Cultivate a supportive policy ecosystem

Look Beyond the One-Time Change

For plants to thrive and sustain year after year, we need fertile ground. In education policy, that means creating an ecosystem that promotes integration and resource equity.

No single policy or set of policies will ever be enough to fulfill the promise of Brown.

As the demographics of students and our society change, as researchers and practitioners learn more about what works, and as political preferences and leaders evolve, the details in this policy agenda might become out of date. Some recommendations stand the test of time because they do not specify strategies or reforms but strengthen the ecosystem within which decisions are made.

What states can do

1. Collect and report data, to assess what’s working and what needs to change.

2. Use district accountability systems to set clear expectations, so that system leaders consider advancing integration and resource equity to be a core part of their job.

3. Leverage federal requirements/supports to advance integration and resource equity.

Illinois presents school funding data well on school report cards.
Community stakeholders can see if a district spends roughly the same amount per student in each school, regardless of whether the school comprises 20 percent or 85 percent low-income students, contrary to best practice of spending substantially more money in higher poverty schools.

More specifics

The word “accountability” in education brings to mind, almost exclusively, systems that grade or rate individual schools. But resource equity and integration are fundamentally multi-school, systemwide issues that require systemic change.
Today’s district accountability systems often grade districts as one big school, treating district leaders as if they were school leaders. This misses the chance to hold districts accountable for the things that they alone have the ability to do—including integrating schools and changing budget processes to channel more resources to schools with the greatest student need.
A smarter district accountability system would be generated in partnership with district leaders themselves, as well as students and families, and would include, for example:
- Deconcentration of poverty:
  
  Districts would earn more points by reducing the range of poverty rates between the highest- and lowest-poverty schools in their district.
  
  For example, they could get all elementary schools within five points of the district-wide average for elementary schools.
- Resource allocation:
  
  Districts would earn more points by aligning the level of resources in a school with the level of student need in that school, either by spreading need evenly and allocating resources equally or by channeling resources (spending per student, number of certified, non-novice teachers and support staff per student, etc.) to the schools with greater student need.
Sometimes state and local leaders need support from federal leaders in order to make difficult change; sometimes that support comes in the form of financial resources and other times in the form of political cover for decisions that could otherwise come with local political repercussions.
One part of building an education ecosystem that values integration and resource equity is leveraging federal requirements and supports.
State leaders should use each of these four federal programs to advance their goals of integrated, well-resourced public schools that work for all students:
(1) Title I of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which requires state, district, and school level resource allocation reviews to support schools that are in need of comprehensive support and improvement and to support underserved students in other schools;
(2) Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in the allocation of school resources such as courses, academic programs, extracurricular activities, teachers, leadership, student support, school facilities, instructional materials, and access to technology and digital opportunities;
(3) the Fostering Diverse Schools Demonstration Grant program, which provides funding to awardees—primarily school districts—working around the country to advance more integrated, well-resourced schools; and
(4) the Magnet Schools Assistance Program, which provides grants to school districts—individually or in partnership with other districts—to establish and operate magnet schools designed to “desegregate public schools