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School Segregation by Boundary Line in Virginia: Scope, Significance and State Policy Solutions

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School Segregation by Boundary Line in Virginia: Scope, Significance and State Policy Solutions School Segregation by Boundary Line in Virginia: Scope, Significance and State Policy Solutions Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, Kendra Taylor, Kimberly Bridges, Erica Frankenberg, Andrene Castro, Shenita Williams & Sarah Haden Report | November 2020 and Contents Introduction .........................................................................................................................................1 Key findings ..........................................................................................................................................3 Landscape of school enrollment and segregation related to boundary lines ...........4 Enrollment by race, poverty and locale, 2009-2018 ..................................................4 Segregation between and within school divisions .....................................................6 School segregation by elementary, middle and high school .............................. 11 Rezoning Trends from Sample of 28 Virginia Divisions ................................................... 12 Enrollment in sampled divisions that have undertaken or considered rezoning ............................................................................................................13 Segregation in sampled divisions that have undertaken or considered rezoning ............................................................................................................14 Rezoning policy in sampled divisions that have undertaken or considered rezoning ............................................................................................................15 What the literature says about segregation and school-related boundaries ......... 18 Relationship between housing and school segregation ....................................... 18 Significance of school boundaries ................................................................................ 20 School and neighborhood decisions related to school boundaries ................. 22 School decisions in a metropolitan context ............................................................... 23 Legal parameters for school related boundaries ..................................................... 25 Evidence-based recommendations to combat relationship between school rezoning and segregation ............................................................................................. 26 Appendix ..........................................................................................................................................A-1 Introduction School segregation by race and poverty is deepening in Virginia.1 In an era of swift demographic change in both cities and suburbs, alongside sharply rising inequality,2 renewed attention to the dynamics of segregation grows more import- ant. School district and attendance boundary lines that wall-off communities with highly differentiated wealth help structure segregation. Over time, these invisible boundaries acquire strong social meaning flowing from the unequal allocation of educational re- sources and, relatedly, the racial/ethnic and economic makeup of students who attend schools within them.3 Widely disparate exposure to school poverty is a central predictor of achievement gaps between White and Asian versus Black and Latinx students.4 Largely because of difficult working conditions, schools serving high concentrations of students of color and students in poverty experience higher rates of leader, teacher and student turnover.5 These schools also offer students fewer opportunities for advanced coursework and re- ceive inadequate funding relative to student need.6 Inequities in school resources are compounded by inequities in surrounding community contexts.7 Addressing segregating 1. Chris Duncombe, Unequal Opportunities (Richmond: Commonwealth Policy Institute, 2017), https://www.thecommonwealth- institute.org/2017/12/11/unequal-opportunities-sample-of-new-format-for-online-reports/. Siegel-Hawley et al., Miles to Go: A Report on Virginia School Segregation, 1989-2010 (Los Angeles: UCLA Civil Rights Project, 2013), https://civilrightsproject. ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/miles-to-go-a-report-on-school-segregation-in-virginia-1989-2010. It is also deepening nationally, according to a 2016 GAO report. See Government Accountability Office. (2016). Better Use of Information Could Help Agencies Identify Disparities and Address Racial Discrimination. Washington, DC. 2. Duncan, Greg and Richard Murnane, eds., Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances (New York: Russell Sage, 2011); Lewis-McCoy, L’Heureux, Inequality in the Promised Land: Race, Resources and Suburban Schooling (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2014) Pearman, Francis, Gentrification and Academic Achievement: A Review of the Research, Review of Educational Research 89(1) (2019). 3. Baker, Bruce and Corcoran, Sean, “The Stealth Inequities of School Funding” (Washington, DC: Center for American Prog- ress, 2012), https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2012/09/19/38189/the-stealth-inequities-of-school- funding/ 4. Reardon, S.F. (2015). School Segregation and Racial Academic Achievement Gaps, https://cepa.stanford.edu/content/ school-segregation-and-racial-academic-achievement-gaps 5. Simon, Nicole and Johnson, Susan Moore (2015). Teacher Turnover in High-Poverty Schools: What We Know and Can Do. Teachers College Record Volume 117 Number 3, p. 1-36 6. GAO, 2016; Johnson, Rucker, Children of the Dream (New York: Basic Books, 2019); Rooks, Noliwe, Cutting School (New York: The New Press, 2017). 7. Owens, Ann, Sean F. Reardon, and Christopher Jencks, “Income Segregation between Schools and School Districts,” American Educational Research Journal 53 (4) (2016):1159-1197. School Segregation by Boundary Line in Virginia | Page 1 mechanisms like school attendance zones and school division lines is thus critical to mit- igating unequal education opportunities. While school boundaries shape who goes to school with whom, they are not im- mutable—rather, they are politically constructed by the state board of education and local school boards vested with the authority to draw them. Unlike division boundaries, attendance boundaries are subject to regular change (e.g., whenever schools open or close, when capacity is too high or too low, etc.) by local board officials. The frequency with which boards take up attendance boundary shifts, which we refer to here as “rezon- ing,” offers a critical opportunity to either exacerbate segregation or further integration.8 Moreover, in a restrictive legal context, considering the neighborhood characteristics un- derlying school attendance boundaries is one of a handful of permissible race-conscious avenues for local education agencies interested in voluntarily promoting integration.9 This research brief explores the landscape of school segregation10 related to bound- ary lines in the state and in key regions. It also analyzes common rezoning criteria and policies in a large sample of Virginia school divisions. The brief then provides a con- densed overview of existing literature on school boundaries and segregation. Finally, it offers evidence-based recommendations for Virginia to combat the relationship between school-related boundaries and segregation. The research team has a wide range and depth of expertise in the areas of race, ed- ucation, law, civil rights, politics, school board governance, state and federal policy and consultancy around the technical aspects of school rezoning. We draw on numerous data sources, including federal and state school enrollment data, Virginia school board policies and media accounts related to rezoning. 8. We use the term integration with intention. School integration describes the complex and continuous process of bring students from different racial/ethnic (we will note when we also mean economic) backgrounds together in the same schools and class- rooms on equal footing. See, Martin Luther King, “The Ethical Demands of Integration,” in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, ed. James Washington (San Francisco: Harper, 1986) and john a. powell, “A New Theory of Integrated Education: True Integration,” in School Resegregation: Must the South Turn Back, eds. John Boger and Gary Orfield (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 281–304. 9. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District. 551 U.S. 701 (2007). 10. We also use the term segregation with intention. School segregation describes the racial/ethnic (we will note when we also mean economic) separation of students in different schools or classrooms. School Segregation by Boundary Line in Virginia | Page 2 Key findings • Students of color now make up a majority of Virginia’s K-12 enrollment (51.6%). • Past and present discrimination has helped dictate an uneven distribution of stu- dent enrollment by race among Virginia’s urban, suburban and rural/town areas. • Student poverty, as measured by eligibility for federal free or reduced priced lunch (FRL), has increased across all geographic locales. It remains highest in Virginia’s urban schools (54% of students qualified for FRL in 2018), moderately high in rural schools (41%) and lowest in suburban schools (31%). • Segregation between schools in the same division contributes to half or more of all multiracial school segregation in Virginia’s metropolitan regions, including Cen- tral Virginia (56%), Tidewater
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