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Austin, Texas, is one of the most racially diverse, culturally vibrant, and progressive cities in the nation. But for residents, the city splits into two worlds with vastly different living experiences. On the west side lies Austin’s affluent population: about 200,000 residents who have accumulated some of the greatest amount of wealth in the world.¹ To the east, more than half of local residents live 200 percent below the poverty line.² Although Austin, Texas, is considered “America’s next great boomtown,”³ it is also one of America’s most economically segregated cities.

The city’s long history of segregation can be felt in the public schooling system. More than three-quarters of Austin’s public schools, for instance, have a poverty rate that is either 80 percent and higher or 40 percent and lower.⁴

But deeply ingrained and pervasive economic segregation in Austin’s public schools is no isolated incident. In fact, it reflects a disturbing, nationwide trend. Millions of students across the country attend schools that are intensely segregated by economic status. Today, 40 percent of all low-income children—or 10 million students—attend schools with poverty rates reaching 75 percent or higher.⁵

Rising income inequality has contributed to these trends of economic segregation⁶ and thus further exacerbates many of the nation’s student achievement issues. When it comes to high-school completion, students attending high-poverty schools—or schools where at least 75 percent of students are eligible for free and reduced-price lunch—only have a 68 percent chance of graduating.⁷ In comparison, students attending low-poverty schools—or where 25 percent or less of students qualify for free and reduced-price lunch—have a 91 percent chance of graduating.⁸

Moreover, all students—rich or poor, white and nonwhite alike—miss out on the substantial benefits of learning in richly diverse classrooms.⁹ As the research shows, students across the spectrum are better prepared for post-secondary success when they have been educated in diverse schools and have learned alongside peers who come from all walks of life.¹⁰

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in creating schools that are economically integrated. At the federal level, former U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. prioritized school diversity through a number of federal grant programs, including the Investing in Innovation Fund, or I3, Magnet School Assistance Program, and Charter School Program grant competitions.¹¹ Additionally, in December 2016, the U.S. Department of Education announced the Opening Doors, Expanding Opportunities grant competition, which will use funds from the 2016 fiscal year to support school districts in increasing socioeconomic diversity in their schools.¹²

The Trump administration, on the other hand, has shown no signs that they would make the issue of school diversity a priority. In fact, Trump’s Education Department has reversed federal action on this issue by ending the Opening Doors, Expanding Opportunities grant program.¹⁶ For her part, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos recently stated that she would support diversity under the Magnet School Assistance Program; only time will tell if this is a true priority or rhetoric.¹⁷

Furthermore, Donald Trump entered his presidency on a divisive campaign that threatened many of the bonds that hold modern Americans together. He called Mexicans “rapists.”¹⁸ He disparaged African Americans.¹⁹ At his rallies, he encouraged violence.²⁰ In short, the nation needs an effort to bring its citizens closer together, and public schools are a critical space for teaching and embracing this nation’s diversity.

Fortunately, in some areas, the notion of economic integration has taken hold at the local level. In fact, many districts that originally submitted applications for the Opening Doors, Expanding Opportunities grants are still moving forward with their diversity plans, in spite of the Trump administration’s recent decision to cut the program. And charter school networks and school districts in major cities such as New York and Los Angeles have recently started implementing programs to integrate their low- and high-poverty schools.²¹

But much more work remains. To shed light on the issue of economic segregation, the authors engaged in a study to find the most and least segregated school districts nationwide. While state and federal policies can and should provide incentives for schools and districts to integrate, the real work lies at the local level.²²

CAP’s hope is that education leaders and policymakers will use this report to guide and inform their integration policies. It is no longer sufficient for districts to say that they are prioritizing integration; they must actually establish and enact policies to that effect. The information in this report, then, takes a first step toward providing the research necessary to understand the pervasiveness of economic segregation.

In this regard, CAP’s report has three aims:

• Examine public opinion on the issue of economic segregation and integration in schools
• Evaluate the degree to which school districts are segregated by income
• Identify viable policy solutions for schools and districts to create economically diverse schools

To realize these aims, this report contains a wide variety of research. First, it analyzes results from a nationally representative survey, which assessed Americans’ perceptions of and ideas about school segregation. Second, the authors present findings from focus groups with parents of school-age children, describing their views on specific desegregation policies. Third, CAP partnered with EdBuild, a national nonprofit and policy studies organization, and analyzed data from more than 1,700 school districts to evaluate economic segregation within each district. Finally, the authors identified a handful of districts that have implemented socioeconomic integration policies and have relatively low levels of economic segregation.

The authors define economic segregation as:

• Large concentrations of low-income students in high-poverty schools
• Large concentrations of high-income students in low-poverty schools
• The degree to which poverty rates of individual schools differ from the district average

The authors relied on data about students’ eligibility for free and reduced-price lunch as a measure of poverty.

An overview of findings

Most Americans support the economic integration of schools

Nearly two-thirds of Americans consider the issue of school segregation to be “somewhat important” or “very important” to them, and 70 percent of Americans agree that more should be done to integrate low- and high-poverty schools.

Four out of 10 U.S. public-school districts experience intense economic segregation or isolation

The authors identified 40 percent of the districts in their sample as “hypersegregated” or “hyperisolated” by income. In other words, most students in the district attend schools with students of similar income backgrounds, or most of the district’s schools look very different from the district as a whole in terms of poverty levels. The authors call this group the “Diversity Watch List.”

A handful of districts have implemented promising policies and practices in economic integration

Since 2007, the number of districts implementing economic integration plans has more than doubled, from 40 to 100 nationwide.²³ These districts tend to be large and urban, and today, roughly 4 million students reside in a school district or charter school with economic integration plans—representing about 8 percent of total public school enrollment.²⁴

Parents are skeptical of integration polices that limit parental choice or neglect the issue of school quality

According to the authors’ focus group research, most parents believe in school diversity in theory, but they reject policies that limit the educational options for their child.

Most Americans see economic segregation as an issue affecting low-income students, but not necessarily higher-income students

Although research shows that all students gain immense benefits from economic integration, the public is not aware of these shared benefits. According to CAP’s survey, more than three-quarters of Americans agree that school integration will improve the quality of education received by low-income students, but less than half of the public agrees that integration will improve the quality of education received by high-income students.

A growing body of research shows that learning in diverse classrooms is essential for students’ success in college, career, and life. To enhance diversity in public schools, and provide students the additional opportunities, resources, and benefits that lie within diverse schools and classrooms, CAP offers the following recommendations.

Next steps for economic integration

What the federal government should do

• Expand federal funding for economic integration strategies. The U.S. Department of Education should increase funding to existing programs supporting socioeconomic diversity and establish a new competitive grant to encourage more economically diverse districts. The federal approach should also go beyond schooling policy and encourage the development of mixed-income housing and other affordable housing opportunities for low-income families in affluent neighborhoods.

• Promote socioeconomic integration as a school improvement strategy. The Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA, includes a new provision for states to set aside at least 7 percent of their Title I funds for school improvement purposes. The U.S. Department of Education should issue guidance on leveraging these funds to create economically diverse schools as part of a school improvement strategy.

• Incentivize and/or require states to track and report patterns of school segregation. The U.S. Department of Education should create incentives, guidelines, and requirements for states to track and collect longitudinal data regarding student demographics and enrollment patterns. The department should require states to report this data in a way that informs strategies to diversify their schools.

What states should do

• Incentivize the creation of high-performing, diverse-by-design charter schools. States should have dedicated funding streams that support the creation of high-performing, diverse-by-design charter schools. States can also incentivize charter school diversity through new competitive grant programs or by leveraging funds made available by the federal Charter School Program. 

• Encourage regional enrollment models. State legislatures should establish laws and policies that not only allow but also incentivize schools to enroll students from diverse areas, including the development of regional charter schools that cross traditional school district boundaries.

• Equalize funding across and within school districts. States should equalize school funding across and within school districts. Across districts, inequitable funding systems promote economic segregation by making local areas overly dependent on local funding, incentivizing district leaders to exclude low-income neighborhoods from their borders. Within districts, well-resourced schools tend to serve affluent communities while under-resourced schools tend to serve low-income communities. States should equalize funding within and across districts to reduce these patterns of economic segregation.

• Track and report patterns of school segregation. The collection of longitudinal data regarding student demographics and enrollment patterns would enable school districts to thoughtfully address segregation issues, and would allow schools to purposefully locate in areas that are in need of more diverse schools.

• Support housing development as a way to foster economic integration in schools. States can foster economic integration in public schools by funding mixed-income housing development projects. States should also outlaw policies that exclude low-income families from wealthy neighborhood properties.

What school districts should do

• Include parents in economic integration plans and provide specialized programs that appeal to a wide range of families. Districts should consult racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse parents during the planning stages of integration strategies to build trust, create buy-in, and develop a more informed decision on diversifying their schools. Districts should also focus on methods of socioeconomic integration that appeal to families across a range of income levels.

• Implement controlled choice programs. Districts should consider income background and socioeconomic status in their student assignment systems. More specifically, weighted lottery systems can ensure schools have an economically diverse student body. These so-called controlled choice programs allow parents to rank-order their preferred schools, but district leaders can take into account the parent’s education level, income background, and special needs during the assignment process.

• Encourage interdistrict and intradistrict transfers. Districts should work together to permit parents to indicate a preference for a school within or outside of their local district—prioritizing transfers that would be integrative.²⁵

• Redraw attendance zone boundaries to ensure neighborhood schools pull from an economically diverse student population. Districts should shift away from the traditional notion of a neighborhood school and redraw attendance zone boundaries so that they transcend neighborhood lines. When creating new schools to accommodate a growing population, districts should be strategic in placing these schools in areas located between low- and high-income neighborhoods.

• Partner with county agencies to create inclusionary zoning policies. School districts should partner with housing agency officials, elected officials, and other municipal government leaders to investigate segregation patterns in their communities. Leaders should work together to create inclusionary zoning policies that require the creation of affordable housing in higher-income neighborhoods. This measure will help create more integrated neighborhoods and, ultimately, diverse schools.

• Fund capacity-building efforts. Even if a school is well-integrated, segregation patterns can still take place at the classroom level. It takes intentional work from school leaders, as well as classroom teachers, to develop a school curriculum and culture that meet the needs of a culturally and economically diverse student body. Thus, districts should invest in the development of successful learning models for diverse schools.

There must also be additional research on the effectiveness of these integration methods, to ensure federal, state, and local policymakers are investing in evidence-based interventions proven to not only improve school diversity but also boost student outcomes. With the rapid changes in the economic and racial makeup of the nation’s public schooling system, researchers, scholars, policymakers, and practitioners can no longer afford to sit idly by as the country’s schools become increasingly segregated on socioeconomic lines.

Educational disparities between lower- and higher-income students have noticeably widened in recent years. In fact, income-based disparities among students are now larger than racial disparities,²⁶ and low-income children are 15 percent less likely to graduate from high school than their high-income peers.²⁷

The causes of this gap are many and well-documented. Many low-income students encounter a host of disadvantages outside of school that are likely to affect their educational achievement.²⁸  For instance, low-income students are less likely to benefit from parents with postsecondary degrees. Studies have shown that the mother’s education level strongly predicts the achievement of the child, and among low-income families, the mother’s education level usually does not exceed a high school diploma.²⁹

Children living in low-income neighborhoods also have increased exposure to hardship in their communities. These communities tend to lack access to meaningful job opportunities and face chronic unemployment. As a consequence, members are more likely to be distressed by mental health challenges, substance abuse, crime, and high levels of incarceration. Furthermore, residents of these communities are also excessively exposed to pollutants and environmental hazards. The trauma associated with all of these conditions poses serious negative consequences for a child’s well-being and brain development.³⁰

But while family and community factors are strong predictors of student achievement, school-level factors matter as well. In fact, in 1966, James Coleman, an American sociologist and researcher, released a report that studied more than 650,000 students nationwide and found that the level of student poverty in a school is the single most determinative school-level factor in a student’s academic achievement.³¹

Since the Coleman report, study after study has shown that low-income children who attend high-poverty schools fare worse than low-income children who attend low-poverty schools.

Early efforts at more economically integrated schools

Coleman’s report sparked a number of reforms. In the 1970’s, La Crosse, Wisconsin, became the first municipality to intentionally create economically diverse schools. To do so, La Crosse redrew student attendance boundaries so that about 15 to 45 percent of students within each school came from low-income families.³²

Since then, an increasing number of schools and districts across the country have adopted policies that create income diversity within their schools. Although the approach differs, the goal is the same: to create schools that serve both high-income and low-income students and ultimately improve academic and life outcomes for all students.

During the 1990’s and early 2000’s, economic integration saw somewhat slow growth, with a few major school districts, including Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Wake County, North Carolina, instituting policies that created economically balanced student bodies within their schools.

After the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, which limited the voluntary use of race in school assignment plans,³³ the number of schools and districts using socioeconomic integration policies grew rapidly. In 2007, about 40 districts were implementing socioeconomic integration plans; by 2016, that figure more than doubled to 100 school districts and charter networks, according to The Century Foundation.³⁴ Today, 4.4 million students attend school districts or charter school networks with socioeconomic integration plans—representing about 8 percent of the public schooling population. These students attend more than 6,000 schools.³⁵

Despite these efforts, economic segregation within school systems has grown worse. One study, for instance, found that among the country’s largest 100 school districts, economic segregation between schools in the same district has risen 40 percent since 1970.³⁶

Decades of research have shown that low-income students have better academic outcomes when they attend economically diverse schools. For example, among low-income fourth graders, students who attend low-poverty schools are two grade levels ahead of their peers in high-poverty schools. according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.⁴⁷ Students in econo