In his new book, Tim DeRoche critically reviews a concept often taken for granted: that students should be assigned to public schools based on their home addresses. It’s an important idea to unpack. In my years of advocacy for school choice, I have found that the biggest pushback comes from those who raised their children either in good school districts or within the attendance zones of good public schools inside larger districts. Local schools worked for them, they argued, so why do we need school choice?
We’ve always had school choice and always will; it’s the availability of that choice that stimulates so much debate. Since 1925, when the Supreme Court unanimously upheld their right to do so, families with means can send their children to private schools. Such families can also gain entry to desirable public schools by purchasing homes in those school districts.
Over time, this selective process has become a brutally effective sorting machine. Census data indicate that the nation’s wealthiest school districts—those with median incomes above $166,000—are 70 percent white and only 13 percent black and Hispanic. In these districts, 70 percent of the families earn more than $100,000 per year. Almost two-thirds of these districts’ adult residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher, providing their children with crucial social capital. At the bottom of the distribution—those districts with median incomes below $55,000—close to 56 percent of residents are black or Hispanic, and only 12 percent of adults hold a four-year college degree. In these districts, 62 percent of families earn less than $50,000 per year.
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