 Good morning. My name is Jessica Cartichon. I'm the director of the Washington DC office and federal policy for the Learning Policy Institute a Non-profit nonpartisan organization committed to advancing evidence-based policies that support equitable and empowering learning for each and every child I would like to welcome you to the briefing separate and unequal how school investment and integration matter for educational Opportunity and attainment. I'd like to begin by thanking our congressional co-hosts Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut and Congresswoman Marsha Fudge from the 11th district of Ohio both of whom will be joining us later for comments I'd also like to thank their wonderful staff for not only their support for this briefing But for these issues in an ongoing manner We would also like to recognize and thank our event co-sponsors the National Coalition on school diversity The Stanford Graduate School of Education and the Center for Education Policy and Analysis Despite a large body of research showing that school desegregation Benefits all students there still exists a persistent yet misguided belief that school segregation doesn't matter Today we will share the research on why integration and investments matters Matter federal and state investments and efforts following the Supreme Court decision and Brown versus Board of Education That were effective in closing opportunity and achievement gaps and key strategies for moving the work forward We are honored to begin with a presentation by Dr. Sean Reardon the endowed professor of poverty inequality and education and Professor of sociology at Stanford University Dr. Reardon's research focuses on the causes patterns trends and consequences of social and educational inequality the effects of educational policy on educational and social inequality and an applied statistical methods for education research Dr. Reardon is the developer of the Stanford Education Data Archive Based on 300 million standardized test scores CEDA provides measures of educational opportunity average test core performance Academic achievement gaps and other information for every public school district in the United States Dr. Reardon is a member of the National Academy of Education and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Please join me in welcoming Dr. Sean Reardon Thank You Jessica and thank all of you for being here today and I also want to thank senator Murphy and congressman fudge for Not only sponsoring this but for sponsoring the Strength and Diversity Act that's now under discussion in Congress. I want to Start by sort of reminding us so 65 years ago The Supreme Court outlawed school segregation in the Brown decision another 15 years later about 50 years ago We started desegregating schools in earnest in the United States And made real progress and as rocker Johnson will describe those efforts were quite effective But for the last few decades we've been in an era and sort of accepted a regime of resegregation Under the under the belief or perhaps the hope that somehow segregation doesn't matter anymore That it's possible now to have segregated schools, but still provide equal educational opportunity for all children I'm going to show you the results of the work. We've been doing that tries to see is that true is it possible to have High levels of segregation, but still provide equal educational opportunity for children So I the the project I've been working on is the educational opportunity project and in that we've been collecting information about educational opportunity in every public school and school district in America This map shows the average performance of white students in every Part of the United States where the darker green means high test scores and blue means Below average test scores you can see that in most parts of the United States white students white students score Above the national average When you look at the same picture for black students however It's quite different in almost every part of the United States the average black student Test scores are well below the national average What that means is that black students in every community in the United States have Below average educational opportunities. They haven't had the same opportunity to learn the material and therefore Aren't able to perform as well on the test The same picture is true for Hispanic students for most of the country Test scores are well below average So the presence of these achievement gaps or opportunity gaps as we think of them everywhere Is a substantial challenge the question is what causes them and what can we do about it? So we've been studying Studying this along with my eyes I along with my co-authors Aaron Faley Erica Weathers and Huan Zhang have written a paper about this So it's briefly described with a few key results of here today One of the key factors contributing to unequal opportunity and achievement gaps is economic inequality Black parents incomes and levels of education are well below those of the average white And so that contributes to the kinds of resources that families have to provide opportunities for their children to learn At home their ability to pay for high quality child care in preschool Their ability to live in communities that have high quality schools But independent of economic inequality the other key factor we find that's related To unequal opportunity and achievement gaps Is segregation In all of our analyses segregation stands out as the the single strongest predictor of academic achievement gaps and and unequal opportunity Now I want to talk today about two kinds of segregation. One is racial segregation. That's that is the extent to which minority students attend schools that are predominantly Attended by minority students and white students attend schools attended by white students The other is um, what you might think of as racial economic segregation And that's the extent to which black or hispanic students attend schools That are high poverty schools where many of their schoolmates Have incomes below the poverty line So the the both of these kinds of segregation turned out to be important and I want to try to Explain how we think about that in in our work I might show you a few a few pictures, uh, and they're going to have this kind of a structure I don't know if you can all see this very well, but on the horizontal axis here is a measure of racial segregation Uh, we're further to the right Is higher racial segregation meaning black students attend Schools with mostly black and hispanic students and white students attend schools mostly with white and asian students And on the left is places with low or no segregation And on the vertical axis is going to be a measure of the achievement gap where the bottom is no achievement gap And the higher up is is a large achieving The top there is an achievement gap of five grade levels just to give you a sense of the scale So if we look at every public school district in the country That has at least 100 black and 100 white students per grade. So we just limited For now just to these large districts. This is what we see each of those dots is a school district and uh What you see is that the the school districts that are more segregated On average tend to have larger achievement gaps than the school districts that are less segregated And I should note that even the places that aren't segregated at all still on average have a sizable achievement gap of one and a half grade levels But you'll notice that there if we look at the places that are very segregated on the right Uh, you can see they have very different sizes of achievement gaps So Washington dc in atlanta have among the very largest achievement gaps in the united states the achievement gap here in washington is about five grade levels That is the average white students test scores are about five grade levels Higher than the average black students in washington dc That's astronomical uh Educational inequality right the opportunities that those children have had are enormous The same is true in atlanta New york city and philadelphia also are very highly racially segregated but have achievement gaps They're only about two or two and a half grade levels. I say only but even that's extremely high and unacceptable Detroit's the only highly segregated place that has a small achievement gap So what why is it that these these places which are all highly segregated racially still have different size of achievement gaps Part of it is the difference in economic inequality in those places So white and black children in washington dc Come from families with very different economic resources The same is true in atlanta whereas in detroit white and black children Come on average from families with similar and very low levels of economic resources But economic resources and family background are far from the only reason If instead of looking at racial segregation We look at the amount of economic segregation in each of these places. We see a somewhat different story So i'm going to show you the same picture, but now the horizontal axis is going to be this measure of racial economic segregation That is the extent to which black students in the school district Attend higher poverty schools than white students in the district So if you have a school district where the black students are in schools with free lunch eligibility rates of 70 80 percent and the white students are in schools with free lunch rates of 20 percent say You're going to have a large amount of what we call racial economic segregation So it's not just the concentration of students by race, but the concentration of black and hispanic students in high poverty schools Is what this is going to measure and again the vertical axis is going to show you The achievement gap when we look at the picture this way We see a much starker picture Places with high levels of racial economic segregation have Very high achievement gaps and there are no places that have low achievement gaps If we look at those same five places, they fall along this this line So part of the reason that washington and atlanta have such large achievement gaps is not only that they have high levels of racial segregation But that the black and hispanic students in dc and atlanta are concentrated disproportionately in very high poverty schools Whereas the white students are concentrated in much much lower poverty schools In detroit white and black students are concentrated in roughly equally and very high poverty schools So they fall far on the left of this picture So the the key finding here is that while racial segregation is highly predictive of achievement gaps It's the racial concentration in high poverty schools that really explains it So when racial segregation Results in the concentration of minority students in high poverty schools. We see enormous achievement gaps Now you might wonder if well, maybe that's because kids come into school with with large opportunity gaps The differences in the school readiness and so it's not really the school segregation that matters Certainly, that's part of the story But we then look to say Well, how much do the achievement gaps grow in school districts that are highly segregated relative to how much they grow In school districts that are less segregated That is how much they grow as children progress through school if segregation Limits opportunity while kids are in school Then we ought to see the achievement gaps getting larger in more segregated places over as kids progress through school So we look at this This and again, we're going to see the same picture with this Racial economic segregation on the horizontal axis But now the vertical axis is a measure of how fast the achievement gap grows as children progress through school And that horizontal line there is zero means the achievement gap stays the same size A larger numbers means it grows more And if we look again at all of those school districts, we see a very clear pattern The higher the segregation the faster the achievement gap grows while children are in school So that suggests that segregation is not only related to unequal opportunities In early childhood and outside of school, but segregation creates unequal opportunities in school And leads to differential learning rates for black and white or hispanic and white students That is segregation is highly implicated in the production of unequal educational opportunity while children are in school Why is that? Again, we can see the our five school districts there Why is why is this the case? Well part of it is that high poverty schools tend to be Have more challenges and on average are less effective at providing educational opportunities partly because They're under resourced partly because children have more needs and so even equal resources might not be sufficient to create equal educational opportunities This is a very simple picture of this. We looked at every School in the country above a certain size, but this is about 50 000 public schools in the country And we measured how fast children learn in each of those schools And on the left are the highest The most affluent schools schools with very low poverty and on the right are the schools with high poverty And you can see Children's learning rates are much faster in the low poverty schools than the high poverty schools That is to say high high poverty schools aren't able on average to provide the same amount of educational opportunity as low poverty schools So when we concentrate minority students in low poverty school in high poverty schools We're concentrating them in schools on the right hand side of this picture schools that provide lower educational opportunity So one answer to this is well, let's just make sure schools in high poverty areas have Are as good as schools in low poverty areas But we don't have any evidence that we know how to do that at scale If we did we would have seen some highly segregated school districts That had small achievement gaps Or where achievement gaps grew at a small rate, but we have no such example in the united states We looked at all 13 000 public school districts in the country. There's not a single one of them That has high levels of racial economic segregation or even moderately high levels But also has small achievement gaps That is to say, uh, it's impossible or at least uh to create equal educational opportunity under conditions of high segregation So just to summarize a few takeaway points One is we find very clearly that racial segregation leads to unequal educational opportunity Secondly, we find that it does so primarily because it concentrates minority students in high poverty schools And high poverty schools are on average less effective than low poverty schools The other thing we find is that separate but equal Is a fiction It doesn't exist in any single community in the united states. There's no school district where we have high segregation but equal opportunity And so that leads us to conclude that if we want to be serious about addressing issues of educational opportunity Um, we're going to need to address the challenges of segregation And we're going to need to do so by addressing both residential and school segregation Is it going to be impossible to to uh, meaningfully and substantially reduce school segregation without substantially reducing residential segregation I want to thank you for your time and Our website with all of this data and all of our research is at edopportunity.org And please feel free to email us if you have any questions. Thank you Great. Thank you. And we will also make sure that this power point presentation is available on the event webpage We are now honored to hear from dr. Rucker johnson the chancellor's Professor of public policy at the university of california berkeley and faculty research associate at the national bureau of economic research As a labor economist who specializes in the economics of education dr Johnson focuses on the role of poverty and inequality and affecting life chances Dr. Johnson's work reflects insights from multiple disciplinary perspectives to improve our understanding of the causes Consequences and remedies of inequality in this country Dr. Johnson was one of 35 scholars to receive the prestigious andrew carnegie fellowship And is the author of the book children of the dream. Why school integration works? Please join me in welcoming dr. Johnson Great. So it's so great to be here. Thanks jessica and linda dolling hammond and learning policy institute and particularly senator murphy and congresswoman fudge for both the support of the strength and diversity act and all of you for being here You know when we think about the two areas that have the biggest impact on of opportunity on children they're in education And housing and yet those are the areas in which we've made the least At least civil rights have made the least progress due to segregation. And so when we think about integration It's not only about the assignment of children to schools Uh by race but centrally about resources it's centrally about funding and teacher quality and teacher diversity and curricular quality And yet the heavy reliance on the local property tax base to fund our schools Is another form of segregation both then and now And yet there's a lot of policy amnesia about what Uh the effects and lower-run effects have been of previous major attempts to address equal educational opportunity And so I want to revisit that because it's the period in which The greatest racial conversions and academic achievement and educational attainments in earnings The period that we witnessed that was the period of significant integration efforts that while Short and window is this period and so when we look at Evidence from black-white test score gap among students born in 1954 all the way through born 30 years later seeing that decline by nearly 40 percent and yet The sluggish way rate at which it's progressed and closing the black-white test score gap since the 80s Now it's important not to confuse the symptom that is these achievement gaps with the underlying disease Gaping educational opportunity gaps by race and class that preceded them beginning in the pre-k years and so what we do In part is to look at this timing of Court ordered school desegregation recognizing that without the federal involvement We saw limited integration efforts Throughout the first decade after brown that until teeth and enforcement was put and brought through the civil rights act of 64 And the subsequent acceleration through that 15-year window leading to peak integration levels in 1988 and then we have Had a hands-off approach and increasingly resegregation since the early 90s and so the question is When we look at those periods in which we sought integration What we see is that period where the court orders led to significant reductions in racial school segregation A 30 drop in racial school segregation and moving from desegregation to integration Means moving from access to inclusion from exposure to understanding and one of the key components of that Was actually the increase significant increases in school spending That raised the levels of spending by a near 20 for african-americans due to the school resource equity And when we look at what impacts it had on educational outcomes beyond test scores But the life chances of those children experienced in the early courts born between 1950 and 1975 What we see is a significant increase That the longer children were treated for the symptoms of segregated poorly funded schools And the higher doses of integration and school funding reform they admit They were administered the better their outcomes. We're talking about more than a year of additional educational attainment And more over that the gains for african-american students did not come at the expense of white children That this is not a zero-sum game and more over that when we look at The the magnitude of these that these were big enough to effectively eliminate the black-white educational attainment gap And more over these continued and reflected the significant increases in earnings That for each year of exposure to integrated schools. We saw about a three to five percent increase in wages culminating with about a 30 percent increase in wages for black children exposed throughout their school age years relative to Black children from those same districts who were confined to segregated schools We saw that the power of those impacts were strong enough to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty Again with significant reductions in the annual incidents of poverty in adulthood Now what's important is that these impacts of integration were not just felt for the first generation that attended desegregated schools but for their children as well and Additionally, we see significant reductions in incarceration that accompanied this exposure and access to better funded schools Now when we fast forward one of the things that we recognize is that integration alone is insufficient to fulfill the promise of equal educational opportunity There could be no cure without it, but it by itself was insufficient and so it has to be combined with school resource equity through school funding reforms and access and expansions of access to high quality pre-k and so what we want to zero in on is school desegregation aims to achieve the goal of equal educational opportunity by redistributing school children school funding reforms by redistributing resources And pre-k expansions by redistributing the timing of investments back to the earliest years of cognitive development And while each of those three policies are instrumental in affecting life Chances of children. It's really the synergies between them that The power to transform children's lives really lie And so it's really this three-dimensional synergy between school desegregation school funding reforms and quality pre-k That's precisely the policy prescription that we believe is required to overcome the legacy of segregation So we look at that by looking first at the Nationwide districts with most students of color in schools are spending about 15 less in per pupil spending than predominantly white affluent ones despite the greater proportion and concentration of need from special needs to English language learners to concentrations of poverty And what that money buys is access to better instructional expenditures teacher salaries smaller class sizes And what we're finding is when those reforms happen And they're preceded by access to quality pre-k what we see is that the head start impacts Depend critically on whether those children are subsequently attending well funded schools the very fact that half of the achievement gap among third graders That we see at third grade Half of that achievement gap was already present at kindergarten entry really highlights The footprint of early life experiences in the critical aspect that currently less than half of three and four year olds attend quality pre-k programs Now what we see in the early period of the rollout of head start is significant expansions and head start led to significant increases in high school graduation rates And those impacts were double when they were subsequently attending Well funded k-12 schools and similarly the effects of a 10 percent increase in k-12 spending Was double when it was preceded by access to quality pre-k. We see this both an increase in educational attainment and reductions in poverty and adulthood as well as reductions in incarceration So when we put all of this together Using the experiences of california and other school funding reforms and the differences across the country what we really see the importance of is Continuing integration alongside Significant expansions and target expansions in school spending, but the nature of segregation today is not just What's happening in cosmetic ways with with looking at desegregated schools But looking at the fact that we're seeing desegregated schools In segregated classrooms that racialized tracking is meaning that access to college preparatory courses Access to gifted and talented programs There is bias for the guarding the placement and that is an important aspect of how integration Has to be achieved. What we saw is that leading up to integration we saw an increasing rates of high school graduation rates that then Leveled off after the resegregation of schools um One of the things that when we think about schools we focus on educational outcomes But one of the things that we have to consider is the ways in which it affects socialization processes racial access Racial attitudes are formed in these years the contact hypothesis as martin king Elequently described it people fail to get along because they fear each other they fear each other because they don't know each other They don't know each other because they have not communicated with each other And what we try to document is how that exposure In school settings affects political views in adulthood racial attitudes and so in summary What we see is that for poor children The long run effects of k-12 spending double when preceded by access to quality pre-k We see that the resegregation of schools resulted in lower educational attainment for poor minority children with Larger academic achievement gaps and part of that is teacher quality that is harder retained High quality teachers in high poverty districts that we see that the recent surges in political polarization And racial intolerance in adulthood are linked to the lack of school age exposure to diversity There's a direct link there and finally that we find that the power of a 25 increase in per pupil spending Throughout k-12 years could eliminate the average attainment gaps that we see between children from low income and non-poor families Finally targeted public investments in education and health more than pay for themselves In the long run we see this in Community spending less on remediation on public assistance on health care crime And the benefits from increasing revenues when we invest in all of our kids equitably. Thank you so much for your time I'm gonna leave that back up for a minute. Just a little longer. Great. Thank you So it is now my pleasure to introduce dr. Linda darling Hammond She's the president and ceo of the learning policy institute and the charlesy do common professor Of education emeritus at stanford university where she founded the stanford center For opportunity policy in education and served as the faculty sponsor of the stanford teacher education program Dr. Darling Hammond also serves as the president of the california state board of education And is past president of the american educational research association And recipients of its awards for distinguished contributions to research lifetime achievement and research to policy She's also a member of the american association of arts and sciences and the national academy of education Please join me in welcoming dr. Darling Hammond We are having um such a corny copia of intellectual riches this morning I just really want to appreciate my colleagues rucker and shawn for I'm getting us going on this really important conversation And i'm gonna continue and really think a little bit about the policy elements that can be brought to bear and have been We titled this how investment and integration matter and you heard from rucker the Synergy that you really need to accomplish to get the kind of goals that we're talking about when brown versus board of education Was first brought it was a consolidation at the supreme court level of multiple lawsuits And there have been many years of lawsuits leading up to that moment And they toggled back and forth between the theories of addressing unequal spending And addressing segregation It was ultimately the segregation argument that you know was the basis for the brown decision But it was always In part because of the fact that segregation had been accompanied by dramatically unequal spending. So we're seeing the same kinds of Factors today that were in place then The us you could think of having two achievement gaps We have what we've been talking about this morning the gap between white and more affluent students In the united states students of color And those in poverty, but also we have a gap that's been growing Between us students and those and others increasingly high achieving nations that have made much more thoughtful and equitable investments In education over the last 30 years. We were indisputably the number one country in the world in education In the 1970s We now if you look at the piezer rankings are somewhere between about 25th and 35th In reading math and science and have been declining In both absolute terms and relative terms in recent years So the genesis of the Of the disparities is in fact this issue of inequality One of the reasons for the trends I just described is that The us has higher poverty rates for children than any other country In the industrialized world by a large Measure where that red line on the far right hand side of the graph It's also the case that in higher performing Countries, this is from oecd You see a relationship along the bottom line as spending money Progressively that is to put more money into the education of students of greater needs Math achievement is on the vertical axis. You see up at the upper right hand quadrant Countries you often hear about as being high achievers Singapore and Finland and many others in the upper left hand quadrant. You see the countries that are Performing at high levels with great inequality and it's an empty set There are no countries that have high rates of inequality and high achievement And that's you know part of the fact that you see a very different way of allocating resources In countries that are making strong gains in the us just to give some background School funding is both unequal across states and within states On the left hand side, you can see just the range across states. Vermont spends about three times more than arizona on average The data on the right hand side are from new york state And you can see that districts there Typically the high spending districts are spending three times more than the low spending districts And when you multiply that out across the country The wealthiest districts in the country are spending about 10 times more on per pupil on education than the poorest districts in the country and that explains sort of the range of educational opportunity that we have Far in contrast to countries where there's equitable allocation of resources to schools Also, we see this growing concentration Of poverty poverty used to be much more You know Spread out if you will And lower in the amount of poverty. In fact, we have almost twice as many kids in poverty now as in the And at the end of the 1960s But only 12 states spend their money progressively such that There's at least 10 percent more spent on kids in high poverty districts 28 states spend less on kids in high poverty districts. There are about 10 in the in the middle And the anatomy of inequality really begins with poverty and segregation It then leads is exacerbated by unequal school funding There's then an inequitable distribution of well qualified teachers, which rucker referred to That is accompanied by unequal access to high quality curriculum And at the top of that unequal pyramid you get the dysfunctional schools that we're worried about I'm going to pause now in the in my remarks and introduce Senator chris murphy and come back to the policy strategies that we want to Be using to address these problems After senator murphy has helped us really understand the rationale behind the work that he is doing, which we are here In gratitude for It's our honor to introduce senator murphy. It's great to see you. He's from the great state of canatic it That's john britain one of our co-authors of Of an article that i'm going to mention in a moment here cheering for connecticut and the senator The senator is a member of the senate health education labor and pensions committee And the appropriations committee in his home state the city of hartford is one place where we've witnessed the effectiveness of state and local efforts To diversify public schools These efforts came about after the connecticut supreme court ruled that racial ethnic ethnic and economic isolation In hartford schools violated the state's constitutional obligation to provide all children with racially integrated and substantially equal educational opportunities There's actually an lpi publication on the table outside called sharing the wealth which describes the Efforts that were made in hartford to create a regional desegregation and wealth sharing plan john britain was partly responsible for making that happen and he is here with us today Senator murphy has consistently demonstrated his commitment to rectifying the inequalities identified by the court Including the important oversight role of the federal government as it relates to student civil rights He does so by consistently putting forth High quality research based ideas for supporting state and local efforts To ensure that all students have access to the resources and supports they need to fully participate in a democratic and global society senator murphy a member of the senate health committee along with congresswoman fudge introduced the strength and diversity act Which provides federal funds to support state and local efforts to create greater racial and socioeconomic diversity In our nation's public schools He is a steady strong voice for equality in this country. Please join me in welcoming senator christ murphy Well, uh, thank you very very much linda. Thank you for being such A hero to those of us in the congress who care about the issues upon which you're all being briefed today It's really wonderful to see A capacity crowd here, and I think you're gonna get an enormous amount Out of this presentation and these panels and i'm glad to be here with marcia who I know is uh on her way Speaking of heroes, uh, john britain is Not just one of the individuals responsible for the chef case and the implementation plan But really the central figure in much of that story a story, which Still has not been finished in kinetic it as he will testify. We have certainly made Uh insufficient progress to recognize what is now a state constitutional right To an equal education integrated with With with peers But without leaders like linda and john and so many others in this room We wouldn't be where we are today. I'm just really here to welcome you to thank you for spending some time on this topic and to just give you a little bit of a Window into the work that your allies in the senate and the house are doing. Let me thank lpi and the national coalition on school diversity The stanford center for education policy analysis and the stanford school of education for hosting This event really proud to have partnered as was mentioned with representative fudge on the strength in diversity act But as linda mentioned listen in kinetic it We live with the catastrophe of Social economic and racial segregation. We continue to be one of the most segregated states in the nation and as we have watched since 1988 the share of Intensely segregated minority schools Dramatically expand We simply haven't made the progress that we need to make and we've watched how the dollars in our state of Connecticut Follow that pattern of segregation We have bridgeport one of the lowest income districts district with enormously Segregated schools Getting about $14,000 per student Whereas Greenwich an incredibly wealthy school district Majority white district is spending $21,000 per student think of this in danbury, which is actually a pretty racially and economically diverse school district They're spending about $16,000 per student whereas Cornwall a Exclusively white small town school district is spending $35,000 per student And so even with a constitutional right to a equal integrated education in connecticut We still have it wrong. We still have more and more kids who are going to school in economically and racially segregated environments And we have an enormous difference In how money flows to wealthy districts and to more economically challenged districts And we need help from the federal government because our politics in a state like connecticut Play against any efforts to try to change this reality through the state legislature in hartford We have Political power exists in connecticut in the richer areas and in the suburbs low Turnout and elections in the cities inevitably mean that they have Less ability to advocate for themselves in hartford and the status quo Festers on and on and on The poor districts The districts with more intense segregation get less and less and less and the districts with More economic means with more political power and Hartford get more and more and more And we know this story because this is the story That is played out decade after decade in state capital after state capital Which is why the federal government is involved in the question of education, right? The federal government got involved in education policy because of Civil rights issues because we knew that there were populations that simply on their own Could not beat the power structures that were in place in state capitals throughout the country And so the federal government a long time ago stepped up and started to require either through court decisions or legislation Change to happen and we need to continue to prompt that change And there's a number of ways in which we can do that First we need to remember how close we came to passing a new version of the elementary and secondary education Act that had no civil rights provisions in it Remember the bill that comes out of the help committee in the senate has no requirement That states track Populations and their performance based on race or income or disability And no requirement that the states actually do something when they find that those groups of students are falling far behind their peers By By a hair We were able to get that provision reinserted back into that bill But it is a reminder that we have to constantly be vigilant to make sure that there is a civil rights element Of federal education law But now we are fighting with the department of education over whether they are actually going to Track and record the data when it comes to the performance of minority students or disabled students Or economically disadvantaged students We can't fix this problem if we can't identify it And so we need your help in continuing to make sure the department of education Is aggregating and disaggregating data along the lines that are most helpful to our ability to uh to Make the case for why More integrated less segregated environments are good for students. Uh, and then this legislation that Representative fudge and I have It's a fairly meager amount of money that would fund Voluntary state or local based efforts to Integrate schools economically and racially I wish it were more money, but I think it's an important signal that the federal government Understands what the data tells us about kids who are going to school in Environments in which they are sitting in classrooms with kids who have different economic backgrounds for from them Who are of different races than they are? And by sending a value statement that the federal government is going to put some dollars behind these efforts to diversify our school environments I think it will unlock some more efforts at the state and local level. Um, and finally What I've tried to do back in Connecticut is You know not come to these conclusions based just on the good data and policy work that you do but actually sit with kids right Go to the places where we have truly diverse learning environments and hear from them As to what they think the benefit was and is uh, I was in meriden, canada kid at platte high school, which is a just wonderful learning environment of a high school in which You have, um, white and black and Hispanic kids Walking down the halls sitting in classes together kids of different economic backgrounds playing sports together And you know these kids were just So excited to sit around a table and tell me the benefit that they got From that experience and plenty of them had come to meriden from environments in which they were only going to school With african-american kids or which they were only going to school with white kids or where they were only going to school With poor kids and their eyes were just you know as big as saucers when they got to platte and And and and understood the benefit to them of that diverse learning environment and that's what the data continues to tell us It tells us that the kids that go to school in these Diverse environments do better But it also tells us that companies that create diverse environments do better Right the data consistently tells us that as you move through life as you move from school into the economy If you are in a diverse environment, you are going to perform better in school and in the private sector and our strength in diversity act is An effort not to fix this problem with one piece of federal legislation But to make sure that folks realize that congress gets Congress understands what the data tells us and that we want to send This message to school districts and to states that we're going to support you if you choose to engage in these efforts So i'm just really proud to Be able to to to do a small slice of this work really excited to partner with all of you who I think are going to be better advocates better educated champions on the issue of the importance of diversity after this event today And I welcome you to the united states senate. Thanks very much for having me We are so fortunate to have senator murphy and his colleagues devoted to the long haul on these issues so sort of given the Framework that we've been hearing this morning We also have heard about the fact that investments matter along with Desegregation i'm actually going to quote another study that rucker johnson was Involved in on investments matter and he mentioned it earlier that looking over Really a very similar period of time when school finance reforms were underway along with desegregation reforms Low-income students who experience the benefits of school finance reforms for all of their k-12 years If they had 20 more funding spent on them Had graduation rates 23 points higher Additional year of attainment family incomes higher and eliminated the adult poverty gap with more fluent classmates These issues need to be thought about together. So there was a period of time when we made these major investments as a country Back in the 1970s Actually beginning in the 60s with the war on poverty Desegregation assistance investments in magnet schools The beginning of esea title one dollars going to urban districts school finance reforms underway The achievement gap between black and white students. This happens to be in reading Closed significantly during that period of time you can see how much the gap closed But almost all the policies that were started in that period of time were ended during the 1980s and so since the 1980s The achievement gap has grown again. It is now 30 higher in reading and math than it was 30 years ago So it's not that we don't know how to address these issues. It's that we have not sustained Our efforts to do so. This is not something that's just happened It has happened because of the elimination of policies That were moving in the other direction among those were also housing policies that enabled middle class families to have homes that required economically Desegregated housing in communities that has not been continued and enforced in recent years As a consequence as you can see the proportion of black students attending majority white schools has been falling steeply since the 1980s In the places where there was desegregation we saw ruckers data in that regard This is a map showing how segregation Decreased or increased at moments in time You can see that the zero in the middle is the number of years since The release from court oversight Under court oversight segregation decreased rapidly and when court oversight was removed Which has been a litigation struggle across the country segregation increases Even more dramatically And that's kind of where we are today. In addition funding levels for education have fallen during the recession And it's just recently that about half the states have caught up to what they were spending back in 2007 Those funding gaps have become greater for title one high poverty schools So the lack of resources has been been exacerbated since the Recession caused state funding drops that were implemented in a way that Allowed the burden to fall most heavily on students in high poverty schools What can we do well, we've heard about the strength and diversity act and as senator murphy said that is a Importance small step to keeping this issue on the agenda We could also as we do currently in the federal Essa law we expect schools and states to show progress for all groups of students on achievement We could also expect them as a condition of federal funding to show The school resource equity progress for students across Different districts and different schools We could expect equity indicators in district and school report cards We could in fact reestablish the department of education's guidance that was recently Eliminated to support voluntary desegregation efforts in districts And to enable them to make continue to make progress in that regard without fear of being sued by the federal government For example, we could increase funding under essa for magnet schools Right now we're spending about 10 times more on charter schools than on magnet schools Charters are occasionally desegregated, but generally speaking our exacerbating segregation In this country We could increase funding for magnet schools to at least that level And other state and local efforts to create more economically and racially diverse schools We could eliminate the legislation that is currently on the books that prohibits the use of federal funds for bussing So that districts like san antonio New york and many others that are seeking to desegregate through choice Mechanisms of parents actually have the money to pay for the transportation that allows that to happen We could enforce The policies that exist in essa Which actually require districts to show that they are integrating students in classrooms and schools by race Economics disability status language status That's a little equity nuggets sitting in the law that no one's paying attention to right now But that is something that both states and the federal government could be looking to enforce There's also in the law an expectation for school finance reporting by school And there are comparability provisions for ensuring teacher equity across schools within districts None of those are the subject of enforcement at the moment and all of them could make a dent in this problem So We're going to stop here with that as just a beginning point for the conversation about solutions And i am going to introduce our moderator for our panel peter cookson from the lpi staff And also co-author of the article i mentioned earlier on sharing the wealth Is going to lead us in a conversation And peter is the co-lead of our equitable resources and access team at learning policy institute. Thank you Well, thank you very much Well, uh, i'm going to sit over there, but just to just to say this is a good beginning of a conversation i'm going to ask the panelists a few questions Briefly let them interact with each other And then we're going to have an open discussion So, um think of what you might want to ask, but i think i'm going to sit down over there Can you hear me now? Okay, sorry So this was a A really stimulating but more than stimulating was actually a pretty profound conversation given the data that all three of you presented here So the questions i'm going to ask are not necessarily the most Central to maybe what you're saying but an extension of it a little bit to ask you to push your thinking a little bit on it So shan i'm going to start with you Given your research about the role of poverty and continuing segregation, which you so well and brilliantly showed us Should we be focused on socioeconomic integration and or increasing school funding and not necessarily on racial diversity? So the question about what we should do We should do a lot of things. Um, this isn't a problem That's small enough that one solution is likely To work or to work equally well in all places so, uh Certainly our data show that racial segregation is deeply problematic for equality of educational opportunity And it it also shows that a large part of why it's Problematic is because it concentrates minority students in high poverty schools But that doesn't mean that the right or only solution in every place is to focus only on socioeconomic integration In many places it's not mathematically possible to reduce Racial economic segregation strictly by focusing on economics That is we need to address both the racial and the economic piece of it. So, um, I think a strategy that both focuses on racial integration and economic integration is likely to be most fruitful But even that's probably not sufficient I think what we also have to do is think hard about strategies of of housing policy that will lead to more Diverse communities. It's easier to have diverse schools when you have diverse communities It's often impossible to construct diverse schools when we have as much residential segregation as we do. So I think A comprehensive set of strategies that involves both Race-based and economic-based and housing as well as school-based strategies is likely to be the way forward All right, that's great. That was that was great. You also asked about funding, but I'm going to I'm going to defer to my colleague on the funding issue. Good. Thank you. Thank you. That was that got us off to a great start I rocker You have those three trifecta Policies that could make a difference, but I'm going to ask you something a little different In your book, you describe the role of these breakaway districts districts is succeeding in the face Of segregation efforts. What is the role of the courts and the federal government in your thoughts? In the face of these efforts to sabotage desegregation efforts, especially in the early phases that show they don't work I have the same issue Got it. Yeah, thanks. No, it's a great question. I I think you know recognizing that today About two-thirds of school segregation occurs between districts Implicates as Sean was just saying it becomes much more imperative to use tools of housing policy To integrate schools in ways that busing really in the older era Would have been a more viable solution, but it certainly is not not up to the task in that way And yet at the same time the school attendance boundaries can be drawn in segregated ways Or in ways that help integrate classrooms and that's really largely a policy choice not solely just the outcome of some set of You know individual parental preferences So one of the things that is kind of under the radar is the evidence of gerrymandered school district boundaries and the ways in which kind of people are using their political power to basically secede from districts and sometimes using the avenue of New charter schools in ways that are like unregulated To avoid some of the equity guidelines and so I do think that that's something we've seen that type of play power play being used in North Carolina And and so we really have to think about ways in which The choice-based approach Has to still Be in a way that is tends to the issues of excellence and equity in concert not In a way that hoards opportunity because really what we're talking about we're talking about segregation is really the hoarding of opportunity So I do think that's succeeding and you know The fact that these district boundaries they These lines while they're invisible They're not invisibly like not significantly affecting the opportunity for kids. Absolutely Thank you so much rucker. I And remember we can all talk among ourselves here too, but I'll ask Linda a question first Linda You know you've the importance of teacher quality Including educated diversity is a theme throughout your work and Sean's work and Rutgers work Can you speak a little bit more to the importance Of a well-prepared and diverse teacher workforce and the key levers to ensure all students have access to such teachers Maybe referencing the higher education act or historically black colleges and universities Is part of what I described as the anatomy of inequality is that when you have You know disparate funding for schools and districts You also then get very inequitably distributed teachers We're seeing that right now with huge teacher shortages across the country And many many people in the teaching force coming in without preparation And often staying a very short time so you get schools where you've got lots of underprepared teachers You know with a lot of churn In high poverty segregated schools and that's one of the major reasons that you see the outcomes that you do So it's tremendously important. I will say that in this country We have not invested in the teaching profession and the development of teachers Again since about the 1970s when there I came into teaching as many people did on the national defense education act Where you could you know get your Training underwritten while you know in your loans underwritten part of our problem right now is that we've got Many fewer people going into teaching the salaries are way behind those of other professionals So you earn about 30 less student debt is a huge issue. We've heard about it on that campaign trail and It is Actually a barrier for going into professions like teaching because people choose their profession based on you know Whether they can afford to be in that Line of work given the debt that they're carrying So to really solve these problems. This is another piece of the puzzle We need to get to a place like some other countries are Singapore Finland if you teach there your education is entirely free There are incentives to be in schools where you are needed and supports Mentoring available for all individuals in that context Mentoring that then also creates a stable teaching force So part of the solution ultimately because parents will When there are choice plans available and there are lots of kinds of choice publicly Within public school districts and even across public school districts They're going to choose places where they think their kids will be well shot well taught And if we can create the context within which kids are well taught in every school Then you can have a greater Both it will require greater equity and spending But you'll also develop a greater diversity in the The parents who will choose those schools. So it's going to be a critical issue I want to just say a word about diversifying the teaching force as well Which is a very critical issue We actually have evidence now from a number of studies That a black student who's taught by a black teacher for at least one year and sometimes four more than that Has a tremendous bump in achievement and attainment particularly for black male students And we need diversity in the teaching force so that everyone is seeing role models and so that Collective faculties can help each other meet the needs of all kids in their schools So that's another piece of the puzzle the teach grants that Are offered federally could be expanded investments in minority serving institutions to Increase the number of teachers of color who are underwritten and trained to come into the teaching force would be big Contributions to getting to the kind of teaching force we need All right. That was great. Yeah. Thank you. Do you want to Yeah, maybe I'll just to amplify, you know those great points that Linda just laid out Which is just that schools with high levels of black latino Have almost two times as many First-year teachers as schools with low minority enrollment And minority students are more likely to be taught by Inexperienced teachers than experienced ones in 33 states across the country And so the very fact that only a third of public high schools with high latino and black enrollment Offer calculus, you know I'm an economist that teaches quantitative methods and we talk about the under representation of minorities and women in the stem fields These begin those origins of those begin in those curricular access to quality and the fact that less than 30 in gifted and talented Are african-american and latino is part of These access to opportunity issues that we have to zero in on and some of the teaching aspects are related to that So yeah, I think that all right. Can I just uh ask rucker? Are you using the crdc data when you make those claims because there's a point to be made about crdc data? Yes, yeah, I thought so That's right. So the civil rights data collection allows us to know that It has been threatened with you know, um both Earlier on elimination and it we survived that battle But they're now you know cuts in that data collection being threatened again The federal government is no longer analyzing those data and producing reports about them So lpi is going to produce reports on some of these data. We hope other researchers will do so on other sources of those data But that's a critical import as uh senator murphy said if we don't know Where the problems are we can't really address them. Yeah, well, yes Do you want to jump into this conversation? Uh, I would just echo a few things one is that the last graph I showed that showed that high poverty schools Had lower learning rates on average that his children Learn less While they're in those schools is is very largely related to the fact that High poverty schools have a very hard time Staffing themselves with the same kind of skilled experience teachers as low poverty schools do I think that's that's sort of a key piece of it and on the data point I mean I think of The work that I do and lots of other folks do is so dependent on the federal data collection That without crdc and the common core of data and edfax data system and all the other data systems We wouldn't we wouldn't know this and so the kind of educational epidemiology that we can do to sort of map out the problem and identify Where and when things are getting worse and identify places where where things are working without good data We can't do that and so Certainly data is not enough to solve any problem, but but without good data. It's often hard even to know where to start Thank you. That's great. I'm wondering Yeah, I think we can I think maybe we can unless somebody has another point They want to make right now Maybe we could open up the conversation a little bit to the larger group. Does that work for everybody? Hands up already. I'm not just maybe just say one. Okay. Well, we have one more comment here But it's just this idea of the teacher turnover that you know one in five teachers leave the profession within the first five years But that rate is like one in two and some of the high concentrated poverty schools And so it's really those dynamics About how we best recruit retain and develop high quality teachers and teacher diversity that I think linda has well well put and and that those are the pieces that we're trying to connect for teachers Who come in without certification without having training the rate is 49 percent who leave within five years It's only 17 percent for those who come in with training So the problem is both being sure that people can afford to get good training and get the mentoring that they need And then you know addressing the working conditions in those schools. Well, great. Let's get started. Michael has the mic I'll just choose a few people. Um, just to say who you are and your you're um, Where'd you represent and okay? Hi, I'm ember sandsbury. I'm a phc student in education policy in early childhood at george mason university This question is for you. Dr. Johnson. I'm so happy you brought up the early years so in the context of brown v board lousy nickels and The constanetive versus bicarb case A number of education advocates pushed for Um rights and also more mandated supports for immigrant students and English learners And so I want to ask you a question particularly in the early years dual immersion is being pushed as a model That's effective for students But also to attract white and more affluent families into segregated districts if you could speak to that turn of events Thank you. That's good. Actually Sean and I were actually talking about that as an example over dinner yesterday in some way So Sean probably can chime in even more, but I think it's a it's a prime example of diversity as Embraced as an asset To the learning environment as opposed to a barrier or some kind of political Issue to avoid and I think the more that we can both invoke Diversity of in the same way that it's easier to learn a language at earlier ages It is also easier to socialize In learning ways to learn from others at younger parts of the school age Continuum so I think of those as just examples that can be used as catalysts to draw A diverse set of students to Schools, but I also would just lift up the idea that um like New Jersey is an example of a state system that has a Extremely one of the most progressive school funding formulas in the country and part of the legacy of the Abbott rulings But one of the distinctive aspects of it also is that it includes preschool Funding public preschool funding as part of the school remedy That accompanied the school funding reform litigation and I think When we can have reforms that adjoin the pre-k with the k12 environment and then I I'm not as well versed in the Kind of quantitative evidence on the impacts of bilingual education and dual immersion, but I I do think it's it's a great Thing and it's an example of something that was viewed negatively and now the Both research evidence, but also the communities That are surrounding those areas have been able to effectively shift the narrative About that specific issue and I think the same way that we see that there Is how we are going to have to shift the narrative about the value of diversity in other ways Maybe a question on from this side of the room. Is there anybody over there? I see a hand right there Hi, my my name is Jen ride down. I'm a teacher from Washington state And I was part of force busing in Seattle public schools as a student and I teach in a high-poverty school now My question has to do with two things Washington state recently had a court case that successfully challenged how schools were funded And I'm wondering on the federal level What if anything can be done? I'm not saying necessarily our model is perfect But it was an attempt to change the funding that created the Disparities among districts and then the second thing I'm wondering when you talk about the Extensive needs in struggling schools where I'm at Aces the adverse childhood experience as well It's a symptom of what you're talking about of racial and economic segregation It seems to be a great public health crisis That those working in those schools to help those students overcome those achievement gaps Need much more support and training and I'm wondering if you can talk on both funding and on aces Thank you for raising both of those There uh, you know our school finance Lawsuits going on in more than 40 states Washington being one of them almost every state has its state bird its state flag and its state school finance lawsuit Um And you know some of them have been successful We just talked about new jersey new jersey had litigation for 30 years nine court decisions. They finally Created parity funding In the state, and it has dramatically reduced the achievement gap. It is now A majority minority state that is number one in the nation in writing number two in reading number two in graduation rates You know because they've really made those investments So, you know we it has been state by state because of a federal decision in 1975 But the federal government can leverage that activity in part as I said we could expect along with achievement Gains and monitoring Opportunity gains and monitoring for states to demonstrate to get federal funds that they are making progress in closing the opportunity gap And you know that's the intention of the achievement gap conversation, but it hasn't always worked out that way So I think there is a federal lever that could be put to bear and part of the other piece of this is the federal government's commitment to schools that uh, you know where equity for kids are furthest from opportunity and the The situation described with a degree of adverse childhood experiences in high You know schools of concentrated poverty with housing insecurity and health care insecurity and food insecurity and sometimes, you know other conditions of violence or Crime or incarceration in the community, etc You know do create it's one thing to say we have one child in my class who's homeless And i'm going to try to figure out it's another thing to say we've got you know Half of the children in the class are homeless and i'm trying to you know respond to the needs that Are there one thing the federal government used to invest a great deal more in than it does today But could return to his community schools that is the wraparound services that are available We have evidence Lpi did a big synthesis of research on this that you get substantial improvements in child health In school climate in teacher retention because there's that extra set of supports as well as achievement for students When you have well functioning wraparound supports and integrated supports for families in school So that's both a federal and a state initiative that is desperately needed Sean do you want to just jump into this? Let me just add You've said a lot of what i was going to say, but let me add one thing on school finance So for a long time the received wisdom was that funding doesn't matter Um And so efforts to equalize funding or increase funding were a fool's errand and a waste of taxpayer money That was entirely wrong So that was based on old research that was of low quality and not very rigorously done There are a dozen new studies done in the last decade or so all very rigorous all very high quality one of them Done by rucker and his colleagues that show very persuasively that when states increase funding and when they equalize funding It improves educational outcomes and improves it more for low-income students and students in uh In high poverty districts, so so if anyone tells you that funding doesn't matter and we shouldn't be chasing that They're wrong Thank you Representative fudge here. Oh, yes. Okay. Let's let's do that. Sorry. Yeah, all right. I don't want to cut you off All right. Listen, I want to thank the panel and I want to thank all of you for asking question and we'll move on to our next It is my great honor now to welcome our clean-up hitter and uh Tremendous supporter of this agenda congresswoman marsha fudge who represents the 11th congressional district of ohio Which is uh the district that represents my family and I am a big fan and honored That she is here and uh a member of the house education and labor committee subcommittee on civil rights and human services She's also the lead cosponsor of the strength and diversity act with senator murphy Congresswoman fudge is a long-standing advocate for providing every child with equitable access To a quality education from preschool through post-secondary education and for protecting civil and human rights She served the people of ohio for more than three decades Prior to becoming a member of congress She was elected as the first female and first african-american mayor of warrensville heights ohio Please join me in welcoming congresswoman fudge Good morning Just forgive me for running just a few minutes late this morning But we've had obviously a lot of things going on this week Um Just going to speak very briefly about uh our strength and diversity act I was born and raised in the city of cleveland. I went to cleveland public schools Got a very good education because I had very very good educators But I see now what I saw then segregated schools I represent some of the wealthiest people in the world and I represent some of the poorest and as a consequence We decided that it was important for us to try to eliminate every possible barrier For children to get a great education I grew up poor What I learned I learned in school and I learned in libraries But I learned from people who believed that all of us deserved a chance When you live and work and go to school in a segregated environment Things are different Your schools don't have the same kind of resources at the schools in the next city have You don't have swimming pools. Just let's take simple things swimming pools Enough basketball courts But what you don't also have is good libraries and computers and people who understand technology Which is going to be the weight of the world in the next 10 years. It's their way now But in a few more years 80 of all jobs in this country will require technology And so what we do is we put young people at a disadvantage I think maybe we don't do it intentionally But we have let it happen I live in one of the most segregated cities in the country Most of my schools are all 100% free and reduced lunch And so We look at segregation and poverty together It's not a good equation So we decided that we wanted to try to find ways to at least do some things that we knew we had the ability to do And that was to try to eliminate racial and social economic isolation in our schools We have allowed this to happen. We are as segregated now as we were in 1965 So the more things change the more they stay the same So what we have to do as people who have the ability to do it is at least try We may not always succeed, but we have to let young people know that we care and we must try Part of the reason we have so much discipline in poor schools is because they are segregated in poor schools It's just a part of the culture Of poor and segregated schools Now don't get me wrong when I go to the other end of the spectrum and I have very very wealthy schools that are predominantly not minority They are missing out as well Because they don't get well rounded educations They don't understand that in this country Black and brown people are going to be the majority very very soon But not only that they miss out on meeting people who are different Who come from different backgrounds and have different experiences and can make their lives richer And so I'm very very proud to be a part Of this legislation is something that I've been looking at for almost four years We're finally at a point where we think we're going to get it passed and I'm very very excited about it because I represent every single child in the 11th district of Ohio Not just the smart ones Not just the ones that go to the charter schools or the magnet schools every child And I am determined To give every child An opportunity at a good education an opportunity to succeed in this country This bill talks about teachers. How do we integrate the teaching field In these schools as well Education and I know this is an old cliche, but I know it to also be true Education is the great equalizer It is why I stand here today Not because my family had anything more Than what I have which was a good education I'm the first college graduate in my family It is important to me That every child I see And every parent I see that cares about their children's future Can say we tried And with that I thank you and I hope that you will support this legislation that you will tell your senators and your congresspeople It is important That young people in this country Have a chance. Thank you I'd like to thank congresswoman fudge. I'd like to thank senator murphy. Our cosponsors are wonderful Panelists and all of you for taking time out to join us early this morning There's some food left over materials out on the table and our panels will be here for a bit longer So thank you all very much