Patricia Levesque is the Chief Executive Officer for ExcelinEd.
Every student deserves a quality education, but for many families, their child’s education is limited to a neighborhood school that fails to meet their needs. This leaves most parents with two options: Move to a more expensive community with higher quality schools or pay for private school tuition. For low-income families, these options are almost always out of reach, and it’s why some parents are willing to do just about anything, including face jail time, to enroll their child in a better education.
That’s exactly the challenge Kelley Williams-Bolar faced when she used her father’s address so her daughters could attend a better public school in a district where they did not reside. It’s a painful dilemma most parents, especially middle- and upper-income families will never face: a choice between sending your child to a failing school or risking jail to give them a better shot at the American Dream.
It’s not limited to Ms. Williams-Bolar’s experience. In 2019, the District of Columbia sued four adults for almost half-a-million dollars in fines for what the Attorney General called “residency fraud.” Three of them were employees of DC Public Schools! In New York, a former police officer hired by the Greece Central School District staked out school bus stops and the house where Yolanda Hill’s children were listed as living—except the home belonged to the children’s grandmother, and Ms. Hill and her children actually lived in Rochester. Yolanda, who was charged with two felonies, only wanted her kids to have a quality education.
And New York isn’t alone. In districts in Florida, New Jersey, Connecticut and Chicago, schools hire private investigators to “catch” students attending schools they’re not otherwise zoned to attend.
There is something morally wrong with an education system that is designed to limit a child’s access to a better school and goes so far as put their parents behind bars.
These imaginary residential zones and school boundaries have grown to become real boundaries to opportunity for students. And their history reeks of exclusion and opportunity hoarding.
How were these boundaries drawn? We don’t have to guess. Looking at maps and reviewing America’s history, we can see many of our school zones closely hew to the red lines of the 1930s. Derrell Bradford speaks about this, and Tim DeRoche wrote a book on it, “A Fine Line: How Most American Kids Are Kept Out of the Best Public Schools.” Hot off the press is Urban Institute research confirming what we reasonably suspected—attendance zones align with real estate, and real estate correlates with generational wealth.
The good news is that it does not have to be this way. Just as these arbitrary lines were drawn nearly 100 years ago, policymakers can expand opportunity for all families. This year we saw substantive policy changes in Oklahoma and Louisiana that tipped the scales toward parents, increasing their flexibility and rights. We witnessed serious efforts to expand open enrollment in states like Ohio, where the Fordham Institute published research to demonstrate the need for policy change. And keep your eyes on Arizona, actively leading the modernization of transportation with an initial $20 million investment.
As conversations about opportunity continue to unfold in states, consider three initial steps this fall:
First, look at your state’s policies and ask, “How transparent are school attendance zones?” Policymakers can make the lines clear by requiring districts to prominently publish school attendance boundaries on their websites. This level of transparency will allow parents and advocates to openly inspect their fairness.
Second, after viewing mapping data you may find that it clearly shows some students may be zoned for lower performing schools while living closer to higher performing schools. Ask, “Why shouldn’t students be able to attend a higher performing school if it’s closer to home than the lower performing school for which they are zoned?” Policymakers can level the playing field by removing gerrymandered exclusionary zones.
As Superintendent Alberto Carvahlo of Miami-Dade Public Schools recently said, “Choice closer to where students live is the best type of high-quality choice.” One way to ensure students have high-quality options near their home is to break down the outdated, invisible and arbitrary barriers that keep them from attending great public schools nearby.
Finally, join us in Orlando next month at ExcelinEd’s National Summit on Education. There you will have the chance to hear directly from Kelley Williams-Bolar, Derrell Bradford, Tim DeRoche and former Representative Valencia Stovall from Georgia discuss the issue at length. Their keynote discussion is designed to ignite new ideas for addressing intractable problems while encouraging a commitment to actively address these generational problems through policy.
After all, policy changes lives. Just as parents who advocate for their children, so policymakers should recommit to making life measurably more promising for their constituents. When we recognize and confront old and unjust barriers, we build a brighter future for our children and grandchildren. Let’s build it together.
