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Researchers Speak Out On Controversial Diversity Vote In Wake County

The Price of Retreat:

Paying More for a Divided and Less Well-Educated Community

in Wake County, North Carolina

After four months of debate, a newly configured school board voted on March 23, 2010 to end

Wake County’s long-standing commitment to promoting racially and socioeconomically diverse

schools. A brief glimpse into the past—or a look at school systems around the South no longer

working towards the goal of integration—suggests that serious, negative consequences await

North Carolina’s largest district.

Decades of social science research, the experiences of countless educators in school districts

across the nation, and subsequent legal decisions have all confirmed a core proposition of the

U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision: separate is not equal in

the realm of public schools. Inequality of opportunity persists in schools that enroll high

concentrations of students of color, which are nearly always schools that also have high

concentrations of poverty. Such schools are also, as a rule, less likely to attract and retain highquality,

experienced teachers. They are less likely to offer advanced courses to students and less

likely to provide contact with middle-class peers. All of these important factors are strongly

associated with academic success and the exposure to networks that increase post-graduation

opportunities. Further, U.S. public schools should prepare their students for citizenship in a

country that will soon have a majority of nonwhite residents while also shaping future employees

for a global economy. Racially and economically segregated schools are not environments that

allow for students from different backgrounds to become more comfortable with each other and

counteract stereotypes or prejudice. Wake County has decided to put its students at a

disadvantage in all these areas.

Wake County had long been a leader in understanding the importance of diverse schools. For

more than thirty years, the district devised and implemented policies to achieve diversity amid

demographic and legal changes. The county began comprehensively desegregating its schools in

1976, the same year a controversial merger plan won approval. After the North Carolina state

legislature passed a bill making it easier for school districts to consolidate, strong and decisive

leadership pushed a city-suburban merger forward. Since then, the Wake County Public School

System has drawn students from the City of Raleigh and its surrounding suburbs. This

arrangement originally promoted a racial desegregation strategy that included a system of

magnet schools and a 15-45% balancing mechanism stipulating that African American

enrollment at the school level should not fall below 15 percent or above 45 percent.

In 2000, Wake County officials voted to voluntarily begin using a “race-neutral” plan that relied

heavily on socioeconomic and student achievement factors. Based on research linking integrated

student enrollment and healthy, good schools, Wake County school officials implemented a

policy stipulating that no more than 40 percent of students at a given school should be eligible

for free and reduced lunch prices and no more than 25 percent of students at any given school in

the district should have scored below grade level on statewide reading tests. When assigning

students to schools, district officials balanced this commitment to diversity in student

composition with other factors, such as the capacity of a building, whether a student has siblings

at a school and how close a student lives to a school (e.g., a majority of students attended a

school within five miles of their home).

The history of Wake County and other southern districts is particularly instructive to the current

situation facing Wake County. Prior to Brown, southern states operated separate schools for

black and white students. In the hopes of maintaining the pretense of “separate but equal” as the

Supreme Court began taking the requirement more seriously in the cases leading up to Brown,

districts tried to ameliorate funding inequities between black schools and white schools. Yet,

despite those increased expenditures, separate did not produce equal educational opportunities.

Although the post-Brown period of reform witnessed temporary but distinct success, with the

South boasting the most integrated schools for decades, this accomplishment is rapidly coming

undone.

We, the undersigned researchers, hope for a future in which neighborhoods and their schools will

be integrated, making it unnecessary for children to travel to achieve diverse, good schools. The

current reality is, however, that high levels of segregation still exist in many of our communities.

Thus, when students are assigned to schools based on where they live, such assignments tend to

create segregated schools. This recent decision by the Wake County School Board will only

further the trend of resegregation seen in other districts that have also returned to neighborhoodbased

student assignments.

At a time when school systems around the country are coping with dramatic funding cuts, Wake

County’s decision regarding the district’s diversity plan will increase the school system’s

expenses in the short-term and will, more than likely, add greatly to the costs per successful

graduate over the long term. Ending the commitment to school integration may also make the

system ineligible for federal funding specifically tied to diverse schools. Ultimately, the

experience of other districts that have returned to neighborhood schools suggests that the costs of

segregation will linger. Neighborhood-based assignment plans tend to facilitate a situation where

white children access affluent schools with multiple assets, while black and Latino students

enroll in high-poverty, low-performing and unstable schools with few community resources.

Furthermore, since many metropolitan areas do not have enough schools in the center of urban

cores, and districts making decisions like Wake County may incur the expense of constructing

new, segregated schools that often are subjected to achievement sanctions almost as soon as they

open—requiring even more district resources.

We urge reconsideration of the decision to end Wake County’s diversity policy. We stand with

the many parents, students, teachers, civil rights activists, faith leaders, and members of the

business community in Wake County who oppose the school board's decision. In the coming

months, we offer our support and expertise to the district as it considers how to pursue highquality,

diverse schools that will prepare all of its students to be productive members of what we

hope will be a more integrated Wake County and nation.

Signatories:

(affiliations listed for identification purposes only)

Kevin Welner

Director, Education and the Public Interest Center

Professor, University of Colorado at Boulder

Richard D. Kahlenberg,

Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation

Gary Orfield

Professor of Education, Law, Political Science and Urban Planning

University of California, Los Angeles

Patricia Gándara

Professor of Education

University of California, Los Angeles

Erica Frankenberg

Research & Policy Director, Initiative on School Integration

Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles

University of California, Los Angeles

Genevieve Siegel-Hawley

Research Associate, Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles

University of California, Los Angeles

John powell

Director, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity

Professor, The Ohio State University

Andrew Grant-Thomas

Deputy Director, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity

Director, Transforming Race Conference

The Ohio State University

Susan Eaton

Researcher Director

Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice

Harvard Law School

Gina J. Chirichigno

Researcher/Coordinator

Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice

Harvard Law School

Tom Munk

Senior Education Analyst

Westat

Kirsten Kainz

Statistician/Research Assistant Professor

Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Beth Kurtz-Costes

Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies Department of Psychology

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Roslyn Arlin Mickelson

Professor of Sociology, Public Policy, Information Technology, and Women's Studies

UNC-Charlotte

Fatimah L.C. Jackson

Professor of Biological Anthropology

Director, Institute of African American Research

Amy Hawn Nelson

College of Education

UNC-Charlotte

Natasha K. Bowen

Associate Professor

School of Social Work

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

M. Monique McMillian-Robinson

Walden University/The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Rebecca High

Staff Attorney

Racial Justice Act Study

Heather A. Davis

Educational Psychology, Teacher Education

Dept. of Curriculum, Instruction, and Counselor Education

North Carolina State University

Matt Militello

Assistant Professor

College of Education: Leadership Policy, and Adult and Higher Education

North Carolina State University

Tamara Nimkoff

Research Analyst

Westat

Fay Cobb Payton

American Council on Education Fellow 2009-2010

Associate Professor of Information Systems, College of Management

North Carolina State University

Lori Krzeszewski

Curriculum & Instruction-Urban Education

UNC-Charlotte

Candy M Beal

Curriculum, Instruction & Counselor Education

Associate Professor

North Carolina State University

STORY TAGS: research, researchers, diversity, vote, wake, county, controversy, controversial, racial equality, social justice, civil rights, north carolina, schools, schooling, education, black, african, american, minority news, black radio network, race neutrality, policy

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