By Carol Chmelynski

4/23/02 – The San Francisco Unified School District has joined a small but growing number of school systems that are using socioeconomic factors rather than race as criteria in assigning students to schools to promote integration and raise student achievement.

The 60,000-student district has struggled with desegregation for decades. The district, one of the nation's most diverse, has a mix of Chinese, Latino, African American, white, and other students, and none constitutes a majority.

In 1983, San Francisco began limiting the student population at each school to no more than 45 percent of any one racial or ethnic group. But that plan was dropped in 1999 when a federal court settlement barred the district from using race as a factor in school assignments.

The district was still required to maintain desegregated schools. To comply, school officials have now come up with a "diversity index." This complex ranking system considers multiple factors, such as family income, standardized test scores, preschool experience for incoming kindergartners, mother's education level, home language, and the academic ranking of a student's previous school.

San Francisco school officials say the diversity index goes much further than previous efforts to balance school populations by class. Anthony Anderson, director of the district's educational placement center, says the new plan will help move disadvantaged students into better-off schools.

The idea has raised few objections from advocacy groups and others who oppose race-based admission plans.

Several smaller cities have enacted similar desegregation plans based on socioeconomic factors, including La Crosse, Wis.; Cambridge, Mass.; Manchester, Conn.; and Charlotte and Raleigh, N.C.

In addition to a series of court decisions that struck down school busing and other racial integration strategies, the drive toward economic integration reflects a growing belief that income is a stronger predictor of academic achievement than race.

"As a matter of improving academic achievement, having socioeconomic integration is more significant than having racial integration. Motivated students and active parents track more by class than race," says Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a New York-based research organization, and author of All Together Now: Creating Middle Class Schools through Public School Choice.

"Economically integrated schools will do far more to promote achievement and equal opportunity than vouchers, standards, class-size reduction, or any of the other leading education proposals on the Left and Right that seek to make 'separate but equal' schools work," Kahlenberg says.

The 1988 National Education Longitudinal Study found middle-income parents were four times more likely than low-income parents to belong to the PTA and twice as likely to contact their children's schools on academic matters.

Socioeconomic integration has worked well in the 10 years it's been in place in the 8,000-student La Crosse district, says Woody Wiedenhoeft, assistant superintendent for business services.

"Without it, we'd have some schools where up to 90 percent of the students live in poverty," he says. "Without mixing the kids up, the teachers, principals, and guidance counselors would end up spending a tremendous amount of time dealing with issues that come along with poverty instead of academic subjects."

"Often what is going on in school districts is essentially two programs–one for students in more well-off areas and another in the poorer sections," says Edwin Darden, NSBA's senior staff attorney. "There are advantages for all children in a mixed socioeconomic situation."

But Darden cautions school officials that socioeconomic integration can only work in districts that have a large number of middle-class students. In hard-pressed urban and rural districts, a disproportionate share of public school students is poor.

"You have to look at the demographic profile of your district," he says. "It certainly isn't something that is going to work everywhere."

NSBA's Council of Urban Boards of Education has just published From Desegregation to Diversity: A School District's Self-Assessment Guide on Race, Student Assignment, and the Law, by Darden and attorneys Arthur L. Coleman and Scott R. Palmer. Contact: (703) 838-6722.

Reproduced with permission from the Apr. 23, 2002, issue of School Board News. Copyright © 2002, National School Boards Association. Opinions expressed in this newspaper do not necessarily reflect positions of NSBA. This article may be printed out and photocopied for individual or educational use, provided this copyright notice appears on each copy. This article may not be otherwise transmitted or reproduced in print or electronic form without the consent of the Publisher. For more information, call (703) 838-6789.