through groups such as the NAACP, Black Educators Alliance of MA, and Union of Minority Neighborhoods.[68] NAACP not only endorsed No on 2 but was a direct member of the campaign committee, and Juan Cofield–NAACP New England President and SOPS chair–was the public face of the No campaign. This was critical not only in turning a substantial constituency against charters, but also in showing that the Yes campaign’s narrative of voting yes to support inner-cities is backward because inner-city voters overwhelmingly opposed question 2. A few months before the vote, the NAACP convention voted for a moratorium on charters expansion “until they adopt the same level of oversight, civil rights protections, and transparency as public schools.”[69]

Some black pro-charter organizations opposed the NAACP position, such as the Black Alliance for Educational Options and African-American Boston newspaper Bay State Banner.[70] The Yes campaign used tactics with underlying racial motives; for instance, they sent a mailing covered by a picture of President Obama, with text that said “preserve Obama’s education legacy,” yet Obama was never involved in either side. FES created a group called Unify Boston, which spent months getting signatures from parents of color who wanted “great neighborhood schools.” Yet when the leaders told the signature gatherers “that the actual goal of the campaign was to lift the charter cap, a revolt broke out.” A former organizer remarked, “It’s like they think people of color are stupid.”[71]

Black politicians such as Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson and Boston NAACP President Michael Curry played a prominent role in mobilizing their community against question 2. Both represented the No side in debates, attended rallies, and served as “go-to persons for Boston newspaper articles on the campaign.”[72] They showed the depth of No campaign’s support in the black community, rather than the artificial image of support that the Yes campaign attempted to portray.

In areas of Boston like Mattapan, with some of “the lowest performing schools in the state, opposition to Question 2 ran deep,”[73] with many people repulsed by outsiders believing they knew best without actually being on the ground in the community. Boston NAACP president Michael Curry said that “communities of color spoke loudly.”[74] Some of the most emphasized pro-charter arguments highlighted the need to support students of color in failing schools. For instance, one journalist wrote a piece titled, “It’s Heartbreaking’: Boston Parents Ask Why Their Wealthy Neighbors Are Fighting Charter Schools.”[75] This piece tried to portray charters as supported by people of color who live in areas with the highest concentration of charters. But the overwhelming 2 to 1 opposition in those areas showed the opposite; the landslide against charters in inner-city Boston is even a larger margin than the statewide result.[76] Civil rights leaders “say families of color yearn for something deeper [than charters]: A plan to improve the quality of education…so they don’t need alternatives.”[77]

A New Era: Democratic Party Solidarity Against Question 2

Democrats and Republicans initially supported question 2 in similar numbers.[78] In the final vote, Democrats opposed it overwhelmingly. At the June 4th, 2016 MA Democratic State Convention, an event I attended, “Save Our Public Schools” signs abounded despite the fact that the question had not yet even been certified for the ballot. Signatures were submitted by the pro-charter campaign on June 22nd, and the question was certified on July 6th.[79] Pro-charter forces also made a massive push for Democratic delegates and activists. DFER, for instance, was the only outside group to send an official mailing to delegates prior to the state convention. That mailing was an invitation to a DFER breakfast for delegates, which had elaborate food and was attended by pro-charter state legislators. SOPS did not have a breakfast, but it was clear at the convention that they had the people. Numerous SOPS tables appeared throughout the convention hall, and anti-charter stickers were a near-constant sight on delegates while hardly any pro-charter stickers could be spotted. DFER also paid for multiple breakfasts–which cost around $5000 each–at the Democratic National Convention,[80] attempting to portray an image of support for charters in MA.

The No on 2 campaign “tapped into genuinely viral energy.” This spurred the MA Democratic Party to officially oppose question 2, which likely would not have happened without the enormous grassroots mobilization. This stance against charters is at odds with some Democratic legislators, including Speaker DeLeo.[81] Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both endorsed the anti-charter campaign. Warren echoed the central argument of the anti-charter campaign, saying that more charters would damage the education of “students in districts with tight budgets where every dime matters.” She emphasized that 400 million was taken from public schools to charters, resulting in cuts to district schools including “in arts, technology, AP classes, preschool, bus service, and more.”[82] In a blue state like MA, Democratic unity contributed greatly to the No campaign’s landslide victory.

Crossing the Partisan Divide to Oppose Charters: Geographic Trends in the Election Results

Figure 4

The anti-charter effort was victorious in almost every town in Massachusetts. The few towns that voted yes were also some of the wealthiest in Massachusetts. Weston, easily the wealthiest town  with median household income of $201,200,[83] voted 60-40 in support of charter schools, the second highest margin in the state (the highest was 61-39 in Aquinnah, a tiny affluent community on Martha’s Vineyard).[84] Dover, the second wealthiest town, voted 58.7 to 41.3 for charters, the third highest pro-charter margin in the state. Sherborn, with the fifth highest pro-charter margin, is also the fifth wealthiest town. There is a clear correlation between the wealthiest towns and the highest pro-charter margins. The exclusive affluent communities of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard supported charters. On Martha’s Vineyard, wealthy white Edgartown and Chilmark voted yes, while the heavily African-American community of Oak Bluffs voted no, signaling that pro-charter support among the wealthiest Bay Staters was limited to whites. 

Figure 5

Towns that voted for Trump by high margins also voted against charters by margins similar to those in Boston, Worcester, and other liberal cities. For instance, Tolland had the highest margin for Trump and Cambridge had the highest margin for Clinton, but their charter margin was remarkably similar. This implies that Trump-DeVos education policies are not popular with his white working class base, and therefore it’s critical for public education advocates to mobilize that group in order to most effectively resist. The No campaign’s tactic of grassroots outreach in all areas of the Commonwealth succeeded even in white, working-class, Trump supporting areas and therefore a similar anti-charter strategy can be successfully applied across the Midwest and throughout the country. The statewide trend was replicated along wealth lines in Boston itself. The largest anti-charter margin occurred in the predominantly low-income and African-American area of Roxbury while the highest margin in support of charters occurred in the wealthy and white Back Bay.[85] The coalescence of the black community around the anti-charter campaign was reflected in the inner city vote total, with Roxbury, Mattapan, and Dorchester all voting around two to one against question 2. All cities and towns with a large number of charter schools voted against question 2. In fact, no town that voted for charters has a single charter school.

A Model for the Nation: Applying Lessons from the Massachusetts Anti-Charter Campaign to Future Public Education Advocacy

The day after the vote, the Boston Globe headline read, “Crushing defeat leaves charter-school movement in limbo.”[86] This “exceeded the worst case scenario” of charter supporters. One researcher at a pro-charter thinktank acknowledged that the anti-charter side came out ahead on every argument.[87] The No side gained the upper hand because it convinced undecided voters while the Yes side hardly expanded its base. DFER was “quick to issue statements of “we’ll be back – talking-pointed bravado…that conveyed nothing so much as a failure to recognize the magnitude of their loss.”[88] Charter advocates say not to read into the vote. But according to the National Education Policy Center, “the MA campaign suggests that the neoliberal, pro-charter narrative” is ending.[89]

MA’s vote against charters was immediately lauded nationwide as a major step in stopping the tide of charters.[90] Diane Ravitch noted that “this was the first contest over charter schools in which the key issues became public,” highlighting million-dollar donations from financial executives.[91] The Yes effort backfired by creating their worst nightmare, uniting progressives and Democrats against charter schools and into a powerful grassroots force that will continue to fight charters across MA; “all of the momentum is on the [anti-charter] side now.”[92]

Race was a critical aspect. Importantly, the “strong and visible black support for the No campaign upended the Obama-era consensus of broad, bipartisan support for charter schools.”[93] The MTA was the lead organizer in creating the No campaign and its successful strategy. MTA President Madeloni’s decision to pull all the stops on the anti-charter campaign was controversial even within the MTA itself. But her decision to go all-out arguably made all the difference. Teachers and their local unions powered much of this campaign, leading canvasses door to door in every area of the Commonwealth. Teacher unions now have more leverage and will take a broader role against charters in the Trump era.

The landslide victory against charters, and the campaign that made it happen, was unprecedented and lays the path for future resistance to charters. The same tactics and messaging, from coalescing support from the black community to organizing on a grassroots level, can be used not just on other charter school ballot campaigns but also on resisting charters at the legislative level and in other capacities. In the Trump-DeVos era, the No on 2 campaign’s success forms the blueprint for resistance to the privatization of public education.

1. Rinaldi, Jessica. “How Many Charter Schools Are Too Many? – The Boston Globe.” BostonGlobe.com. 03 Nov. 2016. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

2. Mass. Democrats Vote To Oppose Charter School Question. (n.d.). Retrieved May 03, 2017.

3. Blum, L. What we can learn from the Massachusetts ballot question campaign on charter school expansion. National Education Policy Center.

4. Schoenberg, S. S. (2016, November 15). Moody’s: Vote against charter school expansion ‘credit positive’ for Massachusetts cities like Springfield.

5. Cohodes, S., & Dynarski, S. M. (2017, March 29). Massachusetts charter cap holds back disadvantaged students | Brookings Institution. Retrieved May 03, 2017.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Jennifer Berkshire. “What Went Down in Massachusetts – Have You Heard.” Have You Heard. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

10. Blum, L. What we can learn from the Massachusetts ballot question campaign on charter school expansion. National Education Policy Center.

11. Jennifer Berkshire. “What Went Down in Massachusetts – Have You Heard.” Have You Heard. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

12. Blum, L. What we can learn from the Massachusetts ballot question campaign on charter school expansion. National Education Policy Center.

13. Jennifer Berkshire. “What Went Down in Massachusetts – Have You Heard.” Have You Heard. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

14. Davis, J. (2016, November 10). Crushing defeat leaves charter-school movement in limbo – The Boston Globe.

15. Blum, L. What we can learn from the Massachusetts ballot question campaign on charter school expansion. National Education Policy Center.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Why Question 2 grassroots opposition is growing. (2016, August 29). Retrieved April 28, 2017.

19. Ibid.

20. Cohodes, S., & Dynarski, S. M. (2017, March 29). Massachusetts charter cap holds back disadvantaged students | Brookings Institution. Retrieved May 03, 2017.

21. Rinaldi, Jessica. “How Many Charter Schools Are Too Many? – The Boston Globe.” BostonGlobe.com. 03 Nov. 2016. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

22. Cohodes, S., & Dynarski, S. M. (2017, March 29). Massachusetts charter cap holds back disadvantaged students | Brookings Institution. Retrieved May 03, 2017.

23. Why Question 2 grassroots opposition is growing. (2016, August 29). Retrieved April 28, 2017.

24. Ibid.

25. Rinaldi, Jessica. “How Many Charter Schools Are Too Many?” The Boston Globe. BostonGlobe.com. 03 Nov. 2016.

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid.

29. Jennifer Berkshire. “What Went Down in Massachusetts – Have You Heard.” Have You Heard. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

30. “Massachusetts Question 2 – Expand Charter Schools – Results: Rejected.” The New York Times. The New York Times. Web. 03 May 2017.

31. Schoenberg, S. S. (2016, November 15). Moody’s: Vote against charter school expansion ‘credit positive’ for Massachusetts cities like Springfield.

32. Ibid.

33. Staff, G. (2016, November 02). Charter school vote may hurt credit ratings, Moody’s warns Boston, 3 other cities – The Boston Globe.

34. Ibid.

35. Schoenberg, S. S. (2016, November 15). Moody’s: Vote against charter school expansion ‘credit positive’ for Massachusetts cities like Springfield.

36. Blum, L. What we can learn from the Massachusetts ballot question campaign on charter school expansion. National Education Policy Center.

37. Hefling, K. (2016, November 04). Democrats feud over charter schools in Massachusetts. Retrieved May 03, 2017.

38. Why Question 2 grassroots opposition is growing. (2016, August 29). Retrieved April 28, 2017.

39. Ibid.

40. Ibid.

41. Shira Schoenberg. “Who Is Funding Massachusetts Question 2, on Charter School Expansion?” Masslive.com. 05 Nov. 2016.

42. Massachusetts Authorization of Additional Charter Schools and Charter School Expansion, Question 2 (2016).

43. Shira Schoenberg. “Moody’s: Vote against Charter School Expansion ‘credit Positive’ for Massachusetts Cities like Springfield.” Masslive.com. 15 Nov. 2016. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

44. Shira Schoenberg. “Who Is Funding Massachusetts Question 2, on Charter School Expansion?” Masslive.com. 05 Nov. 2016.

45. Ibid.

46. Shira Schoenberg. “Moody’s: Vote against Charter School Expansion ‘credit Positive’ for Massachusetts Cities like Springfield.” Masslive.com. 15 Nov. 2016. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

47. Jennifer Berkshire. “What Went Down in Massachusetts – Have You Heard.” Have You Heard. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

48. Shira Schoenberg. “Moody’s: Vote against Charter School Expansion ‘credit Positive’ for Massachusetts Cities like Springfield.” Masslive.com. 15 Nov. 2016. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

49. Ibid.

50. Massachusetts Authorization of Additional Charter Schools and Charter School Expansion, Question 2 (2016).

51. Schoenberg, S. S. (2016, November 01). Teachers unions file complaint over ‘pay-to-play’ allegations involving charter school supporters.

52. Ibid.

53. Ibid.

54. Ibid.

55. Hefling, K. (2016, November 04). Democrats feud over charter schools in Massachusetts. Retrieved May 03, 2017.

56. Ibid.

57. Ryan, D. L. (2016, October 18). On charter schools, a new partisan divide – The Boston Globe. Retrieved May 03, 2017.

58. Crookston, Paul. “Massachusetts Teachers Pressured by Union Leaders to Oppose Charter Schools.” National Review. 07 Nov. 2016.

59. Jennifer Berkshire. “What Went Down in Massachusetts – Have You Heard.” Have You Heard. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

60. Blum, L. What we can learn from the Massachusetts ballot question campaign on charter school expansion. National Education Policy Center.

61. Ibid.

62. Vaznis, James. “In Boston, Charter Vote Reflected Racial Divide – The Boston Globe.” BostonGlobe.com. 14 Nov. 2016. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

63. Blum, L. What we can learn from the Massachusetts ballot question campaign on charter school expansion. National Education Policy Center.

64. Jennifer Berkshire. “What Went Down in Massachusetts – Have You Heard.” Have You Heard. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

65. Blum, L. What we can learn from the Massachusetts ballot question campaign on charter school expansion. National Education Policy Center.

66. Ibid.

67. Ibid.

68. Ibid.

69. Strauss, V. (2016, October 15). NAACP ratifies controversial resolution for a moratorium on charter schools.

70. Blum, L. What we can learn from the Massachusetts ballot question campaign on charter school expansion. National Education Policy Center.

71. Jennifer Berkshire. “What Went Down in Massachusetts – Have You Heard.” Have You Heard. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

72. Blum, L. What we can learn from the Massachusetts ballot question campaign on charter school expansion. National Education Policy Center.

73. Vaznis, James. “In Boston, Charter Vote Reflected Racial Divide – The Boston Globe.” BostonGlobe.com. 14 Nov. 2016. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

74. Ibid.

75. Jennifer Berkshire. “What Went Down in Massachusetts – Have You Heard.” Have You Heard. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

76. Vaznis, James. “In Boston, Charter Vote Reflected Racial Divide – The Boston Globe.” BostonGlobe.com. 14 Nov. 2016. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

77. Ibid.

78. Ryan, D. L. (2016, October 18). On charter schools, a new partisan divide – The Boston Globe. Retrieved May 03, 2017.

79. “Massachusetts Authorization of Additional Charter Schools and Charter School Expansion, Question 2 (2016).” Ballotpedia. Web. 02 May 2017.

80. Mass. Democrats Vote To Oppose Charter School Question. (n.d.). Retrieved May 03, 2017.

81. Ibid.

82. Hefling, K. (2016, November 04). Democrats feud over charter schools in Massachusetts. Retrieved May 03, 2017.

83. Rocheleau, Matt. “A Town-by-town Look at Income in Massachusetts – The Boston Globe.” BostonGlobe.com. 18 Dec. 2015. Web. 03 May 2017.

84. “Massachusetts Question 2 – Expand Charter Schools – Results: Rejected.” The New York Times. The New York Times. Web. 03 May 2017.

85. Vaznis, James. “In Boston, Charter Vote Reflected Racial Divide – The Boston Globe.” BostonGlobe.com. 14 Nov. 2016. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

86. Davis, J. (2016, November 10). Crushing defeat leaves charter-school movement in limbo – The Boston Globe.

87. Ibid.

88. Jennifer Berkshire. “What Went Down in Massachusetts – Have You Heard.” Have You Heard. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

89. Blum, L. What we can learn from the Massachusetts ballot question campaign on charter school expansion. National Education Policy Center.

90. Education Victories Democrats Can Rally Around. (2016, November 10).

91. Good News on a Gloomy Night: Question 2 in Massachusetts Fails Overwhelmingly. (2016, November 09).

92. Jennifer Berkshire. “What Went Down in Massachusetts – Have You Heard.” Have You Heard. Web. 28 Apr. 2017.

93. Blum, L. What we can learn from the Massachusetts ballot question campaign on charter school expansion. National Education Policy Center.

Works Cited

Vaznis, J. (2016, November 14). In Boston, charter vote reflected racial divide – The Boston Globe. Retrieved April 28, 2017, from https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/11/13/boston-charter-vote-reflected-racial-divide/t5EI29okErZ7JDItnkPZKI/story.html

Blum, L. What we can learn from the Massachusetts ballot question campaign on charter school expansion. National Education Policy Center.

What Went Down in Massachusetts – Have You Heard. Retrieved April 28, 2017, from http://haveyouheardblog.com/what-went-down-in-massachusetts/

Cohodes, S., & Dynarski, S. M. (2017, March 29). Massachusetts charter cap holds back disadvantaged students | Brookings Institution. Retrieved April 28, 2017, from https://www.brookings.edu/research/massachusetts-charter-cap-holds-back-disadvantaged-students/

Cohodes, S., & Dynarski, S. M. (2017, March 29). Massachusetts charter cap holds back disadvantaged students | Brookings Institution. Retrieved May 03, 2017, from https://www.brookings.edu/research/massachusetts-charter-cap-holds-back-disadvantaged-students/

Crookston, P. (2016, November 07). Massachusetts Teachers Pressured by Union Leaders to Oppose Charter Schools. Retrieved April 28, 2017, from http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/441886/massachusetts-teachers-union-pressures-members-vote-against-charter-schools

Dark Money: Pro-Charter-School Fat Cats Took A Page From Offshore Gambling Tycoons. (n.d.). Retrieved April 28, 2017, from http://blogs.wgbh.org/masspoliticsprofs/2017/2/16/dark-money-pro-charter-school-fat-cats-took-page-offshore-gambling-tycoons/

Davis, J. (2016, November 10). Crushing defeat leaves charter-school movement in limbo – The Boston Globe. Retrieved May 03, 2017, from https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/11/09/crushing-defeat-leaves-charter-school-movement-limbo/Lj1JIwnZQIeTOD7sV6G5YL/story.html

Education Victories Democrats Can Rally Around. (2016, November 10). Retrieved April 28, 2017, from http://educationopportunitynetwork.org/education-victories-democrats-can-rally-around/

GOP Senate Leader from Suburbs Wants More Charters for New York City. (2017, April 24). Retrieved April 28, 2017, from https://dianeravitch.net/2017/04/24/gop-senate-leader-from-suburbs-wants-more-charters-for-new-york-city/

Good News on a Gloomy Night: Question 2 in Massachusetts Fails Overwhelmingly. (2016, November 09). Retrieved May 03, 2017, from https://dianeravitch.net/2016/11/09/good-news-on-a-gloomy-night-question-2-in-massachusetts-fails-overwhelmingly/

Hefling, K. (2016, November 04). Democrats feud over charter schools in Massachusetts. Retrieved May 03, 2017, from http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/democrats-divided-on-mass-charter-school-expansion-230888

Mass. Democrats Vote To Oppose Charter School Question. (n.d.). Retrieved May 03, 2017, from http://www.wbur.org/edify/2016/08/17/mass-democrats-charter-school

Massachusetts Authorization of Additional Charter Schools and Charter School Expansion, Question 2 (2016). (n.d.). Retrieved May 02, 2017, from https://ballotpedia.org/Massachusetts_Authorization_of_Additional_Charter_Schools_and_Charter_School_Expansion,_Question_2_(2016)

Massachusetts Teachers Knock Out Corporate Charter School Scheme. (n.d.). Retrieved April 28, 2017, from http://www.labornotes.org/2016/11/massachusetts-teachers-knock-out-corporate-charter-school-scheme

“Massachusetts Question 2 – Expand Charter Schools – Results: Rejected.” The New York Times. The New York Times. Web. 03 May 2017.

Rinaldi, J. (2016, November 03). How many charter schools are too many? – The Boston Globe. Retrieved April 28, 2017, from https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/11/02/how-many-charter-schools-are-too-many/dU4TSVjIlfgNvnzHKj7M1I/story.html

Rocheleau, Matt. “A Town-by-town Look at Income in Massachusetts – The Boston Globe.” BostonGlobe.com. 18 Dec. 2015. Web. 03 May 2017.

Ryan, D. L. (2016, October 18). On charter schools, a new partisan divide – The Boston Globe. Retrieved May 03, 2017, from https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/10/18/charter-schools-new-partisan-divide/YQ3ZkMshShWkoVXZv4mR4N/story.html

Staff, G. (2016, November 02). Charter school vote may hurt credit ratings, Moody’s warns Boston, 3 other cities – The Boston Globe. Retrieved May 03, 2017, from https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/11/01/charter-school-vote-may-hurt-credit-ratings-moody-warns-boston-other-cities/bvEw1j0femPzR28M7mgTFN/story.html

Strauss, V. (2016, October 15). NAACP ratifies controversial resolution for a moratorium on charter schools. Retrieved April 28, 2017, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/10/15/naacp-ratifies-controversial-resolution-for-a-moratorium-on-charter-schools/?utm_term=.b8d575604ecf

Why Question 2 grassroots opposition is growing. (2016, August 29). Retrieved April 28, 2017, from https://commonwealthmagazine.org/education/why-question-2-grassroots-opposition-is-growing/

Schoenberg, S. S. (2016, November 15). Moody’s: Vote against charter school expansion ‘credit positive’ for Massachusetts cities like Springfield. Retrieved April 28, 2017, from http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/11/moodys_no_vote_on_charter_scho.html

Schoenberg, S. S. (2016, November 01). Teachers unions file complaint over ‘pay-to-play’ allegations involving charter school supporters. Retrieved May 03, 2017, from http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/11/teachers_unions_file_complaint.html

Schoenberg, S. S. (2016, November 05). Who is funding Massachusetts Question 2, on charter school expansion? Retrieved April 28, 2017, from http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/11/who_is_funding_massachusetts_question_2_charter_schools.html

Background

Schools in poor and low-income neighborhoods have often lack access to adequate educational resources and social services and may be ill equipped to provide interventions to the trauma associated with poverty. Under the Obama administration, The Department of Housing and Urban Development passed the “promise zone” initiative to improve educational outcomes for students in distressed urban and rural neighborhoods by connecting schools with local businesses and community organizers. The Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), part of the impetus for the project, is a privately funded non-profit organization for poverty-stricken children and families living in Harlem, New York. It is a community-based project that provides free support to those in need with the goal of ending generational poverty. The zone, which includes parental workshops, a preschool program, charter schools, and child-oriented health programs for thousands of children and families, has stood out as the success story of effective social capital and communal cohesion. The model of HCZ poses the question of whether neighborhood zones represent a paradigm shift in modern American education and if HUD’s promise zone initiative is a sound solution to end intergenerational poverty.

The Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ) is a non-profit organization for families in poverty living in Harlem, New York that provides free social, educational, and healthcare support. The HCZ is “aimed at doing nothing less than breaking the cycle of generational poverty for the thousands of children and families it serves.”[1] The organization began as the Rheedlen Centers for Children and Families as New York City’s first truancy prevention program in 1970. By 1994, Rheedlen opened a Beacon center – Countee Cullen Community Center – at Public School (P.S.) 194 – for after school, weekend, and summer programming. In 2000, HCZ started “The Baby College,” a series of parenting workshops. In 2001, it introduced the “Harlem Gems” pre-school program and by 2004, it opened Promise Academy, the zone’s first charter school. Now, the project has expanded to about 100 blocks of Central Harlem and includes 3 extended-day charter schools, all-day pre-kindergarten, health clinics and community centers for adults and children, youth violence prevention programs, foster care social services, and college admissions and retention support.[2] Living up to its moniker of “cradle-to-college,” HCZ reported 96% college acceptance rate in 2016. Spurred by the success of the zone, Former President Obama launched the promise zone initiative in 2013.

In contrast the privately funded non-profit HCZ, promise zones are high poverty urban, rural and tribal communities designated by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (H.U.D) to connect and partner with local leaders and receive federal funding aimed at “improving educational opportunities, leveraging private investment, increasing economic activity, reducing violent crimes, enhancing public health and addressing other communal priorities.”[3] Promise zone designees receive a federal liaison to help navigate federal programs, preferences for certain competitive federal grant programs and technical assistance to manage and facilitate initiatives. The federal model attempts to replicate HCZ by encouraging community based public and partnerships between schools and educators and local businesses and corporations. For example, designees also receive tax incentives, and an opportunity to engage five AmeriCorps VISTA members. On January 9^th, 2014 Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and San Antonio were announced as the first round promise zone designees. On April 28^th, 2015, Camden; Indianapolis; Minneapolis; North Hartford; Sacramento; and St. Louis were announced as the second round designees. Finally, on June 6^th, 2016, Atlanta; Nashville; Evansville; South Los Angeles; San Diego; Spokane Tribe of Indians, Washington; Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, Rolette County; and Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico were announced as the third and final round of designations bringing the total to 22 Promise Zones across the country.

Question – Is the Harlem children’s zone accomplishing its goal? Should HUD’s promise zone initiative be the future of American public education?

In recent years, there has been much controversy surrounding the Harlem Children’s Zone as a model for the future of education. The 2010 documentary Waiting for “Superman” praised the model and promoted HCZ as a model of education of which to aspire.[4] The documentary criticizes the American public education system most specifically teacher tenure, teaching standards and teacher unions and makes statistical comparisons between state, private, and charter schools. The film also stars Geoffrey Canada, who is the founder and CEO of the HCZ. A year later, the Grassroots Education Movement released the film The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman accusing the former of exaggerating the success of the HCZ and bringing into light the high private revenues of the zone of which public schools cannot compete.[5] To date, HCZ has an endowment of $175 million and revenue of $75 million. Stanley Druckemiller, a former hedge fund manager and college friend of Canada, who has given over $100 million since 2006, donate most of the funds.[6] In comparison, each federally designated promise zone receives about a quarter, if that, of HCZ’s endowment over multiple years.

Comparing financial support, HCZ falls into the 10% of New York school districts. The zone spends about $16,000 per student per year at the Promise Academies and an average of $5,000 per child for the many other programs the HCZ provides outside the charter schools.[7] Slightly lower, New York City spends $14,452 per student per year. (IBID) However, HCZ does not have the highest spending per capita among school districts. The richest 10 percent of New York school districts spend $28,754 per student, much higher than the cost of educating students in the Harlem Children’s Zone and three times the national average.[8] While HCZ comes with a steep price tag, the data on district spending begs the question of what price is equitable to close the gap between the poorest and the wealthiest?

Financial differences aside, longitudinal statistic research uses HCZ as a basis to question whether neighborhood based approaches to educational achievement of low-income students work any better than conventional methods. In a study of the HCZ, Brookings posed two related but strikingly different questions about the efficacy of the zone: first, do students “who receive the full panoply of HCZ services have superior achievement to similar students who don’t receive those services” and second, did “students who received the schools-only component of the HCZ” perform as well as “students who received the full treatment?”[9] The research presumes that if HCZ works, then it must prove that students who receive all of the services and neighborhood interventions have higher achievement than similar students, even those partially involved in the zone and especially those not involved in the zone at all. The report references an experiment conducted by Harvard researchers Will Dobbie and Roland G. Fryer published in 2009 that compared the educational achievement of students that attended the HCZ’s oldest charter, Promise Academy, with the students who did not. Dobbie and Fryer, concluded that “the effects in middle school are enough to reverse the black-white achievement gap in mathematics” however “students outside the Zone garner the same benefit from the HCZ charter schools as the students outside the Zone.”[10] In summary, proximity didn’t show a statistically significant difference such that high-quality schools and high-quality schools coupled with community investments generate the same achievement gains.

Now, the Brookings report was limited in scope by relying on a group of students selected to participate in a lottery to attend an HCZ charter school, leaving numerous unanswered variables. When slots exceed supply, NYC charters are required to take students by lottery. Dobbie and Fryer theorized that by studying these “lottery winners” and “lottery losers” they could essentially create the conditions for a randomized experiment; however, the outcomes of these students cannot be solely held to the respective schools for a conclusive answer to the question. First, there is no assessment of various demographics – the educational background, socioeconomic status, race, disabilities, etc. – of these students prior to lottery assignments. Second, this study doesn’t measure how the zone impacts and reweaves the social fabric of Harlem, a community that has been degenerated by poverty for over a century. To reiterate, the purpose of the zone is to end intergenerational poverty and is thus aimed at various social enterprises, not just education. The results of the charter schools are merely one aspect of the Harlem community and do not present a robust analysis of the whole community impact.

Standardized test scores reveal that HCZ does not stand out among some of New York City’s charter schools. The HCZ Promise Academy I is the longest established HCZ public charter and serves elementary through high school. Comparing results from Promise Academy to the average test scores of all charters in Manhattan and the Bronx, Brookings found that “half or more of the public charter schools in Manhattan and the Bronx produce test scores on state assessments that are superior to those produced by the HCZ Promise Academy,” which is true both for actual scores and scores adjusted for student demographics (percent free lunch, percent reduced lunch, percent limited English proficient, percent African American, and percent Hispanic).[11] Although HCZ appeared to perform slightly stronger in the mathematics exam, in conclusion, HCZ Promise Academy “is a middling New York City charter school.”

However to date, HCZ schools have impacted students of the Harlem community. By 2013, although no class had yet graduated from the complete cradle to college pipeline (Baby College through Promise Academy), over 900 students had been enrolled in HCZ’s College Success Office.[12] In addition, the majority of these students were in their first to third years of post-secondary schooling and 36 had graduated from two-year and four-year degree programs. Less than 10% of HCZ students had dropped out of school, which is significantly lower the national average of 43.6%. The state of New York requires high schoolers to earn a 65 on the standardized Regents exam to earn a diploma. In 2010, and 2012, Promise Academy I scored comparatively with the most competitive of NYC charter schools. “Promise Academy I’s entire 2012 graduating class scored 65 or higher (with almost half scored 85 or higher) on the English exam; 90 percent scored 65 or higher on the Geometry exam; and 96 percent scored 65 or higher on the Algebra 2 and Trigonometry exam. In 2010, 92 percent scored a 65 or higher on the Integrated Algebra exam.”[13] Finally, in the New York City Progress Report for 2011–2012, Promise Academy I placed in the 99th percentile of city high schools with the sixth-highest score in the city, boasting a 96 percent pass rate in English and 98 percent pass rate in Integrated Algebra in the New York Regents examination.

Moreover, Dobbie and Fryer do note that HCZ does make a difference. “They concluded that the Promise Academy and additional support services had effectively reversed ‘the black–white achievement gap in mathematics (HCZ students outperform the typical white student in New York City and the difference is statistically significant) and reduced it in ELA [English Language Arts].”[14] Especially at the younger levels, the researchers found statistically significant differences for Harlem students who attended and didn’t attend Promise Academy. “The effect of being enrolled at the elementary charter school on third-grade test scores—the first year that children in New York take standardized exams—is large and precisely estimated, with point estimates ranging from 1.906 to 2.039 standard deviations in math and 1.693 to 1.863 in ELA. This suggests that the HCZ elementary school impacts both math and ELA scores significantly, eliminating the race gap in both subjects.”[15] Of course, the same limitations apply for the positive and negative results of the Dobbie and Fryer study. It was based on the lottery of a single of class students in a single year, which may not reflect the performance of HCZ relative to other schools in previous school years.

Continuing, equating academic achievement with standardized test scores may only answer one piece of the puzzle. Canada responded to the formerly mentioned Brookings study and criticized its “wrong-headed take” on the Zone.[16] Mainly, he implied the failures of the study stem from its narrow analysis, which is of only one of the three charters and the lack of a longitudinal track of student growth over time. Citing the Dobbie and Fryer analysis and the Whitehurst and Croft analysis, Canada claims the latter ignores the charter schools that are outperforming Bronx and Manhattan schools and fails to include student growth at HCZ which also outperforms the boroughs.

Is it fact that HCZ Promise Academies perform on par with the upper echelon of New York City charters an indictment of its efficacy? Secondly, if yes, is that an indictment of the model as a whole? First, the Brookings report doesn’t compare HCZ charter to charters nationally or in other urban areas. It is important to consider to whom is the Zone being weighed. Second, there is inconclusive and controversial data on the ability of charters to promote educational achievement at the fundamental level due to selection and attribution biases.[17] Finally, what does ending intergenerational poverty mean and is it statistically reasonable to measure a charter that serves students in poverty to ones that may not. HCZ has a high price tag but so do some of the highest performing school districts and so, should they be targeted as well?

HCZ Promise Academy students do perform better than students of their backgrounds attending a New York City public school but the charter school at the top of the list is a KIPP school[18] which calls into comparison two different models of education and their abilities to create achievement for historically marginalized groups. Additionally, KIPP schools tend to more closely align their spending per-student to that of the surrounding district. On the other hand, the KIPP model has been around much longer and it can be argued that it may take time for HCZ to demonstrate the same level of achievement as much more established schools. But the question of how much time is enough time is a difficult one to answer.

Reforming neighborhoods and making schools the center of social service networks is certainly innovative but the data seems to be inconclusive on whether it will always work. While HCZ benefits from over $100 million in philanthropy to support its holistic approach and has seen wonderful successes, how replicable of a model is it? Can the HCZ model work in any neighborhood and its associated social services? What kinds of ingredients are required for the successful implementation of a school centered neighborhood zone? In conclusion, there doesn’t seem to be enough data to conclusively argue whether the HCZ neighborhood package “works.” Although there are noteworthy successes, it is difficult to unequivocally associate these results to HCZ exclusively.

There is quantitative data that is convenient for measuring the success of the Harlem Children’s Zone but the data is mixed and leaves many questions unanswered often telling oppositional narratives. We have only a limited basis for evaluating the Zone’s full impact. To reiterate, the Zone “works to reweave the social fabric of Harlem” and so to evaluate the Zone fully, the cumulative social impact of the organization on the entire Harlem community, not just specific results of the Zone schools ought to be measured. While academic success is an important factor in rebuilding a community, it is just one piece in the overall puzzle, not the puzzle itself. It is likely fair to say that HUD’s promise zone initiative will not be able to replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone and too soon to predict whether promise zones as opposed to schools-only approaches are better.

[1] “About HCZ – Helping Kids Succeed.” Harlem Children’s Zone. HCZ, n.d. Web. 03 May 2017.

[2] Ibid…

[3] “Promise Zones.” HUD. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, n.d. Web. 03 May 2017.

[4] Heilemann Published Sep 6, 2010, John. “Schools: The Disaster Movie.” NYMag.com. New York Magazine, 6 Sept. 2010. Web. 03 May 2017.

[5] Szhamilton. “Waiting for Batman: Following the Money at the Harlem Children’s Zone.” Daily Kos. Daily Kos, 13 July 2011. Web. 03 May 2017.

[6] Callahan, David. “Who’s the Harlem Children’s Zone $100 Million Donor?” Inside Philanthropy. Inside Philanthropy, 22 Jan. 2014. Web. 03 May 2017.

[7] Otterman, Sharon. “Lauded Harlem Schools Have Their Own Problems.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 12 Oct. 2010. Web. 03 May 2017.

[8] Kellermann, Carol. “No More Aid for the Affluent.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 27 Mar. 2010. Web. 03 May 2017.

[9] Whitehurst, Grover, and Michelle Croft. “The Harlem Children’s Zone, Promise Neighborhoods, and the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education | Brookings Institution.”Brookings. Brookings, 28 July 2016. Web. 03 May 2017.

[10] Ibid…

[11] Whitehurst, Grover, and Michelle Croft. “The Harlem Children’s Zone, Promise Neighborhoods, and the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education | Brookings Institution.”Brookings. Brookings, 28 July 2016. Web. 03 May 2017.

[12] Hanson, Danielle. “Assessing the Harlem Children’s Zone.” The Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation, 6 Mar. 2013. Web. 04 May 2017.

[13] Ibid..

[14] Hanson, Danielle. “Assessing the Harlem Children’s Zone.” The Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation, 6 Mar. 2013. Web. 04 May 2017.

[15] Ibid..

[16] Swaminathan, Nikhil. “Geoffrey Canada Responds to Brookings Study on Harlem Children’s Zone.” GOOD Magazine. GOOD, 17 Feb. 2015. Web. 04 May 2017.

[17] Welner, Kevin G. “The Dirty Dozen: How Charter Schools Influence Student Enrollment.”National Education Policy Center. N.p., 10 May 2013. Web. 04 May 2017.

[18] “CHARTER SCHOOL PERFORMANCE IN NEW YORK CITY.” (n.d.): n. pag. Center for Research on Educational Outcomes. Stanford University, Jan. 2010. Web. 4 May 2017.

By Eliza Scruton and Emily Patton

Executive Summary

Given the well-documented negative psychosocial and economic effects on the outcomes of teenage parents (Kiselica & Pfaller, 1993; Coren et al., 2003; Freudenberg & Ruglis, 2007; National Conference of State Legislatures, 2013; Einhorn, 2015), we believe it is vital that school systems offer some means of providing the resources they need to mitigate these effects. While many school districts offer no special support to teenage parents, those that do generally follow one (or sometimes both) of two models: creating a standalone school for pregnant and parenting teenagers, or providing wraparound services through mainstream schools. Currently, districts seem to be trending toward the latter model, with many alternative “pregnancy schools” across the country having closed within the past few years (Einhorn, 2015; Swaby, 2016). This trend is in part due to declining rates of teen pregnancy (Center for Disease Control, 2016) and in part due to a changing social landscape (Swaby, 2016). This essay draws on both empirical and anecdotal data to evaluate the potential impacts of this transition, and concludes that the location at which support services are provided to pregnant teens is less important than the quality and accessibility of the services themselves.

Introduction

This policy report concerns the ways that public schools can provide support and resources to pregnant and parenting teenagers. In it, we highlight the advantages and drawbacks to two general models. The first of these is a model in which pregnant and parenting teens attend a separate school from their non-parenting peers, and receive the aforementioned services in the context of that school.  The second is the “wraparound services” model, wherein teenage parents receive services (such as medical care, counseling, and coordination with social workers (Swaby, 2016)) within the schools they already attend, provided by an external source.

Statistically, standalone schools for pregnant and parenting teenagers boast much higher graduation rates than the national average for this demographic; however, it remains unclear whether this type of success depends upon the standalone school model as opposed to a wraparound services model. Alternative schools provide a number of advantages, in that they provide teen mothers with a social network of their peers (Bowens, 2016) and a non-judgmental social environment (Halpern, 2011). Furthermore, their comparatively high staff-to-student ratio allows every student to receive a high level of individual attention (Halpern, 2011; Bowens, 2016). However, in many cases, pregnant teenagers opt to remain in their own schools (Orson, 2016); moreover, some have critiqued the practice of setting up alternative schools as a means to cloister teenage mothers out of sight (Einhorn, 2015), harkening back to an outdated understanding of teenage pregnancy as a social contagion (Swaby, 2016).

In order to to explore the impact of transitioning from standalone schools to wraparound services, we focus primarily on the case of the Polly T. McCabe Center in New Haven, Connecticut. McCabe, until recently, operated a brick-and-mortar school for pregnant teens, but has transitioned in the last year to offering wraparound services through other public high schools (Halpern, 2011; Swaby, 2016). Based on evidence from this school and others like it, we argue that the closing of a standalone school may be more beneficial to students provided that they continue to receive the same amount of services and resources through the wraparound program.

Background

Teenage pregnancy in the United States today is at record lows. The CDC reports that in 2014, the birth rate for women aged 15-19 years was 24.2 per 1000 women, a 9% decrease from the previous year. This decline is consistent with overall trends since the early 1990’s, depicted in Figure 1 below, as reported by the CDC. The underlying causes of declining teenage pregnancy rates are not entirely understood, though some studies suggest that increased contraceptive use is more responsible than delayed sexual activity (Lindberg et al., 2016).

Figure 1: Trends in live births among women aged 15-19 years

Still, though, teenage pregnancy remains an important public health issue: the US has the highest rate of teen pregnancy among Western industrialized nations (CDC), and pregnancy is the leading cause of high school dropout among girls (Freudenberg & Ruglis, 2007). Reports of the precise graduation rate of pregnant and parenting teenagers vary somewhat: according to a 2013 report from the National Conference of State Legislatures, only about 40% of teenage mothers complete high school; some report the rate slightly higher, at 50% (Einhorn, 2015). Either of these figures, though, is far lower than the national average high school graduation rate, which for public school students was 82% as of 2013 (National Center for Education Statistics, 2016). Because of their increased dropout rate, as well as societal stigma surrounding them and a number of other factors, teenage parents and their children are at risk of experiencing worse psychosocial and socioeconomic outcomes than their peers (Kiselica & Pfaller, 1993; Coren et al., 2003). To some extent, teenage pregnancy can be seen as a symptom of socioeconomic hardship rather than a source (Charles, 2014; Manlove, 1998): teenage pregnancy tends to follow school disengagement, as well as precede it, and rates of teenage pregnancy are far higher in areas with higher crime and poverty rates (Crane, 1991). Even after adjusting for risk factors for teen pregnancy (such as growing up in poverty or being raised by a single parent), though, the negative effects on academic performance persist (CDC). The goal of support programs for pregnant and parenting teenagers, put simply, is to buck these trends: generally speaking, programs that provide support for teenage parents seek to reduce their dropout rates, including through the prevention of further unplanned pregnancies (teenage parents of more than one child are even more likely to drop out than those with only one).

Institutional support systems for pregnant and parenting teenagers, in general, are few and far between. In the wake of declining teen pregnancy rates nationwide, many programs intended to provide support to parenting youth have been shut down (Einhorn, 2015). Nevertheless, pregnant and parenting teenagers continue to be disadvantaged in society,  and given the decline in outcomes for teenage parents, it is vital that those adolescents who do become parents receive adequate support, and are not simply swept under the rug by school districts. Many schools provide programs that focus on preventing teen pregnancy in the first place. These programs have been at least somewhat effective in increasing teen contraceptive use (Bennett & Assefi, 2005), particularly when they follow an “abstinence-plus” (as opposed to an abstinence-only) model, wherein information on contraception is included in the curriculum. Programs that provide resources to students who have already become pregnant or had children, though, are much less common: a 2012 study by the National Women’s Law Center found that only 26 states provide institutional support for pregnant and parenting teens, and only 18 explicitly disallow discrimination against teenage mothers. According to the NWLC’s study, pregnant and parenting teenagers in many schools are expelled, barred from school activities, and penalized for pregnancy-related absences.

One option for districts seeking to provide such support is to open a school designed to serve only pregnant and parenting students. In addition to services like medical care, daytime childcare, and counselling, these schools provide parenting students with a social network of other adolescent parents. In many cases, these alternative schools were founded with the intention of eventually reintegrating students into their original high schools (Orson, 2016). Some of these programs also operate through charter schools. Some of these schools, such as Pathways Academy in Detroit, provide education to their students through online courses rather than through a more traditional classroom setting (Einhorn, 2015). Students at many of these programs have cited them as a sole or significant factor in the successful completion of their high school diplomas (Konz, 2015; Skinner, 2014; Einhorn, 2015; Halpern, 2011). At the same time, though, there is some debate about the social benefits of these alternative schools. While they do provide teen mothers with a social network of their peers, some argue that cloistering teen mothers in a separate school away from their non-parenting counterparts perpetuates social stigma surrounding them (Einhorn, 2015) Programs such as these, in the context of public school districts, are not terribly common, but do exist in small number around the country.

These alternative schools are, however, dwindling in number. Several of these programs, including Detroit’s Catherine Ferguson Academy and Baltimore’s Lawrence Paquin Middle/High School, have been shut down in recent years (Einhorn, 2015). The Jefferson County Public School (JCPS) district in Kentucky is considering consolidating the Georgia Chaffee Teenage Parent Program (TAPP), which currently operates two schools, into one building in the coming years (Ross, 2015). In New Haven, the Polly T. McCabe Center recently made the transition from existing as a separate school for teen mothers to an organization that provides wraparound services through more traditional schools (Swaby, 2016). Many districts that have shut down alternative schools for pregnant students have cited budgetary concerns among their reasons for doing so (Ross, 2015; Swaby, 2016). Given the historically low rates of teen pregnancy today, it is unclear whether the benefits of running alternative schools for pregnant students are worth the added expenditures. However, monetary concerns and declining rates of teenage pregnancy are not the only reasons for the closing of many of these programs: changing societal norms also affect the demand for alternative schools for pregnant students. For example, in the case of Polly McCabe, both the laws surrounding pregnant students and the popular understanding of teenage pregnancy have changed drastically since its founding in 1966 (Swaby, 2016). At that time, pregnant students in New Haven were not allowed to attend mainstream high schools; under Title IX, this is no longer the case (Orson, 2016). Furthermore, teen pregnancy is not seen as “contagious” in the way that it once was.

Outside of alternative programs specifically for teenage parents, there are other ways for districts and states to provide resources to teenage parents, either through financial support or through subsidized services. The Connecticut Department of Education, for example, provides a program known as the Support for Pregnant and Parenting Teenagers (SPPT) grant, which operates in the five districts statewide with the highest rates of teenage pregnancy. This program more closely resembles the “wraparound services” model that New Haven’s Polly T. McCabe Center has recently transitioned to. The SPPT grant provides resources to teenage parents within existing comprehensive high schools. These services include family support, referrals to prenatal care services, child care, and parenting education. One feature of the SPPT grant, which is not generally present in programs like Pathways Academy in Detroit, JCPS’s TAPP schools, or even the Polly T. McCabe Center, is a particular focus on providing resources for teenage fathers (Connecticut State Department of Education, 2015), with the goal of increasing father involvement in their children’s lives.

Wraparound services are generally provided by state or local governments, rather than by the federal government. As such, the precise nature of these wraparound services varies significantly between programs. In the case of Polly McCabe, their six-person staff includes two outreach workers and one social worker, though the center has requested funds to hire an additional outreach worker and social worker for the upcoming school year (Swaby, 2016). These staffers provide services to pregnant and parenting mothers throughout the district. Middle school students who become pregnant also have the option of receiving schooling through New Haven’s “homebound” program, wherein students who are unable to attend school (generally due to illness or expulsion) can receive up to two hours of instruction per day in their own homes (Bailey, 2014; Swaby, 2016). One issue that still remains to be fully dealt with is that of how to provide affordable childcare to parenting teenagers during the school day: in New Haven, the only mainstream school with an operating daycare facility is Wilbur Cross High School. However, the Board of Education is considering opening another facility, possibly at Hillhouse High School or the Reginald Mayo Early Childhood School. Polly McCabe also partners with the LULAC Head Start Daycare Center, which continues to operate at the site of McCabe’s standalone school. Students receiving McCabe’s wraparound services are not required to pay for the childcare their children receive through LULAC (Bowens, 2016). In addition to the resources provided to mothers, McCabe also provides outreach to teenage fathers to connect them to jobs and other services.

Analysis: Evaluating the models

There is a wealth of empirical evidence–both qualitative and quantitative–that supports the claim that alternative schools for pregnant teens can have a positive impact on not only the educational outcomes of  teen parents, but also the health outcomes of both parents and children. A study of New Haven’s Polly T. McCabe Center for Pregnant Adolescents found reduced incidence of repeat childbearing among women who enrolled at the center (Advocates for Youth, 2009). Within six years postpartum, those who did not have another child not only had higher educational attainment, but were also less likely to rely solely on public assistance to support their families (Advocates for Youth, 2009). At the Laurence Paquin School for pregnant and/or parenting teens in Baltimore City, participating students were found to have higher educational aspiration, better reproductive health outcomes, higher contraceptive use, and more breast-feeding practice and intention than those of their non-participating counterparts (Amin et al, 2006). Detroit’s Catherine Ferguson Academy, which was in operation from 1986 through 2014, once boasted a graduation rate of 90%–a significant increase from the estimated national average of 50% (Einhorn, 2015). Other similar models have have shown students to have similar improvements in graduation and health rates (Alford, 2009, Einhorn, 2015; Halpern, 2011).

Whether these outcomes are unique to these alternative schools–or whether they could be replicated through other programs–still remains to be seen. After all, in most alternative schools, the main difference lies not in the type of facility used or even the pace or content of curriculum, but in the range of auxiliary resources and services that the school can provide, as well as the level of individual attention that each student receives from the school’s teachers and staff. This is particularly salient given the fact that the majority of the resources that alternative schools are able to provide are social services, especially when it comes to counseling. In fact, one the biggest advantages cited by both students and administrators in successful alternative schools was the degree to which the teachers and administrators could be involved in their students’ lives, both inside and outside the classroom. This high level of engagement serves to not only encourage academic achievement, but also help students overcome external barriers that might discourage them from completing their education. In an article from 2015, the principal of  the Detroit’s Pathways school described spending evenings and weekends visiting absent and prospective students (Einhorn, 2015). At other schools like Polly T. McCabe, staff members are involved in anything from helping students search for jobs to resolving interpersonal conflicts; one principal even drove a student to the hospital to give birth when her boyfriend refused to help (Halpern, 2011). This depth of involvement is enabled by the fact that alternative schools for pregnant women have a much higher staff to student ratio than other public schools. In this sense, one could argue that the key to ensuring the success of pregnant teens isn’t so much dependent on their segregation from a regular student body as it is the school’s ability to provide them with a network of support that is sufficient enough to allow them to focus on school, rather than having to navigate the difficulties of pregnancy alone.

Another way in which alternative schools alleviate pressure from their students lives is through financial support, to the extent that these schools are providing students with services and resources that they would otherwise have to pay for themselves, they offer a form of financial support. This is especially true of schools that offer child care, which can often be so prohibitively expensive that it is cheaper for young mothers to stay home rather than get a job. Other schools, like the Early Beginners Program, provide access to tangible goods including used books, maternity clothes, toys, and even weekly free diapers (Skinner, 2014). Much like counseling, these resources need not be exclusively available through a separate school facility, and could be incorporated into a wraparound services program.

The idea that students will succeed better in school when they receive more resources and attention is not exclusively applicable to pregnant women. As one journalist commented, reflecting on the success of a former McCabe student: “Perhaps she is an example of what good can come when schools don’t mainstream students with special needs; but her success may also simply indicate that any time a school system can afford to lavish attention on students who might otherwise be neglected, great things can happen.” (Halpern, 2011). It is possible that the reason why alternative schools are successful are because they are often geared towards exactly these kinds of students. Analyses of data from the National Survey of Family Growth have shown a significant correlation between socioeconomic status and teen pregnancy, with those of lower socioeconomic status being more likely to get pregnant as a teen (Hunter, 2012). Another study comparing teen mothers to their closest peers such as childless sisters or pregnant teens who had miscarried) found that the negative impact of having a child itself was marginal compared to the impact of a disadvantaged background (Halpern, 2011). In this sense, one of the most important roles of alternative schools for pregnant teens may not be mitigating the difficulties of pregnancy, but rather mitigating the obstacles of poverty.

One aspect of alternative schools that is less easily replicable in a public school setting is the community of peers that the space inherently provides. This community can serve not only as a source of positive support, but also as a shield from negative outside influences. As one McCabe student summarized: “The best thing about being [at McCabe] is that nobody judges you – nobody puts you down for being pregnant. We all understand each other; we are all going through similar situations” (Halpern, 2011). 

There is less comprehensive research and discussion on the efficacy of wraparound services compared to separate brick-and-mortar schools. The debate between the two options is centered largely on the issue of funding, with the former costing far less than the latter. In the case of Polly T. McCabe, the decision to close the school building was primarily an issue of budgetary concerns. According to New Haven’s district director of instruction, shutting down the center would mean a cost reduction of $135,306 for the principal’s salary (Swaby, 2016). The amount that the state spends annually on services for the program’s enrollees, by comparison, is $175,000 (Swaby, 2016). This money will presumably be channeled into the wraparound services which would replace the school’s official programming. In addition to cutting costs, wraparound services can also provide students with the opportunity to stay integrated in their school community, where the academic rigor and variety of course offerings may be better than their usual alternative school. This issue has come up in the debate over Polly T. McCabe, as well as other debates around the country (Konz, 2015).

Conclusion

For many teens around the country, teenage pregnancy can present a significant obstacle when it comes to the completion of their education. However, if these obstacles can be mitigated through public services, the odds of teenage mothers succeeding in graduation can be raised significantly. In our evaluation of these two programs, we have concluded that while schools for pregnant teens may provide teen mothers with a safe and inclusive environment in which they can navigate the difficulties of their pregnancy and impending motherhood, the success of these schools is perhaps less dependent on the fact that they are separate than it is the fact that they are well resourced. With that in mind, we do not reject the idea of wraparound services, but rather embrace them, provided that the depth and quality of these services remains the same as they would be at an original school.

References

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Amin, R., Browne, D.C., Ahmed, J. et al (2006, April). A Study of An Alternative School for Pregnant and/or Parenting Teens: Quantitative and Qualitative Evidence. Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal. 23(172). doi:10.1007/s10560-005-0038-1

Bailey, M. (2014, April 16). Homebound program under review. New Haven Independent. Retrieved from http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/homebound/

Bennett, S. E., & Assefi, N. P. (2005). School-based teenage pregnancy prevention programs: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials. Journal of Adolescent Health, 36(1), 72-81.

Bowens, A (Host and Producer). (2016). Self-love, 3 different ways [Radio interview].  Alisa’s Culture Cocktail. New Haven: WNHH Community Radio.

Center for Disease Control (2016, April 26).  About Teen Pregnancy. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/teenpregnancy/about/index.htm.

Charles, B. (2014, March 22). Teen Pregnancy in Connecticut: City birth rates twice state average. New Haven Register. Retrieved from http://www.nhregister.com/general-news/20140322/teen-pregnancy-in-connecticut-city-birth-rates-twice-state-average.

Connecticut State Department of Education (2015, February 20). Support for Pregnant and Parenting Teens Grant. Retrieved from http://www.sde.ct.gov/sde/cwp/view.asp?a=2678&Q=334262

Coren, E., Barlow, J., & Stewart-Brown, S. (2003). The effectiveness of individual and group-based parenting programmes in improving outcomes for teenage mothers and their children: A systematic review. Journal of adolescence, 26(1), 79-103.

Crane, J. (1991). The epidemic theory of ghettos and neighborhood effects on dropping out and teenage childbearing. American journal of Sociology, 96(5), 1226-1259.

Einhorn, E. (2015, June 3). Teen pregnancy is still a problem– school districts just stopped paying attention. The Hechinger Report. Retrieved from http://hechingerreport.org/teen-pregnancy-is-still-a-problem-school-districts-just-stopped-paying-attention/

Freudenberg, N., & J. Ruglis. (2007, October 15). Reframing School Dropout as a Public Health Issue. Preventing Chronic Disease, 4(4), pp. 1-11.  

Halpern, J. (2011, February 27). The Miracle of Polly McCabe. Boston.com. Retrieved from http://archive.boston.com/lifestyle/articles/2011/02/27/new_haven_school_educates_just_one_kind_of_student_pregnant_teens/

Hunter, Lori M (2012, April). U.S. Teen Birth Rate Correlates With State Income Inequality. Population Reference Bureau. Accessed at http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2012/us-teen-birthrate-income.aspx

Kiselica, M. S., & Pfaller, J. (1993, September). Helping Teenage Parents: The independent and collaborative roles of counselor educators and school counselors. Journal of Counseling and Development, 72(1), pp. 42-48.

Konz, A. (2015, March 15). JCPS exploring changes to teenage pregnancy alternative school program. WDRB news. Retrieved from http://www.wdrb.com/story/28478485/sunday-edition-jcps-exploring-changes-to-teenage-pregnancy-alternative-school-program

Lindberg, L., Santelli, J., & Desai, S. (2016, November). Understanding the decline in adolescent fertility in the United States, 2007–2012. Journal of Adolescent Health, 59(5), 577-583.

Manlove, J. “The influence of high school dropout and school disengagement on the risk of school-age pregnancy.” Journal of Research on Adolescence 8.2 (1998): 187-220.

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National Women’s Law Center (2012, June 18). A Pregnancy Test for Schools: The Impact of Education Law on Pregnant and Parenting Students. Retrieved from https://nwlc.org/resources/a-pregnancy-test-for-schools-the-impact-of-education-laws-on-pregnant-and-parenting-students/

Orson, D. (2016, September 26). With Lower Teen Pregnancy Rates, New Haven Adjusts to Keep Teen Moms in School. WNPR. Retrieved from http://wnpr.org/post/lower-teen-pregnancy-rates-new-haven-adjusts-keep-moms-school

Ross, A. (2015, March 9). JCPS considers cutting $1.7M from alternative schools. The Courier Journal. Retrieved from http://www.courier-journal.com/story/education-blog/2015/03/09/jcps-alternative-schools-funding-budget/24628223/

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Introduction:

“The future is here; it’s just not evenly distributed.” That quote from a William Gibson science fiction novel is used widely in Silicon Valley to describe the technology landscape, but it applies to segregation as well. In the United States, schools are more segregated than they have ever have been despite the Brown v. Board of Education decision that outlawed separate schools for all races (Millhiser, 2015). In the U.S., over one-third of black and Latino students go to schools that are over 90% non-white, while more than one-third of white students go to schools that are over 90% white (Potter & Quick, 2016). The increase in segregation stems in large part from racialized housing practices such as redlining, blockbusting, and racial covenants that have led to the segregation of neighborhoods. These discriminatory practices prevented certain people from buying homes in better areas, which determined where people lived, and as a result, led to segregation in schools as well. Neighborhood stratification led to school segregation because school attendance zones were tethered to real estate and busing-based integration efforts have declined so more students go to the school closest to them (Potter & Quick, 2016).

I will focus primarily on the Sacramento, California district and how it has tried to address these discriminatory practices from the 1900s by instituting inclusionary housing policies to fight racial and economic segregation. Sacramento has succeeded, by and large, because it is considered one of the most diverse and integrated cities in the U.S. (Silver, 2015). Time magazine asked The Civil Rights Project to name the most residentially integrated city in the U.S., and they chose Sacramento (Orfield, 2016).

I will explain how housing discrimination caused segregation in neighborhoods and in schools and how Sacramento’s commitment to creating more affordable housing has had a positive effect in Sacramento on not only its neighborhoods but on the schools as well. By focusing on getting rid of neighborhood segregation, Sacramento has also succeeded in increasing the diversity in schools. In California, Sacramento has the most integrated large public school districts (Orfield, 2016).

While other research has examined how integrated Sacramento is as a city, this report is unique because it ties Sacramento’s focus on desegregating neighborhoods with desegregation in schools. Also, this report will examine the racial demographics in Sacramento public schools and the surrounding county in context with other cities to show how its diversity in neighborhoods is carrying over to the schools and how Sacramento can be an example.

Sacramento may turn out to be the future for school inclusion, once that future gets a bit more widely distributed.

Background

Housing Discrimination

Throughout the 1900s, the U.S. government, realtors, and banks conspired against minorities in a multitude of ways to prevent them from living in certain areas. One example of this is redlining, where banks disproportionately denied black people loans and mortgages so that they couldn’t afford to buy a home. Neighborhoods where black people lived were colored in red and were deemed ineligible for support for the Federal Housing Administration. An example of Chicago in 1939 where an entire area was considered to be minority housing is shown below. Blacks were denied services because of raising prices and because people wanted to maintain the current ethnic composition of the area that would be primarily white (Coates, 2014).

Another practice was blockbusting, where realtors would essentially encourage “white flight.” They would sell a home to a black person in an area and then encourage the white people in the area to move. The realtor would buy it from a white family for a relatively low price and then would charge much more than market rate when selling to a black person, because they may not have had any other options (Coates, 2014). The final discriminatory housing practice that I’ll mention (though there are many more), is racial covenants. This was a legal way to prevent blacks from living in an area, because neighborhoods could band together and prevent blacks from moving into the neighborhood by agreeing not ever sell their home to a black person. For example, by 1940 in Chicago and Los Angeles, 80% of properties had racial covenants (Fair Housing Center, 2010).

Neighborhood Segregation Effects

These methods to prevent blacks from living in white neighborhoods resulted in the segregation of neighborhoods that have had crippling effects for minorities in the U.S, such as increased poverty, poorer health, and higher exposure to violent crime (Bethea 2013). One of the main effects of neighborhood segregation is the segregation of schools. School districts lines tend to be drawn to reflect the neighborhoods and can be segregated by race, as transportation from one school district to another is costly and not time-efficient. Segregated schools tend to lead to better schools for white students and often impoverished schools that don’t have the same resources for minorities (Walsemann, 2010). There have also been shown to be many benefits of racially integrated schools such as obviously allowing minorities to get the same opportunities as white students but also to socialize students and prepare them for a diverse workforce where employers value people who can work with others from diverse cultural backgrounds (Stuart, 2016). In addition, a report found that, “researchers have documented that students’ exposure to other students who are different from themselves and the novel ideas and challenges that such exposure brings leads to improved cognitive skills, including critical thinking and problem solving.” To be sure, there are some drawbacks about promoting the integration of schools, such as the fact that the onus is often placed on minority students and their families to be the ones doing the integrating, and they often have to leave the comfort of their own schools to go to a new school with new people. But, promoting neighborhood integration means that minority students won’t have to travel a long ways to get to a quality school – instead, their neighborhood school will be diverse and likely of better quality.

History in Sacramento

Sacramento, California is one of the cities in the U.S. that is actively trying to address segregated neighborhoods by introducing an inclusionary housing policy. Sacramento passed the Mixed-Income Housing Ordinance in 2000 that applied to all residential developments over nine units in “new growth areas” (Brunick, 2004). The ordinance requires that 15% of all units by affordable housing. The goal is to fight racial and economic segregation by allowing mid-to-low income families to purchase homes in a multitude of areas.

This inclusionary housing policy in Sacramento has contributed to Sacramento becoming one of the most diverse and integrated cities in the U.S, and other large cities could follow their model (Silver, 2015). Sacramento was considered the third most diverse city in the U.S. from a citywide level, the most diverse city from a neighborhood level, and the second most diverse city from an integration standpoint, as shown in the graph below (Silver, 2015).

This graph is from FiveThirtyEight. Sacramento is in the top-right quadrant, which means it has high neighborhood and citywide diversity scores – Sacramento is both diverse and integrated.

Inclusionary Housing in Sacramento

Sacramento decided to adopt an inclusionary housing ordinance in large part because of the affordable housing crisis and to counteract the legal discriminatory practices from the 1900s. In the late 1900s, house prices skyrocketed, as “the cost of a new home nearly tripled and the cost of an existing home nearly doubled” because of high demand for homes, scarcity of available land, and a low supply of houses (Padilla, 1995). The average sales prices of homes increased at a faster rate than the average family income did; from 1994-2003, the average family income increased by 44.6%, but the average sales price of a home increased by 101.5% (Basolo & Scally, 2008).

Sacramento adopted the Mixed-Income Housing Ordinance on October 3, 2000. The main aspect is that it required 15% of new housing projects to be affordable housing for lower-income families. Some other aspects of the ordinance are: it applies to residential projects of 10 or more dwellings, 5% must be low income units and 10% must be very low income unites, developments of 50% or more of inclusionary housing can’t be located next to one another, and the design of inclusionary units needs to be compatible with the other units (Sacramento City Council, 2015).

The idea behind inclusionary housing in Sacramento is that by having more mixed-income and diverse communities, lower-income workers can own a home near where their jobs are, and their kids can live near good, quality schools that have a history of performing well academically (Garvin, 2015). In this way, low-income families can afford houses in already very good neighborhoods, which will build equity over time.

The Need for Inclusionary Housing

The outright housing discrimination in the U.S.that led to neighborhood inequality was banned by the Fair Housing Act of 1968 that addressed issues of, for example, redlining, blockbusting, and forming racial covenants. It deemed these practices to be unconstitutional and tried to make sure the buyer or renter could get access to affordable housing (U.S. Department of Justice, 2015). While these practices were made illegal, the damage had been done, and neighborhoods have remained segregated since then. There have been very few policy efforts to address the segregation problem in the U.S., as “housing policy in the United States appears to be in a protracted, transformative period that combines a lack of strong federal leadership with continued reliance on increasingly uncertain federal funding” (Basolo and Scally, 2008). This may be the case because many politicians are uncomfortable talking about race and don’t want to acknowledge the rampant inequality in neighborhoods around the country.

As stated in a UCLA report on segregation in California, “Housing segregation is a root cause of school segregation. Any long-term policy to foster increased and lasting school integration must determine how to enforce fair housing and affordable housing policies more effectively” (Orfield, 2014).

Inclusionary Housing in Sacramento and its School Districts

We can see the benefits of inclusionary housing with the effects that it has had on the neighborhoods in Sacramento, because of how integrated Sacramento is as a city. Show below is a graph (using this tool) of the downtown Sacramento area, where each dot represents an ethnicity. A blue dot is white, a green dot is black, a red dot is asian, and an orange dot is hispanic. The darker the dot, the more concentrated a certain population is in that area. While there are certain areas that seem to be primarily one race, such as the red section in the middle, the city as a whole appears very diverse. In fact, Sacramento is the most integrated major city in the U.S. (Silver, 2015). It’s a city where every race is in the minority. Sacramento County is 12.7 percent Black, 13.5% Asian, 30.7% Hispanic, 32.4% White, and 10.3% other.

Data Analysis

The desegregated neighborhoods have had the effect of making the Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD) one of the most diverse and desegregated in the U.S in terms of the wide range of students they serve (Rutherford, 2013). The SCUSD is made up of public schools in the area and serves 36.5% Hispanic students, 18.6% white students, 19.1% Asian students, 18% black students, and 5.3% multiracial students (Rutherford, 2013). These numbers show the wide range of students who attend public schools in Sacramento. The one caveat is that the Hispanic population is somewhat overrepresented in the public schools, and the white population is somewhat underrepresented, which is shown in the graphs below.

Even though there is a difference (15.9%) in the percentage of white students who attend the Sacramento public schools (18.6%) and the white percentage of the population (34.5), it is much smaller than in other major cities. This may be a result of Sacramento’s focus on a move toward integrating neighborhoods.

Below, I look at two other cities (Chicago and Baltimore) to show how the disparity between the percentage of white students in public schools versus the percentage of white people in the population in Sacramento is much less than these three cities that have fairly high levels of neighborhood segregation. The population numbers of Sacramento, Chicago, and Baltimore are from the 2010 U.S. Census.

Chicago:

As seen in the map, the neighborhoods in Chicago are very segregated. And, the percentage of white students who attend the public schools in Chicago is much less than the white makeup of the city as a whole. Shown below are two pie charts that show the difference (CPS).

This shows that the number of white students in Chicago (9.9%) is disproportionately low to the number of white people in Chicago (39%). The reason for the disparity in white students in the public schools may because because of the segregated nature of the neighborhoods and schools in Chicago.

Baltimore:

Again, Baltimore is shown above to be a very segregated city. And, the number of white students in Baltimore (7.9%) is disproportionately low to the number of white people in Baltimore (962%).

This effect is also seen somewhat in Sacramento but to a much lesser extent, which shows that Sacramento may be on the right path with the inclusionary housing policy.

Benefits of Integration in Schools

In Sacramento, the fact that the neighborhoods and schools are very desegregated has positive effects for the school and for the students. Diversity in Sacramento schools has cognitive, social, and emotional benefits for students, because the students get a chance to interact with a multitude of people from a variety of backgrounds (Wells, 2016). Diversity in schools also has purported benefits in the workforce, as one study found that 96% of major employers say that it’s important for employees to be “comfortable working with colleagues, customers, and/or clients from diverse cultural backgrounds” (Wells, 2016). Diversity in schools allows students to interact with people of different backgrounds, which will help prepare them socially for the future.

Effects of Desegregation in Sacramento Schools

It is hard to know what exactly the benefits of integration have been so far, since the inclusionary housing policy has only been in place since 2000. But, there are still some signs that the Sacramento City School District is improving – student test scores moved up substantially on the state’s Academic Performance Index (API) from 2011-2012 (SCUSD, 2012). English Language Learners, in particular, has the greatest improvement as a demographic by moving up 15 points in API to above the state average for ELL students. These are just a couple example of improvements in Sacramento schools. It will be important to follow the progress in Sacramento over the next couple of decades to see how the schools fare academically and socially to see if the neighborhood effects of desegregation can carry over to the schools.

Conclusion

One potential solution for integrated neighborhoods is the inclusionary housing policies that have been voluntarily adopted more and more by cities in California. They are needed because of the rising housing costs in the U.S. that are making it harder for impoverished families to buy good houses in good areas. The main purported benefit of inclusionary housing policies has been to make neighborhoods more diverse both economically and racially (Basolo & Scally, 2010). To be sure, there have also been potential negative effects of inclusionary housing such as the supply of homes may go down because the developers may lose incentive to build and construction activity would be reduced and then affordable houses wouldn’t be built. But, there has been no empirical data to show that this is the case.

Overall, inclusionary housing policies in Sacramento have had the effect of making Sacramento one of the most integrated cities in the U.S. The change has been recent, so it is hard to know for certain whether or not the effect will carry over fully to schools. But, there has been some positive changes in the Sacramento school district schools that signifies that focusing on housing policies may be the solution.

The inclusionary housing model has been successful in Sacramento and can be expanded and applied to many more large cities around the U.S. We need more people to be aware of the segregation problem in neighborhoods and in schools in order to fix the rampant problem. With awareness comes more ideas for solutions, and we can start with inclusionary housing practices. By looking at the example in Sacramento, we can make this desegregated and integrated future real everywhere across the United States.

Works Cited

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