The new educational divide

Last year, The Century Foundation assembled a 25-member task force made up of public officials, teachers, civil rights advocates, business people, union leaders, and scholars to devise ways to reinvent the "common school" in the 21st century. The group's report, "Divided We Fail," outlines a detailed plan for bringing together students of different backgrounds, centering on two principles.

First, efforts to promote integration should focus at least as much on socioeconomic status as race. Racial integration is an important goal in and of itself, but the courts have ruled that the efforts to rectify past segregation have run their course, and some courts are forbidding even the voluntary use of race in student assignment. Moreover, the social- science research suggests the reason majority-minority schools often fail is not the concentrations of students of color per se, but the concentrations of low-income students. Concentrated poverty is closely connected to race – indeed racial discrimination in housing explains in large measure why poor blacks are much more likely to attend schools with concentrated poverty than poor whites. But emphasizing economic integration focuses directly on academic achievement over "social engineering," and using income as a measure is perfectly legal.

Second, efforts must build on the trend toward public school choice rather than relying on "forced busing" that leaves parents feeling impotent. Public school choice avoids the politically unacceptable option of compulsory busing on the one hand and the socially unconscionable alternative of school segregation on the other. Every public school should become a magnet school, offering a racially and economically diverse environment, with a special kind of education that will be attractive to particular parents and students.

These new approaches – economic school integration, and public school choice – are being successfully employed in Massachusetts, Missouri, North Carolina, Wisconsin, California, and elsewhere. They must be replicated if we are to avoid an educational catastrophe. Economic segregation is likely to increase by 2025 in all but six states.

We are becoming two Americas: one rich, one poor – and we will pay a steep price if nothing is done to address this crisis. The political obstacles are formidable, but the stakes are too high not to take action in the best interests of our children.

• Lowell P. Weicker Jr., former governor and US senator from Connecticut, is chairman of The Century Foundation task force on the common school. Richard D. Kahlenberg, senior fellow at The Century Foundation, is executive director of the task force.

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