Educational Leadership

mixed-income schools best support lower-achieving students without hurting the higher achievers?

High Tech High and City Neighbors Charter School have innovative strategies for blending the benefits of leveled instruction and heterogeneous classrooms. High Tech High is committed to grouping students by mixed ability as much as possible. “It’s not just diversity in admissions,” said CEO Larry Rosen-stock. “It’s also integration in practice once they’ve arrived.” Leaders at High Tech High realized they needed to offer honors classes so that students could have the weighted grade point averages that selective colleges look for in admissions, but they did not want to separate the highest-achieving students from their peers. Instead, they offer some classes with an honors option, allowing interested students to take the class at the honors level by completing extra assignments.

At City Neighbors Charter School, a K– 8 school in Baltimore, Maryland, teachers regularly adjust student groupings to ensure that all students are appropriately supported and challenged. In the lower grades, students may sometimes be grouped into similar-ability reading circles; but for most assignments, they work in heterogeneous groups chosen for their members’ complementary skill sets. Monica O’Gara, a 1st grade teacher and founding faculty member, described the range of student backgrounds as both a challenge and a resource: “There’s quite a mix of what children understand and what approaches they’re used to or will be effective with them.” Although differentiation is a challenge for teachers, students of all backgrounds benefit from hearing about their classmates’ experiences and from relating their own experiences to others.

In the middle grades, students at City Neighbors start their day with half an hour of highly specialized, small-group instruction called intensive. Intensive provides an opportunity for extra

Socioeconomic
integration is a
win-win situation.

support or enrichment in different subjects, allowing teachers to meet different students’ needs while still teaching most of the academic time in mixed-ability classrooms. For example, some students may spend their intensive time receiving extra writing support while others attend an enrichment intensive on animal dissection. Students cycle through different intensives three times a year, giving teachers multiple opportunities to adjust placements based on individual needs.

Some charter schools are also tackling the more elusive issue of how to encourage students of different backgrounds to interact socially. Community Roots Charter School, an elementary and middle school in Brooklyn, created a staff position—director of community development—to facilitate programs that promote community cohesion and celebrate diversity. Through the school’s Play and Learning Squads, for example, small groups of students and their parents go on weekend or afternoon outings. Teachers assign the squads with an eye toward grouping students who would not otherwise spend time together outside school.

A Promising Direction

Academic results from these diverse charter schools are promising, if anecdotal. In our Century Foundation report, Richard Kahlenberg and I (2012) profiled seven diverse charter schools whose low-income students outperformed their low-income peers statewide in mathematics and reading, sometimes by dramatic margins. In all but one case, the schools’ low-income students also beat the state proficiency averages for all students.

Many factors are at work in successful
diverse charter schools. As schools of
choice, these schools likely benefit from
having a more engaged parent com-
munity than neighboring traditional
public schools do. Still, when combined
with the body of research showing the
academic advantages of providing
mixed-income learning environments,
their stories are hopeful. If more
schools, charter and otherwise, use cre-
ative strategies to tackle the challenges
of socioeconomic integration, they can
help shift the turnaround discussion
from an exclusive focus on how to
improve high-poverty schools to a dis-
cussion that also looks seriously at how
to break up concentrations of poverty
and provide more diverse learning envi-
ronments for all students. EL

References

Antonio, A. L., Chang, M. J., Hakuta, K., Kenny, D. A., Levin, S., & Milem, J. F. (2004). Effects of racial diversity on complex thinking in college students. Psychological Science, 15( 8), 507–510.

Brewer, D. J., Rees, D. I., & Argys, L. M. (1995). Detracking America’s schools: The reform without cost? Phi Delta Kappan, 77( 3), 210–212, 214–215.

Burris, C. C., Wiley, E. W., Welner, K. G., & Murphy, J. (2008). Accountability, rigor, and detracking: Achievement effects of embracing a challenging curriculum as a universal good for all students. Teachers College Record, 110( 3), 571–608.

Coleman, J. S., Campbell, E. Q., Hobson, C. J., McPartland, J., Mood, J. M., Weinfeld, F. D., et al. (1966). Equality of educational opportunity. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Office of Education/National Center for Education Statistics.

Frankenberg, E., Siegel-Hawley, G., & Wang, J. (2010). Choice without equity: Charter school segregation and the need for civil rights standards. Los Angeles: Civil Rights Project at UCLA.