When choice fosters inequality can research help?

 

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V98 N4 kappanmagazine.org 49
Thinkstock/iStock

By Jennifer B. Ayscue, genevieve Siegel-
Hawley, Brian Woodward, and gary
Orfi eld

School choice, a marginal infl uence in most of the history of Ameri-
can education, has recently become a dominant force in a growing
number of U.S. cities. In the case of the nation’s famous examination
schools, such as New York’s Stuyvesant High School or Boston Latin
School, confl ict has erupted over the racial effect of standards used to
select students. The allocation of scarce and valuable places in these
schools is important to parents and their children, with communities
of color often protesting the radical underrepresentation of students
of color, and white and Asian parents objecting to admission criteria
that don’t rely on tests and grades, which they defi ne as measures of
merit. In largely nonwhite city school systems where most schools are
far behind national norms, the few outstanding schools become pre-
cious resources. And when black and Latino groups see most of those
seats going to white and Asian students who make up a small minority
in the district, there are often objections. In many cities, civil rights
claims allege that the choice process discriminates against black and
Latino students.

We address those struggles here, focusing on extensive research on
criteria schools in Buffalo, N.Y., a case in which the federal govern-

JeNNiFer B. AYSCue (jayscue@ucla.edu) is research director of the Initiative for School Integration at The Civil
Rights Project, University of California, Los Angeles. geNeVieVe SiegeL-HAWLeY is assistant professor of education
at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Va. BriAN WOODWArD is a doctoral candidate in the Graduate
School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. gArY OrFieLD is distinguished
research professor of education, law, political science, and urban planning and co-director of The Civil Rights Project,
University of California, Los Angeles.

A research team identifi es
discriminatory trends in a
choice system — and proposes
how to make that system fair.

R&D

R&D appears in each issue of Kappan with

the assistance of the Deans Alliance, which

is composed of the deans of the education

schools/colleges at the following universities:

George Washington University, Harvard University,

Michigan State University, Northwestern University,

Stanford University, Teachers College Columbia

University, University of California, Berkeley,

University of California, Los Angeles, University

of Colorado, University of Michigan, University of

Pennsylvania, and University of Wisconsin.

When choice fosters inequality,
can research help?

50 Kappan December 2016/January 2017

Figure 1.
Buffalo (N.Y.) Public Schools enrollment, 2013-14

% white % low income
10

0%

80%

60%

40%

20%

0%

Pe
rc

en
ta

ge
o

f
en

ro
llm

en
t

21.1%

38.1%

31.6%

65.7%

81.0%

57.3%

51.3%

31.0%

All Buffalo Criteria Olmsted City All Buffalo Criteria Olmsted City
Public schools Honors Public schools Honors
Schools Schools

a reverse discrimination case was filed against the
district, claiming that the racial quotas being used
discriminated against white students. As a result, the
district’s resources, tools, and commitment to deseg-
regation were sharply curtailed.

For the past two decades, Buffalo Public Schools’
choice system has relied on a set of criteria schools
that admit students on the basis of some combina-
tion of test scores, grades, attendance, and teacher or
parent recommendations. Two of the district’s eight
criteria schools — City Honors and Olmsted — are
especially sought after; in fact, Newsweek (2013) con-
sistently ranks City Honors among the nation’s top
30 schools. Echoing the civil rights violations al-
leged against other competitive admissions schools,
some Buffalo residents have raised concerns about
the highly unequal representation of students from
different racial groups in Buffalo Public Schools’ cri-
teria schools.

In 2014, a group of Buffalo parents filed a com-
plaint with the federal Office for Civil Rights,
claiming that black students were underrepresented
in the city’s criteria schools. The office’s investiga-
tion substantiated the claim. In 2013-14, Buffalo
Public Schools’ enrollment was 21% white, 54%
black, 16% Latino, and 6% Asian; 81% of students
were low income (see Fig. 1). However, the criteria

ment’s Office for Civil Rights found discrimination,
negotiated an agreement with the district to com-
mission an independent assessment, and eventually
negotiated a settlement. The authors were deeply
involved in that research and believe the findings are
relevant to other schools of choice that use selection
criteria (Orfield et al., 2015).

We will take the reader into complex and strongly
contested terrain. We don’t oppose the creation of
demanding special schools in urban communities and
have not proposed shutting down existing schools.
Our fundamental concern is with operating them
fairly across lines of race, ethnicity, poverty, and im-
migrant status. We believe that in schools of choice,
as in our most selective colleges, diversity is an asset
and that many students from homes and neighbor-
hoods with limited resources are capable of succeed-
ing in demanding schools without any lowering of
standards, if the process is managed appropriately.

Case in point: Criteria schools in Buffalo

During the 1980s, under court-ordered desegre-
gation, Buffalo’s school district developed a highly
diverse, well-integrated, and academically excellent
magnet school system, which was often cited as a
national model. In 1995, Buffalo Public Schools
was released from court oversight. Two years later,

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Second, we collected data from 1,721 people —
which included district offi cials, principals, teachers,
counselors, parents, and students — through indi-
vidual site-based interviews, phone interviews, focus
groups, online surveys, and phone surveys conducted
in both Spanish and English.

Third, we analyzed the data by coding partici-
pants’ responses. Responses were categorized into
the topics of recruitment, outreach, communication,
information, transportation, preparation in earlier
grades, admissions criteria, enrollment, registration
policies, and support for English language learners
and students with disabilities. This analysis directly
informed our recommendations for policy changes.

We identifi ed barriers in four areas that students
of color, low-income students, and English language
learners faced in accessing the criteria schools (see
Fig. 2).

Barrier #1: Information

Providing clear and accessible information to all
families is important for creating an equitable school

schools enrolled disproportionately large shares of
white students (38%) and small shares of low-income
students (57%). The largest disparities occurred at
City Honors (whose student body was 66% white,
19% black, 7% Latino, and 31% low income) and
Olmsted (whose student body was 32% white, 50%
black, 10% Latino, and 51% low income). What
distinguishes these two schools from other criteria
schools with smaller disparities is the heavy use of
tests and other academic admissions criteria.

identifying the barriers

Buffalo Public Schools hired The Civil Rights
Project to identify barriers to equitable access in
the district’s criteria schools and propose solutions,
which, if accepted by both parties, could resolve the
civil rights violations and create more equitable ac-
cess to those schools.

After analyzing enrollment and achievement data,
our team took three steps. First, to get the feedback
we needed, we recruited a wide array of participants
to ensure representation of a range of perspectives,
particularly those from marginalized communities.
We contacted school district leaders, community
members, and religious leaders, distributed fl iers at
schools, and made an announcement at a districtwide
parent meeting about the research we were conduct-
ing. We also generated phone and email messages
that were distributed by the district offi ce.

Equity doesn’t occur unless it’s an
explicit goal and policies are adopted to
attain it.

Figure 2.
Barriers to accessing criteria schools and recommendations for creating more
equitable access

BArrierS reCOMMeNDATiONS

information

• Limited outreach and recruitment
• Unclear and complex admission criteria
• Lack of materials and support in languages other than

English

• Develop a diversity plan and recruitment strategies
• Create Parent Information Center with bilingual staff
• Provide materials in top fi ve languages spoken in district

Preparation

• Disparate preparation in elementary school
• Gifted and talented pipeline disproportionately white and

middle class
• Higher acceptance rates for students who had attended

criteria and charter schools

• Implement a summer preparatory program
• Provide counseling and peer tutoring to support retention

Admission criteria

• Cognitive skills test
• New York English language arts and mathematics

assessments
• Parent and teacher recommendations

• Conduct holistic admissions with fl exible thresholds
• Discontinue use of New York assessment scores
• Weight grades more than tests
• Allocate 10% of seats for students deserving special

consideration

Availability of choices

• Limited number of schools and seats
• High interest

• Create another criteria high school similar to City Honors
• Create at least one additional criteria elementary school

52 Kappan December 2016/January 2017

district percentages (21% white, 19% middle class).
Not surprisingly, a large share of students from this
elementary school was admitted to the most desir-
able criteria high schools. Similarly, students who
had attended charter schools were more likely to
be admitted to criteria high schools than students
who had attended Buffalo Public Schools primary
schools. Among all students who applied to criteria
schools, 47% were accepted; however, 94% of ap-
plicants who had earlier attended a criteria school
were accepted, as were 70% of applicants who had
attended a charter school.

Barrier #3: Admission criteria

Acceptance to City Honors and Olmsted was
based on several criteria, including a cognitive skills
test, the New York state English language arts and
mathematics assessments, grades, and teacher and
parent recommendations. Evidence indicates that
these criteria create additional barriers.

Cognitive skills tests are intended to measure a
student’s reasoning and problem-solving abilities,
but they often reflect students’ knowledge, not their
abilities. Knowledge is influenced by environmen-
tal factors, and students have unequal access to the
knowledge that is assessed on standard IQ tests (Fa-
gan & Holland, 2007).

The use of students’ scores on the New York state
English language arts and mathematics assessments
raises concern for all students because the assess-
ments were newly adopted and aligned to the Com-
mon Core State Standards in 2013. Thus, their reli-
ability and validity are currently uncertain, a concern
that the New York Common Core Task Force (2015)
expressed in its report cautioning against using the
test scores to evaluate students or teachers until 2019.

Requiring recommendations can create an addi-
tional barrier for students of color and low-income
students. Many Buffalo parents, as well as district
staff, said parent recommendations could be ambigu-
ous and culturally biased, a belief that is confirmed in
research, which finds that parent recommendations
are often complex, cumbersome, culturally insensi-
tive, and lacking reliability and validity (Ford, 1998).
Teacher recommendations also can create barriers
for students of color. Recent research (Grissom &
Redding, 2016) found that black students are re-
ferred to gifted programs at significantly lower rates
when they’re taught by nonblack teachers. When
Buffalo Public Schools’ court order ended, so did
the directives about faculty diversity, resulting in a
teaching staff that was more than 85% white in 2014.

Barrier #4: Availability of choices

Participants consistently shared the viewpoint that
the number of seats available for students in high-

choice system. Families cannot access a choice if they
don’t know about it. However, in Buffalo Public
Schools, information was hard to find. And when it
was available, it was unclear, complex, and provided
only in English.

The district’s outreach efforts were limited. Most
parents and students gathered information about cri-
teria schools through social interactions, sometimes
with school personnel but usually with other parents
or students. Parents and students noted that the dis-
trict’s web site was outdated and difficult to navigate;
perhaps as a result, fewer than 5% of parents relied
on the web site for information. When parents were
asked about the information they received from the
district, one of five reported never having received
any information about school choices.

For students and parents who were aware of the
criteria schools, the admission criteria and the admis-
sion process were complicated and unclear. As a vet-
eran 30-year teacher described, “Knowledge of these
schools’ existence — what it takes to be accepted, en-
trance in schools before high school, process to ap-
ply — as a BPS teacher, I didn’t know all of this. Not
only are criteria schools a mystery to students and
parents, [but also] . . . the programs available are ex-
tremely confusing, constantly changing, difficult to
navigate and it’s extremely difficult to obtain informa-
tion.” Confirming this sentiment, 46% of the parents
whose children applied to criteria schools reported
that the process was “very difficult or confusing” and
29% reported it as “somewhat difficult or confusing.”

Finally, families and students whose native lan-
guage is not English had a particularly difficult time
obtaining information about criteria schools be-
cause, as one teacher explained, “the phone calls and
information provided are all in English.”

Barrier #2: Preparation

Students must have the academic preparation
to be competitive as applicants to criteria schools;
however, some students didn’t have access to equi-
table educational opportunities in earlier grades. In
Buffalo Public Schools, as across the United States,
schools with high concentrations of students of color
and low-income students had lower levels of aca-
demic achievement. In Buffalo’s highly segregated
schools, this meant students of color and low-income
students often attended schools with inexperienced
teachers, less challenging curricula, and less com-
petitive classrooms.

Further, there appeared to be an unofficial pipeline
between some elementary schools and the criteria
high schools. For example, there was one criteria
elementary school with a gifted program, which en-
rolled a disproportionately large share of white (47%)
and middle-class (62%) students compared with the

V98 N4 kappanmagazine.org 53

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cause grades are a better predictor of academic suc-
cess (Geiser & Santelices, 2007). We recommended
that admission criteria be considered holistically
rather than in isolation, with fl exible thresholds,
rather than absolute cut points for each criterion,
thus basing the admission decision on each applicant
as a whole. Further, we proposed setting aside 10% of
seats in each criteria school for students who deserve
special consideration on the basis of such factors as
obstacles overcome, exceptional dedication, unusual
success in a school isolated by race and poverty, or
coming from a section of the city that is rarely rep-
resented in criteria schools.

Addressing availability of choices. Finally, we rec-
ommended increasing the number of schools and
seats in high-quality diverse schools. Acknowledging
the work that would be required to do so, one prin-
cipal stated, “I think that would take major resources
and . . . major planning . . . but I have some ideas
for how that could happen. It would take people to
be patient and dedicated to it, but I think we could
do it.” Accordingly, we proposed that Buffalo Public
Schools develop two additional criteria schools —
one elementary school and one high school. Excel-
lence should be replicated, not rationed.

The broader implications

The Buffalo study shows that when the civil rights
rules of court-ordered magnet school plans are re-
placed by a system in which allocation of scarce spots
in excellent schools is turned over to local school
authorities with no oversight, resegregation and se-
vere inequity can reoccur. The civil rights complaint
in Buffalo stemmed from a claim that the criteria
for selecting students were discriminatory — not
that those criteria had been selected intentionally
to discriminate but that they did, in fact, produce
that result. During our time in the district, Buffalo’s
principals, teachers, students, parents, and commu-
nity advocates all described a highly unequal system
of school choice plagued by multiple barriers to in-
formation and admission.

On the basis of our fi ndings, we called for changes
in the criteria. We were convinced, however, that
eliminating all criteria would harm the reputation
of excellent schools. Instead, we proposed lowering

quality criteria schools was insuffi cient. As a parent
said, “There aren’t enough desirable schools in the
area.” A counselor reiterated the point: “You can be
qualifi ed for a criteria school and not be accepted
because there’s not enough space.”

Our recommendations

To address the barriers, we crafted recommen-
dations based in the research literature about how
to make choice systems fair (see Fig. 2). In some
instances, we borrowed from higher education lit-
erature. Our recommendations are aligned with the
joint guidance from the U.S. Department of Justice
and U.S. Department of Education (2011) regard-
ing how schools can create diverse student bodies
and also are consistent with ideas shared by Buffalo
educators, parents, and students. We believe these
recommendations could serve as a general blueprint
for other districts, local conditions permitting.

Addressing information. First, we urged the dis-
trict to develop a diversity plan that would include
fl exible goals for increasing diversity by race, pov-
erty, and language at each school. These goals are
targets for recruitment and enrollment efforts, not
quotas that would set aside seats for students of a
particular race. The district should collect data and
monitor progress on these goals. We also recom-
mended that the district create a Parent Information
Center to serve as a central hub of information about
available choices and how the choice system works.
Printed materials should be available in the top fi ve
languages spoken in the district, which change from
year to year and recently have included English,
Spanish, Arabic, Burmese, Karen, Nepali, and So-
mali. At least one staff member should be bilingual in
the district’s top language. In addition, we suggested
that the district proactively reach out to students by
having teachers and students from criteria schools
visit other schools in the system to share informa-
tion about their school’s offerings and application
procedures.

Addressing preparation. To provide students
with additional preparation, we proposed that Buf-
falo Public Schools create a summer preparatory
program that provides students from less competi-
tive elementary schools an opportunity to prepare
before the admissions period. We also encouraged
the district to create counseling and peer tutoring
programs that would operate during the school year
to support the retention of traditionally underrep-
resented students after they have enrolled in criteria
schools.

Addressing admission criteria. We proposed that
the district eliminate the use of the Common Core-
aligned tests as admission criteria. Student grades
should receive greater weight than test scores be-

Providing clear and accessible
information to all families is important
for creating an equitable school choice
system.

54 Kappan December 2016/January 2017

access and diversity than a more complex
multidimensional remedy would produce.

• In a segregated and unequal city, high reliance
on testing without affi rmative action policies is
likely to reinforce and legitimate inequality.

• There are many feasible, educationally advan-
tageous, and potentially popular remedies that
are noncoercive and could improve conditions.
However, in settings committed to the status
quo or too divided to act, a stronger combi-
nation of external incentives and sanctions
may be necessary to overcome roadblocks and
trigger deeper and more effective reforms.

Civil rights enforcement can play a vital role in this
process. The research community has much to offer
in terms of clearly documenting and raising aware-
ness about existing trends. We encourage advocates
and researchers to document the effects of current
choice systems, and we encourage educators to work
with them to increase fairness in their schools. K

References

Fagan, J.F. & Holland, C.R. (2007). Racial equality in

intelligence: Predictions from a theory of intelligence as

processing. Intelligence, 35 (4), 319-344.

Ford, D.Y. (1998). The underrepresentation of minority students

in gifted education: Problems and promises in recruitment and

retention. Journal of Special Education, 32 (1), 4-14.

Geiser, S. & Santelices, M.V. (2007). Validity of high-school

grades in predicting student success beyond the freshman

year: High-school record vs. standardized tests as indicators

of four-year college outcomes. Berkeley, CA: Center for

Studies in Higher Education.

Grissom, J.A. & Redding, C. (2016). Discretion and

disproportionality: Explaining the underrepresentation of high-

achieving students of color in gifted programs. AERA Open, 2

(1), 1-25.

New York Common Core Task Force. (2015). New York

Common Core Task Force fi nal report. New York, NY: Author.

Newsweek. (2013). America’s best high schools. Newsweek.

www.newsweek.com/2013/05/06/america-s-best-high-

schools.html

Orfi eld, G., Ayscue, J., Ee, J., Frankenberg, E., Siegel-Hawley,

G., Woodward, N., & Amlani, N. (2015). Better choices for

Buffalo’s students: Expanding & reforming the criteria schools

system. Los Angeles, CA: The Civil Rights Project.

U.S. Department of Justice & U.S. Department of Education.

(2011). Guidance on the voluntary use of race to achieve

diversity and avoid racial isolation in elementary and secondary

schools. Washington, DC: Author. www2.ed.gov/about/

offi ces/list/ocr/docs/guidance-ese-201111

the importance of test scores; ending the use of the
new and unproven New York state tests; ending ab-
solute cut points for scores; increasing consideration
of other measures; and setting aside a fraction of
admissions to be made outside this process, among
other recommendations.

In reaching the settlement with the Offi ce for
Civil Rights, the school system accepted many of our
proposed changes in its outreach and recruitment
process but refused to end the excessive reliance on
test scores or expand the supply of high-achieving
schools. Although some positive changes occurred,
the outcomes did not change at City Honors. The
tests must be changed, and there must be explicit
goals for increasing minority representation.

Amid growing nationwide concern about inequi-
table access to exam schools, alongside the spread of
school choice more generally, our recommendations
for Buffalo have broader application. Here are some
lessons we can draw from this work:

• There’s a strong relationship among the lifting
of civil rights goals, changing the mechanisms
in choice plans, and increased stratifi cation in
school districts. Equity doesn’t occur unless
it’s an explicit goal, and policies are adopted to
attain it.

• In the absence of a cooperative and capable
school district, greater equity calls for simpler,
fewer unambiguous requirements even though
they may produce fewer gains in equitable

“Is there an ebony tower, too?”

Excellence should be replicated, not
rationed.