When it comes to segregation, most New Jerseyans don’t see a problem: Just 12 percent of voters say the schools where they live are segregated, and just 19 percent say they want more racial diversity in their neighborhoods, according to a recent poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Yet the reality is, New Jersey’s schools are among the most segregated in America, researchers note – more segregated than Alabama or Mississippi’s. So why don’t people perceive that? And how might this affect the politics of integration, as civil rights activists in New Jersey sue the state over its segregated schools?
We asked Halley Potter, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation who’s studied in school integration for more than a decade. Below is an edited transcript.
Q. Why are schools here more segregated than in Alabama or Mississippi?
A. One factor is the way the state has been divided into so many different school districts. For a relatively small state, New Jersey has more than 600 districts; compare that to Florida, which has just about 70. These small units of school decision-making and funding end up creating lines of segregation that divide students by race, by income and have profound effects on their opportunities. And it’s very hard for students or dollars to cross those district lines.
Q. What do you make of this poll that found most Jerseyans don’t think their schools are segregated?
A. On a national level, most Americans do see segregation as a problem in our schools, so it’s surprising and troubling to see the numbers so low for New Jersey. One hypothesis is that a lot of people in northern states might think of segregation as a problem nationally, but not realize that a lot of the school segregation is right in their own backyard. It may also be that some people consider their schools to be integrated because they reflect their communities, but the communities themselves are highly segregated. I also see echoes of the strong grades that Americans give to their children’s schools even when they see problems in education at large.
Q. Families support the idea of racial and economic school integration in other surveys, regardless of race or class. So why do white families resist integration?
A. Even where there’s general support for integration in polls, when you ask questions like, would you support sending your child to a more diverse school if it required a greater commute time, or anything that requires a trade-off, you see the support start to really decline. So, I think that’s one of the challenges for school integration: You get a lot of head-nodding for the bigger issue, but when the rubber hits the road, people can be scared to make changes to their local schools. It can lead to a zero-sum mindset: A lot of white families are worried that plans to change enrollment to increase integration are going to somehow result in their children getting less. But one thing the data on school integration shows is that there really are benefits to students of all different backgrounds.
Q. Is there growing resistance to integrated schools among Black families?
A. The data I’ve seen shows there’s still a lot of support among Black communities for school integration. But we also need to acknowledge the very real concerns and history of challenges around school integration and the ways Black communities and families have sometimes been harmed or not listened to in past integration efforts. There’s a real effort now to do this in a different way, to center the voices of leaders and communities of color and bring our conversations about resources and funding and enrollment and integration together. The gaps we see in opportunities for students are about both the high levels of segregation in school enrollment and the inequities in terms of funding. Trying to address only one of those things, the funding, has proven over decades to be unsuccessful.
Q. New Jersey’s school funding formula directs more state aid to districts with English language learners and low-income students. How does that factor into this debate?
A. New Jersey is on a stronger footing than many other states; it does have a progressive funding formula. Although I would argue there’s still more that could be done to make that formula better. But even if New Jersey could fix all that, does it really solve the problem? The outcomes we see so far suggest that this alone probably isn’t enough. You go back to the language of Brown v. Board of Education; we just haven’t seen separate ever be truly equal.
Part of that has to do with the ways in which resource inequity can creep in despite the best efforts to equalize things. There could be other factors, like PTA funding or quality of facilities, that you need to factor in. And having diverse groups of students in a space is itself a resource that they deserve equitable access to. Some of the most interesting recent data on this comes from researcher Raj Chetty, looking at the ways it benefits a low-income child to be able to have friendships across socioeconomic lines and how that can lead to economic opportunities down the road. Those things can’t be created with school funding formulas alone. School integration can be one of the most cost-effective strategies for trying to boost student achievement.
Q. What are the best ways to desegregate schools without eliciting backlash and white flight?
A. One really promising strategy is controlled choice. This usually lets families rank their school options; some might choose the schools closest to them as their top choices, others might be more interested in a school with strong offerings for STEM courses or an arts focus. Then families’ choices are weighed together with an enrollment algorithm designed to make sure all schools end up within a certain range of the overall diversity of the community. Through a process like that, you can end up with schools that are much more reflective of the overall community and still give families different options.
In New Jersey, where so much segregation is happening across district lines, a key part of this conversation needs to be at the state level, to see if there are ways to create bigger combined districts or allow students to move across boundaries. One of the most successful examples of this is in Connecticut: Because of a state Supreme Court case, there have been efforts to desegregate the schools in Hartford city and the surrounding suburban districts. As a result, they’ve gone from having roughly 10% of Hartford students attending integrated schools to having about half of students now getting that opportunity. Magnet schools in the city and surrounding suburbs can draw students in both directions. That’s one of the things I think could be really promising in New Jersey.
Q. Do you think you can sell a solution like that when most people don’t even see a problem?
A. It’s clear that there needs to be more education in the state on the problem, but it’s also really important to get people excited about the alternative. You see a lot of interest among families in suburban communities surrounding Hartford city that are excited to attend interdistrict magnet schools. A portion may be motivated because they understand the high levels of segregation in their communities, but in many cases, the driving factor is access to a different learning environment that they see as a benefit for their child.
Q. Otherwise, segregation can be self-perpetuating, right? Affluent parents tend to look at test scores and decide to send their kids to school with other affluent families.
A. Absolutely. If you have choice without elements to promote diversity, then that choice itself ends up just creating more and more segregated schools. When schools that are more segregated with low-income students and students of color are getting fewer resources and not showing good test results, that creates a downward spiral of school perception.
There’s also a fear sometimes among families of not wanting their child to be the only one of a particular racial group in a school. That means that even if there are some elements of school choice, in terms of either picking schools or picking where to live, some families may not feel like everything is actually a true choice for them. With controlled choice programs, families know all the schools in their region are going to have certain levels of diversity, so they can actually start to make choices based on other factors.
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