Segregation by Race and Income Still Shapes Educational Opportunity in Virginia

All students — no matter what they look like or where they were born — benefit from diverse learning environments, where children can learn and play with peers from various backgrounds and learn to appreciate different perspectives. And students from lower-income communities benefit when there are more resources, such as tax dollars, stay-at-home-parent volunteers, and PTA fund drives, which are more commonplace in wealthy communities. This fact is not just common sense, it’s backed by research. We know that bias and unfair treatment exists within particular schools, but we also know that the major underfunding of opportunity for some students is made possible by the sorting of students into different schools through de facto housing segregation. And this didn’t happen by chance: public policy choices created much of this problem, and new public policy choices could undo it.

The benefits of more diverse schools include higher academic achievement, increased likelihood of going to college, better workforce preparation, and a greater likelihood of students having the school resources they need. To put it another way, when kids are in school together, it’s harder for policymakers and well-off parents to ignore the need for extra resources to help students from low-income families learn and thrive.

Virginia has the opportunity to create diverse school environments. More than half of Virginia students are students of color (21% Black, 20% Latino, 8% Asian American/Pacific Islander, and 7% multiple races). But many students have not been able to access opportunities to learn with peers who may bring different perspectives or the full array of benefits from this increasing diversity, because segregation in Virginia schools remains a significant challenge and is even getting worse by some measures. As TCI documented in our 2020 report about school segregation and resource equity, about 1 in 6 Black students (17%) in Virginia attended a school where at least 90% of their classmates were students of color in 2018-2019, compared to about 1 in 8 (13%) back in 2003-2004. The increase was even more dramatic for Latino students during that same time period. The share of Latino students attending a school with 90% or more students of color more than doubled, growing from 4% in 2003-2004 to 11% in 2018-2019.

This increase in de facto school segregation didn’t happen by chance. Beginning about 50 years ago, courts and policymakers largely turned their back on school desegregation, rejecting cross-district integration. And exclusionary zoning and limited affordable housing in communities of opportunity shut many families out of moving to better-funded school divisions. With little political opportunity to continue working for desegregation, advocates and parents turned to fighting for fairer access to resources for Black students and students from low-income families. But despite the hard work of students, parents, teachers, and community leaders, we’re still a very long way from fair school funding. Separate is still unequal in practice.

Making sure students have access to sufficient funding matters for student outcomes. This includes making sure there’s enough overall resources, known as resource adequacy, and that sufficient dollars are going to meet the needs of students facing the highest barriers, known as resource equity. And diverse learning environments also matter. In recent years, policymakers in Virginia have begun considering ways we can incentivize schools to increase diversity, including a proposal to measure progress toward integration and access to advanced coursework for underrepresented students as part of school accountability measures. National researchers have proposed a number of other interventions that schools and policymakers may consider. And breaking down barriers for families from low-income communities to increase access to housing options in high-opportunity neighborhoods would make a big difference.

Category:
Education