An imbalance grows in Cambridge schools
Placements based on income, not race
Five years after Cambridge began using family income instead of race to assign students to schools, the system has become more racially segregated, a Globe review of data shows.
Nearly 60 percent of Cambridge's 12 elementary schools are racially imbalanced, compared with less than 40 percent in 2001-02 before the new policy took effect. White students continue to be the largest racial group at four schools popular among white middle-class parents.
School districts across the nation are considering Cambridge's approach as an alternative after last month's Supreme Court ruling banned the use of race in Seattle and Jefferson County, Ky., desegregation plans.
But school leaders in Cambridge, one of the first cities in the nation to try income as an integration tool, urge others to proceed with caution as they search for a solution to keep them out of court. Income does not necessarily serve as a substitute for race and ethnicity, they say, even though most of their schools have achieved greater diversity in family income and a national report recently heralded the school district's policy as a model.
"Socioeconomic status comes the closest to accomplishing a mix of ethnic and racial diversity," said Thomas Fowler-Finn, Cambridge superintendent. "However, it is imperfect. The best would be to combine race and income in school choice."
Cambridge, a school system with 5,600 students who include recent immigrants, residents of public housing developments , and the offspring of Harvard professors, scrapped its 20-year-old race-based desegregation plan in 2002 because school system lawyers feared it would not pass muster if challenged in court. The student body is 36 percent black, 35.7 percent white, 14.7 percent Hispanic and 11 percent Asian, a makeup that district officials hope each school would reflect.
Schools, while more racially integrated five years ago, had wide income disparities. The percentage of students from low-income families ranged between 20 percent and 75 percent in the 2001-02 school year. Schools with the greatest proportion of low-income families also had lower test scores.
Nearly all principals and district officials supported distributing low-income students more evenly among schools in hopes that academic achievement would improve. High-poverty schools, according to education research, typically have less qualified teachers, lower expectations, low parent involvement, and high student mobility.
The policy was controversial among some middle-class parents who feared that an influx of low-income students would dilute their children's education because teachers would pay the most attention to those furthest behind. Other community members worried that families would be less likely to get their first choice school and wealthier parents would flee the district for private schools.
Under the plan, parents list their top three choices and are entered into two pools, depending on whether their children qualify for federally subsidized lunch, which serves as a common gauge of poverty. To qualify, a family's annual income, depending on its size, must range between $12,740 and $43,680; 45 percent of seats in each school are reserved for low-income students to reflect the district average. Schools could fluctuate 15 percent above or below that amount.
The plan was phased in, starting with incoming kindergartners in 2002 who will be in the fifth grade this fall. In addition, the school system closed, consolidated, and moved several schools, which also affected racial and ethnic demographics. Cambridge has only one high school, which was unaffected by the plan.
Principals and teachers launched citywide recruiting campaigns to improve the income and racial mix in their schools. Some from wealthier schools distributed flyers and school T-shirts at low-income housing developments and HeadStart preschools to attract poor families. Others from high-poverty schools recruited at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods and knocked on doors touting new programs such as Chinese to attract middle- and upper-class parents.
But the efforts to diversify schools have only been able to go so far because Cambridge allows parents to choose from all city schools.
"We don't force people into a school, and we don't prevent students from leaving a school," Fowler-Finn said.
Parents choose schools where they feel the most comfortable, and their choices often split along racial lines. Some high-poverty, mostly minority schools have low-income families on their waiting lists but have trouble filling spots reserved for middle-class students. And some higher income schools popular among middle class families have empty seats for low-income students.
"Even the best social engineering ideas get circumvented by people," said Scott Blaufuss, a stay-at-home father in Cambridge. "People tend to vote with their feet. If they don't like it, they leave."
Student achievement has risen in most schools, and schools' percentage of low-income families now range between 28 percent and 62 percent, better reflecting the district average. But white families have left many schools that received more low-income students.
"Some schools are predominantly minority and some people aren't looking for that," said Kenneth E. Reeves, Cambridge mayor and chairman of the school committee. "By the time some touring parents hit the classrooms, they are ready to go. There is a kind of tipping point."
At the Peabody School, students from low-income families now make up nearly half of the school, up from just over a quarter five years ago. Simultaneously, white students dropped from nearly half to just about a third of the students. Part of the reason, district leaders said, is that the school moved closer to a housing project.
"Most white Peabody parents pulled their children out of this school," said Irene Koronas, a painter whose grandchildren attend the Haggerty School but are slated to enter Peabody for seventh grade. "There were too many African-American students here for them. I think it's despicable. It's a problem in Cambridge."
Parents said that many white Peabody parents transferred to the more affluent Graham and Parks School, where a growing number of white students now make up half the school and where poverty levels have dropped from 38.1 percent to 28.3 percent. Middle-class parents who want their children to enter the school are now turned away because of the imbalance.
"It's very important for these kids to understand the sense of unity and equality through their childhood," said Mahmood Rezaei-Kamalabad, a mechanic and sculptor whose daughter attends Peabody. "If you're not teaching these kids at a young age not to discriminate and if their parents are saying, 'I don't want my children to go to school with your children,' what happens when they grow up and become in positions of power in politics?"
At Fletcher-Maynard Academy , seats reserved for middle-class parents remain empty even though low-income students are on the wait list. The school abuts several public housing developments and low-income apartments filled with mostly African-American, Caribbean, and Latino families. The school's poverty level has dropped from 71.1 percent to 61.8 percent, drawing more middle-class black families, said its principal, Robin Harris. The percentage of white families dropped from 23.7 percent to 13.8 percent.
As poverty dropped, Harris said, she has seen a rise in parent involvement, with nearly 98 percent of parents coming in for teacher conferences compared with less than 70 percent five years ago.
Despite its limited success at integration, Cambridge remains a good national model, said Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a public policy research group .
More than 40 school systems have moved toward socioeconomic integration, said Kahlenberg, author of a recent report on the subject. The districts have had varying success, depending on how the plans are implemented. While Cambridge made income a factor for all elementary schools, San Francisco only used income in over-subscribed schools, and did little to impact diversity in unpopular high-poverty schools, he said.
Roughly 20 Massachusetts school systems are reviewing their racial desegregation plans but none have decided whether to follow Cambridge's lead.
"More districts are going to be looking at income as a factor," Kahlenberg said, "particularly districts that have already been committed to racial integration and want to find a way to achieve some racial integration without running afoul of the Constitution."
Tracy Jan can be reached at tjan@globe.com. 