Ep 11: Does Greater Diversity in High Performing Schools Ensure Better Outcomes for All?

Today we talk with Lisa Barrow, an acclaimed economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Lisa’s recent work explores the impact of work done by Chicago Public Schools to increase diversity in their schools, as well as the results of this work.  

Chicago Public Schools faced a problem similar to BPS regarding diversity in their exam schools, and has developed a way to maintain diversity without having racial quotas. After a court mandate in the early 2000s forcing CPS to get rid of racial quotas at their selective enrollment high schools, CPS changed their admissions policies to consider both a tiered system comprised of factors about one’s neighborhood, socioeconomic status, and household composition, and a combination of test scores and grades.  This admission policy change has resulted in the student bodies at each of Chicago’s selective enrollment high schools being more reflective of the district at large.

We explore in our podcast the impact these admission changes have had on the student body overall, including that students from the higher tiers (poorer neighborhoods) feel safer and report having better relationships with peers, but do not perform as well academically as students with similar tier and academic status who chose to attend schools outside of the selective school category.

This topic is further detailed in The Elite Illusion, a study done by MIT on elite public schools, including BPS Exam Schools.