The school of life

By Ryan Avent

I live in Arlington, Virginia, just across the Potomac river from Washington, DC. It is a very pleasant sort of inner suburb: rich and liberal, economically and racially diverse. Its public schools are of high – but, crucially, not identically high – quality. Not long ago, uneven population growth rates forced Arlington to move some students from one of its high schools to the other two. That’s how the trouble began.

The overcrowded high school, Washington-Lee, ranks between the other two in performance, in income levels and in the share of students who are white. All three are good schools, but the first two are among the very best in Virginia. In determining how to shift school boundaries, the county chose a model which sent a disproportionate number of low-income and non-white students from Washington-Lee to Wakefield (the less good, less rich, less white school), and a disproportionate number of high-income and white students from Washington-Lee to Yorktown (the other one). The proposal, in other words, amplified rather than dampened underlying differences.