Testimony: D.C. Charter Schools Should Use Weighted Lotteries to Promote Integration by Halley Potter

On April 4, 2019, TCF senior fellow Halley Potter and policy associate Kimberly Quick submitted testimony for the D.C. Council Budget Oversight hearing on the District of Columbia Public Charter School Board. Potter and Quick joined advocates and leaders of diverse charter schools in calling for the D.C. Council to amend the District’s charter school law to allow some schools to employ weighted lotteries to promote integration. Kimberly Quick’s testimony may be viewed here (at roughly the 2:32 mark). Halley Potter’s written testimony is provided below.

Dear Chairman Grosso, members of the Committee on Education, and the Committee of the Whole,

My name is Halley Potter. I am a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy think tank with offices in Washington, D.C. and New York City. I am also the coauthor, with my colleague Richard D. Kahlenberg, of A Smarter Charter: Finding What Works for Charter Schools and Public Education (Teachers College Press, 2014), and a former D.C. charter school teacher. I am submitting written testimony to explain the benefits of allowing weighted lotteries in charter school admissions for the purpose of promoting integration and to encourage the council to amend D.C.’s charter school law to explicitly allow such lotteries.

The Case for Encouraging Racial and Socioeconomic Diversity in D.C. Schools

Five decades of research suggest that racial and socioeconomic integration is one of the best design principles for creating successful schools that produce strong results for students and society.¹ Students in diverse schools have higher average test scores and graduation rates than peers of similar backgrounds attending schools with concentrated poverty.² The experience of learning in integrated classrooms alongside peers with different experiences, perspectives, and abilities helps to reduce racial bias and increase creativity, motivation, deeper learning, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills.³ Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall famously wrote, “Unless our children begin to learn together, there is little hope that our people will ever begin to live together.”⁴ Research backs this idea. According to one study, students who attend racially diverse high schools are more likely to live in diverse neighborhoods five years after graduation.⁵

Unfortunately, while the benefits of diverse schools are well documented, segregated schools nevertheless remain a reality across much of the country, including in D.C. The overall proportion of students in D.C. who are considered at-risk (those who are eligible for aid from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, are homeless or in the foster system, or are a year or more behind in school) is declining, and currently about half of all public school students in district and charter schools are considered at-risk. These demographics in theory create the conditions under which more district and charter schools in the city can have economically integrated enrollment, with a mix of at-risk students and non-at-risk peers. However, few individual schools reflect this overall economic diversity. According to an analysis by the D.C. Policy Center, a majority of D.C. schools have become less economically diverse—moving farther away from an even mix of at-risk and not-at-risk students—or have seen no change in their economic diversity in recent years.⁶

The Benefits of Using Weighted Lotteries to Promote Integration in Charter Schools

The city’s unified school lottery system, My School DC, has helped to address some of the equity challenges associated with school choice, including standardizing application processes and creating a central portal for families to apply to schools. However, as a recent article in the Washington Post notes, the unified lottery has not been enough to make meaningful progress in decreasing racial and socioeconomic segregation in D.C. schools.⁷

Allowing consideration of diversity factors in the lottery, including in admission for charter schools, could help improve the lottery’s performance with regard to promoting integration. Weighted lotteries and “set-aside” policies⁸ that give priority to, or reserve seats for, particular groups of students based on diversity-related factors can be powerful tools for achieving diverse enrollment in charter schools, magnet schools, and other schools that use lottery-based admissions.⁹ Weighted lotteries are especially helpful when the diversity of the applicant pool has become imbalanced in a way that is hard to correct through recruitment alone. For example, if many middle-class families find out about a given school through their social networks, that school may still end up with a lottery pool tilted heavily toward more advantaged families, even if it devotes significant energy to recruiting low-income families.

The use of weighted lotteries could be a particularly effective strategy for maintaining diversity and advancing educational equity in the city’s dual language immersion programs. The popularity of these programs among English-dominant families risks displacing English-learning students. This risks becoming a multifaceted tragedy. First, as these programs become more English-dominant, they become less linguistically integrated. Second, they also become less effective for English learners. Research increasingly shows that integrated, “two-way” dual language immersion programs are uniquely beneficial for advancing ELs’ academic development and helping them learn English. Finally, these programs work best for helping English-dominant children become bilingual when they are enrolled with native speakers of the program’s other language—usually Spanish. As English-dominant families displace native Spanish-speaking (or Mandarin-speaking, or French-speaking, as the case may be) students from these programs, they undermine the programs’ effectiveness for helping all students become bilingual. D.C. is fortunate to enroll a linguistically diverse student body; as such, any expansion of dual language immersion programs should prioritize this linguistic integration before opening any “one-way” language immersion programs primarily targeted at English-dominant families.¹⁰

Charter schools in D.C. do not currently have the option of using weighted lotteries to promote integration. D.C.’s public charter school law has been interpreted to prohibit any preferences other than those specifically enumerated, which address siblings, children of the public charter school’s founding board, children of full-time employees, and, for select schools, students with an Individualized Education Program (IEP) or disability. The enumerated preferences do not include socioeconomic status, students’ home languages or English proficiencies, or other educational risk factors.¹¹

Precedent for Using Weighted Lotteries in Other States

According to a new analysis of state charter school policies by The Century Foundation, two-thirds of all states with charter school laws (29 out of 43 states plus the District of Columbia) allow charter schools to implement weighted lotteries that could be used to encourage integration—either by explicitly allowing such preferences or by remaining silent on the issue. The District of Columbia is part of the minority, along with fourteen states, in prohibiting the use of such lotteries.¹²

State charter school laws and policies that affirmatively allow weighted lotteries may be constructed in a variety of ways. Table 1 provides some examples. One state with a weighted lottery policy that is clearly written to support integration is New Jersey, which specifies that charter schools “may seek approval from the Commissioner to establish a weighted lottery that favors educationally disadvantaged students… in an effort to better represent a cross-section of the community’s school-age population.”¹³

Table 1

Different Diversity Factors That May Be Considered in Weighted Lotteries

The diversity factors that are considered most frequently in weighted lotteries are related to socioeconomic status (such as eligibility for free or reduced-price lunch; eligibility for other public assistance programs, such as TANF, SNAP, and/or Medicaid; participation in Section 8 or residence in public housing; self-reported household income; or parental educational attainment), but other types of factors can promote integration as well. For example, dual language immersion schools with weighted lotteries based on students’ home languages can also promote integration by language, resulting in classrooms that include a mix of students who are native English speakers and those who use the target language at home; they also often functionally promote racial and socioeconomic diversity.¹⁴

Table 2

Table 2 lists examples of many different factors that have been used in weighted lotteries in charter and district schools studied by The Century Foundation, including both student-level characteristics (typically determined either by family self-reporting or by matching student information with district records) and neighborhood-level characteristics (typically determined by matching a student’s home address with an analysis of data for that census block). Table 3 lists examples of charter and district schools that use weighted lotteries to promote diversity.

Table 3

Time for the D.C. Council to Act

Research clearly shows that integrated schools benefit all people. D.C. currently has the public school demographics to support more integrated enrollment, but current school enrollment policies do not adequately support diversity. I urge D.C. to join a majority of states in allowing charter schools to use weighted lotteries as one tool to promote school integration.

Thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony.

Sincerely,

Halley Potter
Senior Fellow

1. See Amy Stuart Wells, Lauren Fox, and Diana Cordova-Cobo, “How Racially Diverse Schools and Classrooms Can Benefit All Students,” The Century Foundation, February 9, 2016, https://tcf.org/content/report/how-racially-diverse-schools-and-classrooms-can-benefit-all-students/.
2. NAEP Data Explorer, National Assessment for Educational Progress, 2017, nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/naepdata/; C. Lubienski and S. T. Lubienski, “Charter, private, public schools and academic achievement: New evidence from NAEP mathematics data,” National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, January 2006; and Gregorgy Palardy, “Differential school effects among low, middle, and high social class composition schools,” School Effectiveness and School Improvement 19, no. 1 (2008): 37.
3. Rebecca Bigler and Lynn S. Liben, “A developmental intergroup theory of social stereotypes and prejudices,” Advances in Child Development and Behavior 34 (2006): 39–89. T. F. Pettigrew, and L. R. Tropp, “A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup Contact Theory”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, no. 5 (2006), 751–83. See also J. Boisjoly, G. J. Duncan, M. Kremer, D. M. Levy, and J. Eccles, “Empathy or antipathy? The impact of diversity,” American Economic Review 96, no. 5 (2006): 1890–1905; S. E. Page, The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8757.html; M. Chang, “The Educational Benefits of Sustaining Cross-Racial Interaction Among Undergraduates,” The Journal of Higher Education 77, no. 3 (May/June 2006): 430, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jhe/summary/v077/77.3chang.html; M. J. Chang, “The Positive Educational Effects of Racial Diversity on Campus,” in Diversity Challenged: Evidence on the Impact of Affirmative Action, ed. G. Orfield and M. Kurlaender (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Education Publishing Group, 2001), 175–86, http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED456190; M. Chang et al., ed., Compelling Interest; P. Y. Gurin, “Expert Witness Report in Gratz et al. v. Bollinger et al,” 1998, http://diversity.umich.edu/admissions/legal/expert/gurintoc.html; K. Phillips, “How Diversity Makes Us Smarter,” Scientific American 311, no. 4 (October 2014), http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-smarter/; A. L. Antonio, M. J. Chang, K. Hakuta, D. A. Kenny, S. Levin, and J. F. Milem, “Effects of racial diversity on complex thinking in college students,” Psychological Science 15, no. 8 (2004): 507–10; Brief of Amicus Curiae 553 Social Scientists, Parents Involved v. Seattle School District 551 U.S. 701 (2007) (No. 05-908); P. Marin, “The educational possibility of multi-racial/multi-ethnic college classrooms,” in Does Diversity Make a Difference? Three Research Studies on Diversity in College Classrooms (Washington, D.C.: American Council on Education & American Association of University Professors, 2000), 61–68.
4. Thurgood Marshall, Milliken v. Bradley, dissenting opinion, 1974, available at https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Milliken_v._Bradley/Dissent_Marshall.
5. Kristie J. R. Phillips, Robert J. Rodosky, Marco A. Muñoz, and Elisabeth S. Larsen, “Integrated Schools, Integrated Futures? A Case Study of School Desegregation in Jefferson County, Kentucky,” From the Courtroom to the Classroom: The Shifting Landscape of School Desegregation, ed. Claire E. Smrekar and Ellen B. Goldring (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2009), 239–70.
6. Chelsea Coffin, “Landscape of Diversity in D.C. Public Schools,” D.C. Policy Center, December 17, 2018, https://www.dcpolicycenter.org/publications/landscape-of-diversity-in-dc-public-schools/.
7. Thomas Toch, “The Lottery That’s Revolutionizing D.C. Schools,” Washington Post Magazine, March 20, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/magazine/wp/2019/03/20/feature/the-lottery-thats-revolutionizing-d-c-schools/?utm_term=.82cf9bc5dc29.
8. Admissions procedures for charter schools that receive money through the federal Charter Schools Program are typically limited to weighted lotteries that give “slightly better chances” for admission to educationally disadvantaged students. Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA), Pub. L. No. 114–95 §4303 (2015), https://www.congress.gov/114/plaws/publ95/PLAW-114publ95.pdf. For information on “set-aside” admissions plans, see “New York Appleseed Statement on Set-Aside Admissions Plans for Individual Schools,” New York Appleseed, accessed May 9, 2019, https://www.nyappleseed.org/new-york-appleseed-statement-set-aside-admissions-plans-individual-schools/.
9. For more information on weighted lotteries and other strategies for diverse enrollment, see Halley Potter, “Recruiting and Enrolling a Diverse Student Body in Public Choice Schools,” The Century Foundation, January 29, 2019, https://tcf.org/content/report/recruiting-enrolling-diverse-student-body-public-choice-schools/.
10. See Conor Williams, “Improving Equitable Access to Dual Language Immersion Charter Schools in Washington, D.C.,” The Century Foundation, January 23, 2019, https://tcf.org/content/commentary/improving-equitable-access-dual-language-immersion-charter-schools-washington-d-c/.
11. See D.C. Code § 38–1802.06.
12. Halley Potter and Miriam Nunberg, “Scoring States on Charter School Integration,” The Century Foundation, April 4, 2019, https://tcf.org/content/report/scoring-states-charter-school-integration/.
13. See NJ Rev. Stat. § 6A:11-4.5.
14. Conor Williams, “Improving Equitable Access to Dual Language Immersion Charter Schools in Washington, D.C.,” The Century Foundation, January 23, 2019, https://tcf.org/content/commentary/improving-equitable-access-dual-language-immersion-charter-schools-washington-d-c/.
15. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools vs. Seattle School District No. 1 limited the ability to voluntarily consider race in K–12 school integration policies (when districts or schools are not under legal desegregation orders). (However, school districts may still voluntarily adopt race-based integration strategies, using either generalized or individual student data, under certain circumstances.) School districts are generally required first to consider whether workable race-neutral approaches exist for achieving their integration goals. For more information on the voluntary consideration of race to promote school diversity, see https://school-diversity.org/postpicsresources/.
16. “Admissions,” Brooklyn Prospect Charter School, accessed May 9, 2019, https://www.brooklynprospect.org/admissions/; and Penny Marzulli, personal communication with the author, December 11, 2018.
17. “Magnet Schools—Elementary,” Chicago Public Schools, Office of Access and Enrollment, October 4, 2018, https://cps.edu/AccessAndEnrollment/Pages/MagnetSchoolsElementary.aspx.
18. “Community Roots Charter School Lottery & Admissions Policies,” Community Roots Charter School, accessed May 9, 2019, https://1.cdn.edl.io/LY6ljbi3ILoVKsZS4MW0B2Mqc8q1DE68uuUMdJbffWxa085u.pdf.
19. “2019-20 SY Choice School Selection Process Frequently Asked Questions and Answers,” Office of Transformation and Innovation, Dallas Independent School District, accessed May 9, 2019, https://www.dallasisd.org/cms/lib/TX01001475/Centricity/Domain/14055/19-20%20SY%20Choice%20School%20Selection_Frequently%20Asked%20Questions%20and%20Answers.pdf.
20. Halley Potter, “Updated Inventory of Socioeconomic Integration Policies: Fall 2016,” The Century Foundation, October 14, 2016, https://tcf.org/content/commentary/updated-inventory-socioeconomic-integration-policies-fall-2016/.

Tags: school diversity, socioeconomic diversity, school integration, racial diversity, k-12 education, testimony