After the influence of the family, researcher James Coleman concluded 40 years ago, the single most important factor determining student achievement is the socioeconomic status of the school a child attends. In a large-scale government-sponsored study, Coleman found that all children do better in middle-class schools—whatever the schools’ racial makeup.

Numerous studies subsequently confirmed Coleman’s findings that con-centrations of poverty tend to defeat good education programs. And yet, until recently, most school districts consciously ignored the research, worried that “busing” to mix rich and poor kids would be politically toxic.

Now, that’s beginning to change. Spurred in part by increased state and federal pressure to raise overall student achievement and to reduce the achievement gap between groups, a growing number of districts are pursuing policies of socioeconomic school integration. The list includes Wake County, N.C.; San Francisco; La Crosse, Wis.; Cambridge, Mass.; St. Lucie County, Fla.; Rochester, N.Y.; San Jose, Calif.; and several others.

Most of these districts rely primarily on a system of magnet schools and public school choice, rather than compulsory busing, to achieve their goal of socioeconomic integration. In Wake County, for example, an extensive system of magnet schools in the city of Raleigh helps the district reach toward its goal that no school have more than 40 percent of students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch or more than 25 percent reading below grade level.

While most of these programs are fairly new, the early signs are promising. In Wake, for example, low-income and minority students perform better than low-income and minority students in other North Carolina districts that fail to break up concentrations of poverty. In 2005, on the state’s High School End-of-Course exams, 63.7 percent of low-income students in Wake passed, compared with 48.7 percent in Durham County, 47.8 percent in Guilford County, and 47.8 percent in Mecklenburg County.

The research suggests that while it is possible to make high-poverty schools work—we all know of such schools—it is extremely uncommon. An Economic Policy Institute study, for example, found that middle-class schools (those with fewer than 50 percent of students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch) are 24 times as likely to be consistently high performing as low-income schools (those with 50 percent or more of students eligible for subsidized lunch).

Middle-class schools generally perform better in part because middle-class students typically receive more support at home and come to school better prepared on average. But the vastly different educational environments typically found in middle-class and high-poverty schools also have a profound effect on achievement. Indeed, low-income students who are given a chance to attend middle-class schools perform better, on average, than middle-income students who attend high-poverty schools.

School districts are turning to socioeconomic integration because traditional approaches are disappointing. Providing equal or adequate per-pupil expenditure is a positive step, but equal funding in the context of economic segregation has proven insufficient.

Likewise, racial desegregation raised black achievement in certain areas (such as Charlotte, N.C., where middle-class whites and low-income blacks were integrated) but not in others (such as Boston, where low-income whites and low-income blacks were integrated). Research found that the academic benefits of racial desegregation came not from giving African-American students a chance to sit next to whites, but from giving poor students of all races a chance to attend predominantly middle-class institutions.In middle-class schools, students are surrounded by peers who are, on average, more likely to value achievement and less likely to act out in class than students in high-poverty schools. These peers have larger vocabularies, on average, which are informally transmitted to fellow students through conversation. In middle-class schools, peers are less likely to move in the middle of the school year and disrupt the class routine. They have big dreams and are more likely to plan to go on to college.

In middle-class schools, parents are able to be more active in the school, to volunteer in class, and to make donations to educational foundations. Not having to work three jobs and having a car make it easier to help out in school, so it’s not surprising that middle-class parents are four times as likely to be members of the PTA as low-income parents.

Will middle-class children be hurt by attending economically mixed schools? The research suggests that sprinkling a few middle-class kids into a school of highly concentrated poverty will likely hurt their academic achievement. But so long as a majority of the students are middle class (defined for these purposes as not eligible for free and reduced-price lunch), their achievement does not decline. This is true in part because the majority sets the tone in a school, and because research finds that middle-class children are less affected by school influences (for good or ill) than low-income children.

Of course, in some jurisdictions (approximately 14 percent nationally), it will be impossible to get to the goal of 50 percent or more middle-class student populations in every school because the majority of students in the entire district are low income. But nationally, almost two-thirds of all students are middle class, and creative efforts to integrate schools across existing school district lines should be pursued. While this might sound like a fantasy, today some 300,000 students cross school district lines each day through interdistrict public school choice.

In all communities that attempt to pursue socioeconomic integration, the politics have been heated. Such a program requires political heavy lifting and genuine leadership. But many parents, educators, and business and religious leaders know intuitively what the research has told us for more than 40 years.

Separate schools for rich and poor are inherently unequal.School board members and superintendents who have the fortitude to tackle this problem are likely to face opposition from some middle-class parents who believe they have “purchased” the right to send their children to economically homogeneous neighborhood public schools. But as they say in Wake County, the one thing going for the program politically is that it works.

Richard D. Kahlenberg is Education Fellow at The Century Foundation. This article originally appeared in the April 2006 issue of the American School Board Journal.