Socioeconomics Replacing Race In School Assignments

Education Week (5/7, Zehr) reported, "A growing number of school districts are trying to break up concentrations of poverty on their campuses by taking students' family income into consideration in school assignments. Some of the districts replaced race with socioeconomic status as a determining indicator after the US Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that using race as the primary factor in assigning students to schools violates the Constitution." According to many experts, "the composition of a school's student body affects achievement." They say, for example, that "if black and Hispanic students, who are more likely to be poor, go to the same schools as their better-off white peers...they'll all do better and aspire to higher education." Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, "news reports and other sources" show that the number of "districts with socioeconomic-integration policies" has increased from 40 in 2007 to 70 now.