We all want the best for our children. We value diversity and want to instill in our children a love for all people regardless of race or ethnicity. But how do these values guide how we choose a school for our child? A recent study from the Making Caring Common project at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education found a conflict between the beliefs and actions of white parents on school integration:
Our research suggests that the vast majority of parents across political affiliation, race, class, and geographic region strongly favor schools that are racially and economically integrated.
But unfortunately, this doesn’t translate into action. In districts where parents actually have a choice, schools tend to become more segregated, not less. For example, White, affluent parents often choose schools based on the number of White, affluent students in attendance.
First off, let’s admit that talking about race, especially our own racial beliefs and biases, causes white people to become very defensive. If you want to read more about why it is hard for white people to talk about racism, check out White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo.
As I dive into this discussion I want to give you an eye into the school choice decisions that my wife and I have made with our two daughters. It started fifteen years ago, where my wife and I were living in southwest Littleton, and we found out my wife was pregnant with our first daughter. Well-meaning parents told us that we had to get our daughter on the waitlist for Dennison Elementary School in Jeffco because that would feed into the best high school, D’Evelyn. We were so surprised because our daughter wasn’t even born yet and because we lived in the suburbs, our neighborhood school must be good enough.
We didn’t waitlist our daughter for Dennison Elementary and the year before kindergarten, we started to look into our neighborhood elementary, Stony Creek. But before our oldest was ready for kindergarten, we moved to Champaign, Illinois for my job. Champaign had a long history of racial tension and this impacted the schools. Because of a consent decree to integrate the schools, our oldest started kindergarten at an integrated elementary school. This started our family on the journey of diving deeper into our own white privilege and systemic racism. We soon experienced the strange looks of white families when we said we were moving to the north side of town which was majority black. We saw the benefits for our daughter of being in an integrated school and building relationships with students who were different than her. It was also apparent the inequity of resources and educational pathways for students of color. These experiences in Champaign won us over to the idea of integrated schools.
Then we moved back to Colorado in 2012 and chose Edgewater because it was close to my job. We looked into our neighborhood school because we wanted our daughters to be able to walk to school. We were also excited that our neighborhood school was not majority white.
On a personal note, I attended schools in Indiana and then Arapahoe High School in Littleton, Colorado that were over 95% white. I knew the impacts of growing up in majority white environments on my own racial prejudices and wanted our daughters to grow up differently.
Our daughters both attended their neighborhood elementary school in Edgewater, Lumberg Elementary School, and are now both at Jefferson Junior/Senior High School. Our daughters received a great education at Lumberg Elementary and are now receiving the same at Jefferson. But we still get strange looks from community members and even teachers when we say our daughters are attending Jefferson. Why is this?
As I’ve talked to community members over the years, I’ve heard stories even as far back as the 1970s that if you wanted the best for your student, send them to Lakewood or Wheat Ridge, not Jefferson.
The more I hear these stories and listen to the experiences of others, the more I am convinced that we need to have an honest conversation in Edgewater, and even broader in Jefferson County, around how school choice is impacted by race.
Though we say that we believe in diversity and integrated schools, how does the racial makeup of a school impact where we send our children?
It is hard for me not to notice in the graph above that when the number of Hispanic students at Jefferson increased, then number of white students decreased. The same trend is true for Lumberg Elementary and Edgewater Elementary below.
Now that all of our Edgewater schools are majority Latino/Hispanic, how does this impact the school choices of white families? I don’t have access to recent school choice data for our area but based on past school choice data I have seen, families that choose schools outside our area choose schools that are a majority white. And the test scores and school grades for those schools are better than our Edgewater schools. Does this mean they are better schools or that these schools outside our area are full of students who are white and middle class? More often than not test scores tell more about the socioeconomic status of the families at that school than the quality of education in the building. Schools in east central Jeffco remain segregated as white parents choose schools outside of their neighborhood.
The sad part of the continued segregation of schools in east central Jefferson County is that our community as a whole suffers when our schools are segregated. In their report on school integration, Eric Torres and Richard Weissbourd write, “In fact, research suggests that integration has key social, emotional, and ethical as well as academic benefits for White, advantaged children (The Century Foundation, 2019). Integration is most accurately characterized as a collective act that is likely to benefit one’s own children, other people’s children, and the country as a whole.”
So how do we change the reality of segregated schools in Edgewater and east central Jefferson County?
First, we start the conversation around race and school choice even though it is a hard conversation for white families. Edgewater Collective is starting to talk to community partners and local experts about how to hold community conversations around school choice and race in a healthy and productive way.
Second, I think it is important for Jeffco Public Schools to form a task force of parents, community members and school leaders focused on school integration. With two years of Enroll Jeffco school choice data, trends around school choice and race can begin to be analyzed. Then, community conversations and next steps can be discussed to create more integrated schools in Jefferson County, especially along the Sheridan corridor of east central Jeffco.
And for those families that want to look into taking steps toward choosing integrated schools for their own children, here is a great article in The Washington Post.
Together we can have the tough conversations about race, seek to understand each other and work to create integrated school environments where each student is valued and given the opportunity to succeed.
Joel has been a resident of Edgewater, Colorado with his family since 2012. He is the Executive Director of local education nonprofit Edgewater Collective and Editor of the Edgewater Echo.
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