Cambridge tried to get better racial and economic diversity among students. Now it has one of the most segregated schools in the state.
A novel approach to integrating Cambridge schools has fallen well short of its goal.
Two decades ago, Cambridge embarked on a novel approach to integrating its schools, using family income rather than race to help determine which schools students attend.
It was hailed as a promising way to achieve socioeconomic and racial diversity, since students of color disproportionately live in low income households, while also preserving a family’s right to choose where to educate their children.
But that novel approach has fallen well short of its goal: there are such wide disparities in how students from different racial and socioeconomic status are assigned that Cambridge now has one of the most segregated schools in the state: the Fletcher Maynard Academy, where the population is more than 90 percent of students of color.
Located roughly between Central and Kendall squares, Fletcher Maynard draws many students from nearby public housing, and consequently 70 percent of students are from low-income families. By contrast, the Baldwin School, located near Lesley and Harvard universities, has only 20 percent of students from low income families, while students of color make up less than half the enrollment.
“The district is so blatantly segregated by race and income and yet they claim to be about equity,” said Missy Page, whose daughter attends Haggerty School, where more than 40 percent of students are low-income, slightly above the district average.
Richard Kahlenberg, a researcher at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., was surprised at the disparities in Cambridge, since his earlier research suggested the city’s choice system could be a potential model.
“It is imperative that the district take some dramatic steps to move the system back toward the goal of integration and providing popular choices to parents,” said Kahlenberg. “The worst thing to do would be just to let the system go on as it is — missing the integration targets — and hoping the situation will get better on its own.”
Getting integration right can yield many benefits, as research shows socio-economically and racially diverse schools promote stronger learning environments for students.
But with courts striking down race as a determining factor in school assignments, districts have abandoned such policies or have looked for alternatives, such as using family income.
More than 170 districts and charter schools nationwide have integration policies that consider socio-economic factors, such as students qualifying for free and reduced-price meals or families receiving government assistance, according to the Century Foundation, a progressive independent think tank. Boston, as part of changes to exam school admission process in 2021, incorporated census tract data about where applicants live and the poverty-levels of the schools they attend.
But some research has found that systems that allow parents to choose schools and which also promote economic integration have failed to significantly close achievement gaps in their districts.
David Murphy, interim superintendent of Cambridge schools, said the choice system is working, noting it has created vibrant learning communities at a number of schools serving diverse student populations extremely well.
“At the end of day, I don’t think success should be measured by whether we have an exact precise proportional balancing in every school,” he said. But he added, “We can narrow the gap and we should try to have populations that are representative of the community.”
But some parents and social justice advocates in Cambridge contend school choice is not living up to its integration goals and are calling for an overhaul.
Their cause gained traction in December when the Cambridge School Committee approved closing the Kennedy-Longfellow School due to lackluster demand, low MCAS scores, deteriorating building conditions, and other issues.
In many ways, Kennedy-Longfellow highlights the troubling shortfalls of the choice system. Only about 200 students attend the school, which has capacity for 700, and its demographics are lopsided: 64 percent of students are low-income, including many recent migrants, and are overwhelmingly Black, Latino, or Asian.
By contrast, the district average of low-income students in prekindergarten through Grade 5 is 37 percent.
Many parents fault district leaders for not doing enough to improve the Kennedy-Longfellow, such as adding programs or renovating its deteriorating building, which is just a few blocks from the gleaming towers of Kendall Square, but is plagued by leaks, water damage, and rats.
“It makes me so angry,” said Page, treasurer of the Friends of Kennedy-Longfellow and whose daughter used to attend the school. “The school was set up to fail.”
Cambridge has had a school choice system since the 1980s, initially focusing on racial integration. But it dropped race as a factor in 2001 out of concern it would not survive a court challenge. The district now integrates schools based on students eligible for free and reduced-priced meals.
The change has decreased the gaps between schools with the largest population of low-income students and the smallest by more than 10 percentage points over the last two decades.
Still, five of 12 lower grade schools are considered imbalanced. Three have under representations of low-income students, while two have disproportionately high representations.
Under the policy, a school is considered balanced if the percentage of low-income students reflects the district average for elementary schools or upper schools. The assignment policy allows for a variation of plus or minus 10 percentage points.
A variety of factors contribute to the disparities. High-performing and popular schools fill up quickly during the registration periods, forcing late-registering families, who often are from low-income households, to choose from only those schools with available seats. The district also has placed some programs, such as those for migrant students, at certain schools, pushing up low-income student counts.
When Virginia Cuello arrived in Cambridge on a snowy December day 10 years ago from the Dominican Republic with her 7-year-old daughter, Sarah Suarez, the only school with available seats in an English immersion program was the Kennedy-Longfellow.
Cuello found the staff welcoming on her daughter’s first day of classes, telling her about a food pantry and other resources. Her daughter’s second grade teacher showed them around the classroom and let Cuello stay through lunch.
She was impressed with the quality of teaching. Within a couple of years, Sarah’s English fluency flourished and so did her grades and MCAS scores.
The experience emboldened her to send her younger daughter, Sofia Suarez, who now is in the second grade and has disabilities, to Kennedy-Longfellow. Now, Cuello is working with families in the English immersion program to help them choose new schools for next year.
“I just feel like it’s terrible the school is closing,” Cuello said.
Under Cambridge’s choice policy, the School Committee is supposed to routinely examine schools with low demand and devise ways to make them more appealing to families.
Cambridge has previously done that with other low demand schools, adding a Montessori program to the Tobin School and a Chinese immersion program at the Martin Luther King Jr. School. Both are now among the most popular.
But school leaders opted against re-inventing Kennedy-Longfellow because other schools have enough space to absorb its students, according to Murphy.
“By under-utilizing space in higher performing schools we created a situation in which a school was open only as a default option to families for whom choice was not available,” Murphy said.
Parents and some education advocates say closing Kennedy-Longfellow doesn’t address the imbalance at other schools and could even worsen it. Parents who wait to register will have less popular schools to choose from.
Cambridge City Councilor Patricia Nolan, who is a former School Committee member and co-chaired a review of the school choice system a decade ago, said the current disparities indicate not enough is being done to support every school.
“It’s a great way to run a school district if you have the courage to use the data to address weak links in the district,” she said. “If you make it so all schools are perceived as having equally good quality, it’s going to change the way people have confidence in the system.”
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