Why is it so important for us to be a socioeconomically diverse school?

In giving an overview of the draft of the ANCS strategic plan at the “state of the school” meeting a couple weeks ago, I spent some time talking about the history of socioeconomic diversity at our school.  There was an active effort on the part of the founding group of parents and teachers at our school to spread the word about the enrollment process far and wide in southeast Atlanta in order to attract a diverse applicant group.  As a public charter school where the only criteria for entry can be residency in the Atlanta Public School district followed by a random enrollment lottery, capturing diversity in the applicant pool has long been the only way to put a school in a position for achieving diversity in its student body.  In the first years of our school, the student population came close to reflecting the racial and socioeconomic diversity of students in southeast Atlanta as a whole, with the school’s percentage of students qualifying for free or reduced price lunch (FRL) over 35%, the threshold for Title I status.

Today, the socioeconomic profile of the student body at ANCS has begun to look significantly different.  Our middle school campus continues to hold its Title I status based on FRL percentage, but that may well go away after this school year.  And at the elementary campus where our school was founded, the FRL percentage hovers around 15%.

Why the reason for the shift in our socioeconomic diversity?  It’s a layered answer for sure with no single factor standing out.  Some might say that the income level of the neighborhoods from which we primarily draw students has changed over the past decade.  However, the numbers don’t seem to bear that out–when you look at a FRL percentage of close to 80% at another local elementary school (Parkside) with students from many of the same neighborhoods, it’s hard to think that shifting neighborhood demographics are the cause.

So if socioeconomic diversity exists around us, perhaps the level of outreach during the enrollment process that would help maintain that diversity at our school has waned.  That’s certainly part of the reason for the decline in our FRL numbers as we have not been as active in this area as in the early years, though we have taken steps in the past year to make sure a wider number of families are aware of our school.

A third argument has been that the approach to teaching and learning at ANCS works better for students from middle class income level families, and so, either families of lower income levels might not then even apply, or, if they do, their students will eventually leave the school to find a “better fit”.  But our low student attrition data suggests that students of all backgrounds are staying at the school once they’re in, and, as I wrote about in a blog post last year, the idea that certain ways of schooling work better (or worse) for students of different income levels is nonsense.

As a part of our strategic plan, we will be focusing this year on exploring the issues above and ways of addressing them so that we can be a more socioeconomically diverse school, ideally with a student FRL percentage school wide of around 35-50%.  Why?  For the same reasons that such diversity was so important to the founders of our school 12 years ago—to benefit students.

Our strategic plan draft lists as a part of our school’s mission that we “challenge each student to take an active role as an informed citizen in a global society”.  Learning with and from students of backgrounds different than one’s own is one way to live out that mission.  Research from “socioeconomically integrated” schools (that is, schools with FRL percentages in approximately the 35-50% range) has shown academic benefit to students of all races and socioeconomic status at such schools.  And numerous other studies demonstrate higher levels of empathy, civic participation, college graduation, and other positive indicators for students who attend socioeconomically and racially diverse K-12 schools.

A recent op-ed in The New York Times made the case for why seeking student diversity is in keeping with the sprit behind the original intent of charter schools as labs for public innovation.  Indeed, there are many public charter schools committed to being “diverse by design” and even recent guidance from the U.S. Department of Education gives room for charter schools to pursue different enrollment lottery policies in order to enroll more “educationally disadvantaged” students.

And so, like other charter schools across the country with similar missions, we will look to the different mechanisms available to us achieve and maintain socioeconomic diversity, especially as we work towards the renewal of our charter in 2016.  Of course, there are some who might raise the question that, with an already long wait list, won’t these efforts make it even harder for families to get into ANCS?  It is likely that they will.  And talking about race and class can no doubt be messy and complicated.  But the alternative–of keeping with the status quo and avoiding this work–does a disservice to our students now and in their futures.