A new report ranks North Carolina among the seven worst states for economic segregation in public schools. The report, called the States of Segregation, was released this week by the advocacy group Brown's Promise.
The report uses data from The Segregation Tracking Project to rank states on their economic and racial segregation. UCLA sociology professor Ann Owens is a co-creator of that project. Its interactive, online map tracks segregation across public schools nationwide, including charter schools.
Owens explained that there are a few different ways to measure segregation. The metric in this report tells you how evenly students of different groups are enrolled across schools, ranging from zero to one. The index score for economic segregation compares students who qualify for free or reduced price lunch to those who do not.
"So, if there was no segregation, that metric would be zero. If it was total segregation, where all the disadvantaged children went to some schools, and all the advantaged children went to another set of schools, that would be total segregation. It would be one," Owens explained.
North Carolina's index score for economic segregation was 0.3, landing the state among the top seven worst.
"I think it indicates that economic segregation is a persistent problem for the state, that there's lots of work to do," Owens said.
Owens said economic segregation is known to have negative effects on students.
"In places where there's high levels of economic segregation, there's larger test score gaps, for example, between poor and non-poor children, and that can then trickle down into inequalities later in life," Owens said.
Owens said the problem is that when poverty gets concentrated in certain schools, so do students' needs.
"If you're a teacher and you have one poor child in your classroom, you can marshal the resources you have to try to mitigate that. If all of the kids in your classroom are poor, that can present real challenges," Owen said.
And North Carolina's not off the hook for racial segregation.
"The rankings are a little bit different, the number itself is pretty similar," Owens said, referring to the index number.
Relative to other states, North Carolina ranked 33rd for segregation by race. Owens said that's because states in the Northeast and Midwest are simply a lot more racially segregated, especially between districts.
"But in southern states like North Carolina, it's not uncommon where the within-district story is really where the action is," Owens said.
And since North Carolina has a lot of economic segregation inside of school districts, school boards and policymakers have more power to do something about it.
