Integration: What is it good for?

How do the FAIR schools in Crystal and downtown Minneapolis exemplify integration? It sounds like a simple question for a magnet school run by the West Metro Education Program – a collaboration between 10 suburban districts and Minneapolis Public Schools, whose purpose it is to encourage school integration and equity.

But the question was met with a blank look from FAIR school principal Kevin Bennett. “What do you mean by integration?” Bennett asked. “People tend to use integration, diversity and equity in a lot of different ways. It would be nice to see what the stated goal is in terms of integrating the school.”

Bennett hit the nail on the head. Finding an agreed-upon definition of what integration is and why we should want it is surprisingly difficult, which may be part of the reason so many integration programs are under attack: legislators voted this summer to repurpose state funding used to integrate schools; Eden Prairie superintendant Melissa Krull was forced to resign after she changed the district’s attendance boundaries to encourage integration; and St. Paul is moving away from its magnet programs in favor of neighborhood schools.

Before we decide whether we’re going to throw away programs functioning under the integration marquee or fight for them, it seems worthwhile to pause and ask ourselves what is integration and why would we want it?

First, does segregation exist?

Non-white students are no longer explicitly forced to attend certain schools based on the color of their skin, but school attendance zones, neighborhood segregation and parent choice continue to create racially and economically concentrated schools. For example, in Minneapolis, where 32.9 percent of students are white, there exist schools like Hale, Burroughs and Lake Harriet, where more than 75 percent of students are white. Or Andersen, Cityview and Nellie Stone Johnson, where more than 95 percent of students are not.

Suburban districts are increasingly seeing similar trends. In Eden Prairie, where most schools enrolled less than 25 percent low-income students, Forest Hills elementary was more than 40 percent low-income. Former superintendent Melissa Krull re-drew attendance boundaries to integrate the school by income, which also resulted in increased racial integration. Parent protests led to a buyout of her contract in September.

You can see segregation on a large scale by looking at the difference in racial composition between neighboring school districts, which led to the creation of inter-district collaborations like the WMEP. Or you can find it on a smaller scale, by noticing the difference between lower-level and higher-level high school course enrollments.

Race and poverty certainly are not the same thing, but they’re related. In 2010 27.2 percent of Minnesotans of color fell below the poverty line, compared to 8.4 percent of white Minnesotans. Although historically, integration efforts have aimed to de-segregate racially concentrated schools, the conversation is turning more and more towards economics and even test scores. St. Paul’s new strategic plan will reserve 20 percent of seats in low-poverty schools for kids from neighborhoods with high proportions of low-income students who score low on state tests.

Does it really matter who kids sit next to?

Researcher Thomas Luce from the University of Minnesota’s Institute on Race and Poverty says it does. He said integrated schools could help the metro area better cope with rapidly changing demographics. In 1990, 9.3 percent of metro area residents were people of color – in 2010, it was 23.6 percent. Luce said racially and economically diverse communities tend to be unstable; they’re transitioning from being mostly white to mostly brown. In many cases, long term white community members startled by the change begin to leave the neighborhood. The transition can snowball as the flight of neighbors convinces more people that the neighborhood is in fact unstable.

Stable schools can slow the transition. Luce said that in a regionally integrated system, where schools look similar no matter what neighborhood you’re in, white flight doesn’t happen so quickly. That’s why he said housing policy has to be tied to school policy, for example by constructing more affordable housing in affluent communities.

But as schools’ resources shrink, neighborhood stability isn’t at the top of most districts’ priorities. Achievement is. In 2011 the state distributed $91 million in integration revenue meant to increase interracial contacts and improve educational opportunities in schools. During the summer’s budget negotiations legislators mandated that that funding be repurposed to address achievement instead of integration. On February 15, an integration revenue task force will submit recommendations for how the funding should be used to the legislature.

Many studies say achievement and integration are closely connected. Roslyn Mickelson, a professor from the University of North Carolina, helped create the Spivack archive, a database containing more than 400 studies related to the effects of school demographics on students. She testified before the task force, saying that hundreds of studies link integrated schools to higher test scores, graduation rates and entrance into college. She cited studies that show high-poverty schools tend to have higher teacher turnover than integrated schools and fewer opportunities for students to network with academically oriented peers. She said that although lower-income minorities benefit most, even higher-income white students benefit from integration.

Integration clearly isn’t the only path to high scores and college. Seed-Harvest preparatory school, a charter whose students are mostly low-income and African or African American, scored significantly higher than the state average on Minnesota math tests.

George Mason University professor David J. Armor also testified before the task force, citing research that said integration does not make a significant difference in achievement. Mickelson said he relied on outdated research.

Is physical integration enough?

One of Luce’s proposals to the task force suggests that districts receive a dollar amount for each student who makes a pro-integrative move within or outside of the district, and for each student who attends a physically integrated school.

But putting kids together is only a first step, and social, rather than academic, benefits drive many parents to send their kids to diverse schools.

Sharon Goens and Mary Ann Bradley are transferring their African American 4th-grader to the FAIR school in Crystal, because they want her to be able to advocate for herself – something they didn’t feel she would learn at the racially diverse Seward community school she had been attending. Seward is 53 percent non-white, with a large number of African and African American students.

The mid-year transfer came after what the parents described as painful and inadequate exchanges with school staff about race.

“I have found an abysmal lack of interest in talking about race by many factors,” said Goens. “It’s not blatant racism. It’s more unwillingness to engage.”

Bradley said the school seemed interested in finding out what immigrant families needed, but didn’t listen to longer-term families of color. She said family engagement often meant a free meal instead of an authentic conversation, which was particularly frustrating for their family, which is not low-income.

At FAIR, students say they talk about race regularly. “A conversation about race will pop up at least once or twice a week,” said Jamir Hopson, a junior from Minneapolis attending FAIR downtown. And it’s not just in social studies. Skye G., a 9th grader who lives in Crystal, said that in a recent math class, she studied the rate at which non-white students receive curfew tickets. Every year 8th grade English and social studies classes open a wall between classrooms and spend a quarter in “the big room” talking about race.

“I think our talks about race in an open environment have helped me talk more about what I’m going through,” said Hopson, who is black. “If I didn’t talk about it, I would learn to adapt to it and think it’s right.”

“I’m almost positive that if me and Maddie just went to Eden Prairie together, me and Maddie would probably never have a conversation once,” said Hopson, referring to his white classmate, Madeleine Bertch, whose resident district is Eden Prairie. The two of them have a spoken word class together, where they say they’ve learned a lot about each other’s backgrounds.

The downtown school adopted the FAIR school Crystal’s model of focusing on integration through the arts three years ago, after being criticized for its high concentration of low-income and non-white students. Students complete traditional coursework during the first part of the day, and take art classes during their last two hours.

What happens if Minneapolis leaves?

Minneapolis submitted a withdrawal notice to WMEP in January, in order to have flexibility of involvement, depending on what happens with integration revenue. Integration revenue is only about three percent of the money students bring to the FAIR schools. The rest comes from basic state aid, local levies and other state aids like compensatory funds and Title 1. That money, minus the three percent in integration revenue would still come with enrolled students whether or not Minneapolis participated in WMEP and whether or not WMEP received integration revenue. A loss of integration revenue would be more likely to affect programs like the cultural competency trainings WMEP offers to member districts and requires FAIR teachers to complete.

Bradley and Goens don’t know yet whether FAIR will be right for their daughter, but Bradley said, “It’s hard to imagine a place where there’s an issue [addressed that’s] so important to us and so critical for our daughter in knowing how to advocate for herself.”

Alleen Brown

Alleen Brown (alleenbrown@tcdailyplanet.net or Twitter @AlleenBrown) is a freelance writer from Minneapolis.