Gov. Scott Walker’s 2015-17 biennial budget proposes the elimination of an integration program that currently buses over a thousand minority students from Milwaukee to white majority public schools in the city’s suburbs.
The Chapter 220 integration program — which started in the 1970s to promote diversity in Wisconsin’s public schools — gives white students the option to attend mostly minority schools in the city as well as allowing minority students to attend suburban schools. Milwaukee Public Schools spokesperson Tony Tagliavia said the program is one of the oldest of its kind in the country.
This year, Tagliavia said there are 215 suburban students attending Milwaukee public schools and approximately 1,456 Milwaukee residents attending suburban school districts. The integration program provides free transportation for these students, Tagliavia said.
The move to eliminate the program could redirect $60 million in school funding. It could also have significant impacts in the state with the country’s largest achievement gap between white and minority students, University of Wisconsin educational policy professor Peter Goff said.
Goff said not much research has been done examining the exact effects of Chapter 220 on Wisconsin’s public schools, so the implications of the proposed elimination give rise to concern.
“In some ways you’re operating blind, and I think that’s always dangerous,” Goff said.
Madeline Hafner, executive director of UW’s Minority Student Achievement Network, said racially integrated schools bring a host of benefits to students who attend them.
The purpose of the integration program was to create racially diverse schools, which Hafner said research has found is beneficial both to students of color and to white students.
Hafner said the main challenge for minority students attending segregated schools is the unequal distribution of resources, primarily good teachers. High poverty schools, which tend to teach higher proportions of minorities, have less qualified teachers, which Hafner said is a significant factor in Wisconsin’s achievement gap.
Hafner said schools with high proportions of minority students also tend to have higher teacher turnover and substandard materials.
“When you have an integration program like the Milwaukee one [Chapter 220], you’re eliminating some of these challenges that are associated with segregated, high poverty schools,” Hafner said.
Additionally, students of color who attend racially diverse schools are held to higher academic expectations, Hafner said. She said all racial demographics engage in increased communication when schools are more diverse. This translates into conversations about race in the classroom, Hafner said.
The same types of issues that drive the push for more diverse institutes of higher learning — such as increased civic and communal responsibility and decrease in racial prejudice — are important at the primary school and high school levels as well, Hafner said.
But Goff said affluent students would feel less of the burden if the program were eliminated. He said in terms of winners and losers, minority students would feel the brunt of the program’s deletion.
“We’re in a situation where Wisconsin has the largest achievement gap in the country and this isn’t a fleeting occurrence, it’s been sustained for many years,” Goff said.
Walker’s office did not respond for comment.
