Search Results

This chapter investigates the impacts of socioeconomic status (SES) integration in Wake County, North Carolina and Cambridge, Massachusetts. First, it provides a definition of SES integration, along with a brief discussion of how districts measure poverty status. This is followed by an examination of the political context surrounding the Wake County and Cambridge assignment plans, and an analysis of racial and SES enrollment data and student- achievement outcomes. The chapter concludes with a discussion of implications that might be drawn from SES integration in these two districts.

This chapter sets the case of Wake County into a broader national perspective by comparing it with a number of other urban and suburban jurisdictions. Particular attention is paid to understanding Wake's often-reported uniqueness. A typology of school districts is developed based on the characteristics critical to understanding both the breakdown in Wake's consensus and the efforts to move it away from the diversity assignment policy. Specifically, the urban and suburban jurisdictions are sorted into four cells based upon their variation in racial heterogeneity and civic life (or the extent to which residents have reserves of social capital). The role of population growth/decline and partisan politics in the experiences of these districts is also considered. Special emphasis is placed on a comparison with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district, also located in North Carolina. The analysis indicates that racial and socioeconomic heterogeneity and a robust civic life make Wake quite different from many other districts. Wake was able to sustain a diversity policy for an extended period of time while its growing population and more partisan local politics resulted in volatile policy making.

This chapter examines how Wake's school system and assignment policy changed after the establishment of a single countywide district in 1976. It discusses how the district achieved an early consensus regarding both the importance of diversity and of improving student educational outcomes. It also describes key strategies, such as magnets, that Wake County used to mix public schools. The chapter then investigates the root causes of the dissolution of consensus in an examination of the major demographic changes caused by dramatic population growth, the rise of the county's Republican Party, and the subsequent increased role of partisanship and ideology in local elections of all types. It demonstrates how divisions within the school board along partisan lines affected many issues, including funding and bond issuances. It describes the social and political events beginning around 2000 that set the stage for the 2009 election and, in turn, concerted efforts to change Wake's diversity assignment policy.

This chapter describes the decades of collaborative effort by lawyers, social scientists, and community members to pursue public school integration. Describing the Sheff v. O'Neill litigation and the developments ending the voluntary integration policy in Wake County, North Carolina, the chapter highlights the political and legal fragility of voluntary integration efforts, reminding us about the difficulty in maintaining support for integration and educational reform.

This chapter examine districts' use of “small-scale geography” to promote racial integration. Plans that use variations of geography and population characteristics are implemented in Wake County, North Carolina, and Berkeley, California. This chapter examines how Wake County manages nodes in student assignment, and investigates how Berkeley utilizes more than 440 planning areas in its integration efforts.

This chapter focuses on the general assignment policy of the Wake school board. It emphasizes that disagreements about the conflicting cultural models of public education were a leading cause of the breakdown of Wake's consensus. Wake initially assigned students in order to balance schools by race, but as districts across the country came under political and legal pressure to end the practice, the school board utilized socioeconomic status. Supporters argued that the approach was fair, essential to the system's overall academic achievement, made the area attractive to newcomers, and involved the busing of only a small proportion of students for diversity reasons. Advocating the neighborhood model, opponents argued that diversity restricted choice, caused hardship by assigning children far from their homes, undermined collective academic performance, and constituted a form of social engineering. The chapter presents survey results demonstrating that, although inversely correlated according to media coverage, respondent preferences for diversity and neighborhood schools were not diametrically opposed. The findings suggest that neighborhood schools had a high degree of support among many citizens, but a subset was also very supportive of diversity. This chapter also investigates diversity preferences by race and shows that African American views on school assignment policies were very different from whites' views.

This chapter focuses on public school assignments in Wake County, North Carolina. It begins by highlighting the importance of education as a placement mechanism in our society, as well as the importance of diversity in school assignments for promoting upward mobility. It then introduces social capital theory and examines how various types of social capital, including bridging, bonding, norms, and trust, operate within families and among families, schools, and communities. The chapter describes two models of public school assignment: one based on neighborhood schools, the other based on diversity. It demonstrates how heterogeneity in public school assignments and reliance on neighborhood schools relate to social capital in different ways. It also provides basic information on the size and geography of Wake County, which play a role in the county's school assignment policy change.

This chapter focuses on the events of the 2009 school board election and its aftermath. It begins by examining the 2009 campaign, which brought about the unified county system's first Republican-affiliated and conservative-leaning school board majority. It then discusses efforts of the new Republican-affiliated board majority to transform the school system's policies, particularly on general assignment. These were not completely successful and were often met with robust opposition. The chapter presents interview and survey data to explain citizen attitudes toward the school board. It demonstrates that residents were split in their support for the Republican-backed board. The findings provide an important part of an emerging picture regarding the lines along which Wake's consensus had dissolved.

This chapter examines Wake's considerable use of year-round schooling. Wake year-round school assignments started in 1989 as a cost-saving measure. Year-round schools began as an optional magnet program, but in 2006, with an exploding population and limited finances, the school board effectively made year-round schools mandatory in many rapidly growing communities. The policy presented significant challenges to many families and further antagonized school board opponents already disagreeable over assignment and other policies. It motivated them to become better organized, to support particular school board candidates, and to file a lawsuit against the board. This chapter presents survey and interview data to show citizen sentiments regarding year-round schools. The results demonstrate that wealthier residents with fewer children were more supportive of year-round schools, presumably because they were better positioned to manage the challenges posed by the schedule.

This concluding chapter briefly discusses the repudiation of the Republican-backed board in the 2011 and 2013 elections and the events in between. It summarizes the central findings and revisits the book's main themes with special attention being paid to social capital theory. It also speculates on the future of the county's public schools, particularly with regard to their assignment policy. Explosive population growth, elevated partisanship and politicization of local matters, and a growing and increasingly coordinated opposition to the existing school board majority and its decisions, particularly those surrounding diversity in student assignments, brought about tremendous change in board composition and many policies. The board elected in 2009 found governing difficult, and Republican control lasted only two years. Despite the establishment of a pro-diversity majority after 2011, however, the old policy was not immediately or completely revived.

This chapter examines the Wake school board's implementation of ad hoc student assignment decisions up until the watershed 2009 election. As growth accelerated after 2000, citizens became increasingly concerned about the implications of this for schools. Population growth was not uniform across the county and resources were limited and the board was committed to diversity. So more children from more neighborhoods were reassigned each year. This chapter argues that this generated such deep resentment among county residents that it was eventually marshaled into a fairly cohesive and potent opposition to the board and its policies more generally. Survey data show that respondents had three main concerns about frequent reassignment: it posed challenges to parents, presented dangers to child learning and friendships, and brought unsettling uncertainty to family life. The findings reveal a role for social capital and provide some interesting racial differences.