Schools in California are more divided between rich and poor than in 40 other states in the country, according to a new report. That segregation is occurring both between school districts and within them. Nationally, it’s worse than it was three decades ago.
This matters because schools with higher concentrations of students who qualify for free and reduced lunch tend to have higher teacher turnover rates and worse educational outcomes, said Stephen Owens, policy director for the Brown’s Promise project, which co-authored the study.
“I was a teacher for five years,” he said. “If you have one child in your 25 that you're teaching that's having a difficult time or who has a lot of needs that are being unmet at home, that can be treated as like, ‘OK, how can we support this human? If 20 of your 25 kids are disregulated ... It's hard to learn if so many of your classmates are dealing with those unmet needs.”
Owens suggested one of the most straightforward solutions would be to redraw district lines, or share resources across them.
“They were not handed down from Mount Sinai,” he said. “These were lines that were drawn at one point and can be redrawn or can have their impact lessened in children's lives.”
While redistricting might be costly short-term, it may be less expensive than the economic impacts of segregation in the long-term.
“If we don't do this, then not only is it a big moral issue,” said Raymond Pierce of the Southern Education Foundation, “but it becomes an economic issue as well.”
“Because these folks who have not had an opportunity to access, equal educational opportunities — what are we going to do?” he said. “Do they add to the rolls of the unemployed? Do they add to the rolls of the people who have no source of income, add to the rolls of the people who have no housing, add to the rolls of people that have inadequate health care? Absolutely. And all that becomes a tax on the nation and society as a whole.”
More states outranked California for racial segregation than economic segregation. The state ranked 25th nationally for segregation between white students and Black, Hispanic, and Native American students.
