On Black Families, ‘Good’ Schools, And Educational Choice [Op-Ed]

Because of our segregated past and present, Black families have a constrained set of choices when it comes to education. Many have accepted these constraints, made plain by parents incessantly seeking to find a “good school,” whether it’s public, private, predominantly Black, predominantly White, or low-income, keeping their search within the confines of an inequitable system. In fact, how we typically define a good school reinforces the very systems that undermine Black people’s liberation.

Most people loosely throw around the phrase “good school,” equating an “A+” rating with quality without examining what that grade actually reflects. The reality is that much of what we consider a good school is merely a product of demographics, chiefly the wealth profiles of students’ families. 

Wealthier families score higher on standardized tests. So, if you filter out low-income students or live in a toney district, you will naturally get a higher rating. This filter comes in the form of charter, magnet, and private schools, as well as expulsion and excessive punishment.

If you accept a system designed around exclusivity, then, for Black families with means, the “choice” will be between a good (often times predominantly white) and a bad school (predominantly black). What they are typically choosing is between a less resourced school and one made to look good through exclusivity.  

If we are ever to break outside the confines of built-in inequality, we must focus our collective attention on the underlying systems that not only reinforce exclusivity and segregation, but also inevitably foster outcomes that are problematic for schools: concentrated poverty, housing segregation, and chronic disinvestment. These issues don’t stop at the schoolhouse door.

What makes a school authentically good is the quality of its teachers, curriculum, and engagement within and beyond the school’s walls. 

Students feel safe, affirmed, and welcome in good schools. Students are challenged to think critically and rigorously, meeting society’s social and economic demands. In good schools, students become civically engaged with school and local government. Good schools do not shy away from accurate history and/or difficult conversations, using their subject lessons as guides. Maybe most importantly, good schools affirm the communities they serve, expand our sense of community, and deepen our commitment to democracy.

There are many schools that score high on standardized tests that don’t share components of an authentically good school, and there are low-income schools that do. For instance, in 2019, researchers identified 156 “positive outlier” districts where white, African American, and Hispanic students achieve at higher-than-predicted levels relative to their socioeconomic status. In places like Washington, D.C., and New Orleans, Black teachers were fired en masse, effectively blaming them for underperformance. Because test scores can mask teacher quality, there are many Black teachers in low-income schools who would easily see gains with richer populations.

Resources do matter. A well-resourced school simply has greater capacity to allow teachers to differentiate instruction, offer challenging coursework, and provide opportunities to see beyond their local communities. However, many low-income schools are good; they simply produce outcomes that their parents’ income predicts.

When it comes to schooling, education doesn’t predict wealth as much as wealth predicts education. The more wealth a family has, the more education and opportunities they will be afforded.

Parents of means will not only use their wealth to invest in their children’s education. They will also use their wealth to influence policy in ways that advantage the schools their children are in. So, in many cases, a school is “good” by the shares of kids that have been excluded.

A predominantly white school isn’t inherently a good school or even a well-resourced one, and yet many families, twisted by the bad school narrative, chose their school based on how white it is. Certainly, past and present education financing has privileged majority-white districts, reflected in a funding gap. However, we must resist the idea that an exclusive school is a good one. And we must resist the individualistic framing of having to choose only for your child.

Of course, parents will place their children in a safe place that generates learning. However, accepting that individualistic framing is one reason many communities are being starved of resources.

Lower-income students are less likely to score in the highest percentiles, largely because their parents don’t have the discretionary income to put toward enriching activities. In addition, schools predominantly populated by people of color receive significantly fewer resources than their majority-white counterparts. Sure, there are low-income schools that buck the trend, but by and large, poor-performing schools generate lower test scores — though that’s not what constitutes a good or bad school.

A good school isn’t defined by test scores or the percentage of white students. A school’s rating is more than how much money is in its budget. No, a good school is not even about how your child is performing. You can’t blame being average on the school. I often see wealthier families pull their children from multiple schools only to get the same result.

Our quest for a good school must transition to a search for power within our communities. Where incomes can make ends meet, homeownership is high, and people own their businesses, good schools are much more likely to be had. Places where residents can safely walk and breathe clean air along commercial corridors filled with Black-owned businesses are places where good schools will emerge. A question every parent should grapple with is: How do we enrich and empower our communities so that our schools reflect them? Children don’t live in schools; they live with families in communities. The school choice movement has largely sidestepped this issue, moving schools around like furniture in a dilapidated house and giving the illusion of increasing options instead of focusing on empowering families and districts. Private school families often abandon the question as soon as their child hits the school grounds.

God forbid that people make choices around their communities. If families of all hues grappled with community questions, then we would combat the structural racism we’ve seemingly accepted as given, a good even.

The narrative and discourse Black families consistently have fits neatly into an individualistic, school choice frame that a charter school leader can love. But we’ve seen what moving the furniture around in a broken house looks like. If we don’t see the structural changes we need to make for the greater community, then we will continue to accept our constraints as a given.

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