First-of-its-kind bill would incentivize integration of North Carolina schools

This week, Rep. Cecil Brockman introduced a first-of-its-kind bill to add measures of school segregation to North Carolina’s School Report Cards. If passed, H948 would provide policymakers, families, and students with new data to identify racially segregated schools and those in which opportunities and resources are being denied to certain student groups.

The bill is based on the maxim that “what gets measured, gets done.” By measuring and publicizing the extent to which our schools are segregated and the extent to which certain student groups are denied equal access to resources, leaders at all levels of government can then take steps to address these problems. Publishing the data on the School Report Card page would make this data transparent and widely available to students, parents, and other advocates invested in school integration.

First, the bill would assign each school a “proportionality score.” The proportionality score measures the extent to which the demographics of an individual school differ from the county in which the school is located. The bill would assign each school in the state – including charter schools – a designation of “highly proportional,” “proportional,” “somewhat disproportional,” or “highly disproportional” to identify which schools are the most racially segregated.

Additionally, the bill would gather information on the extent to which resources are disproportionately provided within a school. That is, H948 would require reporting on the equality of access to gifted programs, advanced courses, and experienced and credentialed teachers.

Finally, the bill would examine the equitable distribution of opportunities and resources across schools and student subgroups within a district. It would measure equality of access to instruction in arts and music, as well as access to support personnel such as psychologists, counselors, and nurses.

The bill stems from the work of the Center for Diversity and Equality in Education New Jersey, which developed the proportionality score metric to identify racially segregated schools, and the National Coalition on School Diversity, which created model legislation off which H948 is based (full disclosure, this author contributed to the NCSD report). H948 represents the first state effort to incorporate measures of school segregation into a state’s accountability system.

In addition to being innovative, the bill is timely and important. School segregation in North Carolina continues to harm students from all backgrounds. North Carolina has experienced a stark increase in the number of racially- and economically-isolated schools in the past decade. Legislative leaders continue to push ideas that exacerbate segregation such as unfettered charter school growth, municipal charter schools, and the potential break-up of large, county school districts.

Research continues to show that school integration benefits all students. Integrated schools tend to have higher test scores and narrower opportunity gaps. They positively impact educational attainment, lifetime earnings, incarceration rates, and health outcomes of Black students. Finally, integrated schools increase cross-racial trust and friendships and enhance students’ capacity for working with others.

Of course, there are many additional steps that policymakers could take to actively integrate our schools. Federal and state leaders should be providing our schools with adequate funding, offering financial and technical assistance to districts implementing school integration plans, addressing exclusionary school district boundaries, and by better regulating charter schools. Local leaders can modify attendance zone policies, create magnet schools, replace school resource officers with counselors and social workers, and implement culturally-responsive practices that uplift and affirm all students’ humanity. Still, Brockman’s bill offers an important first step in measuring and publicizing the ways in which school segregation continues to harm all of North Carolina’s students.