Why is achieving socioeconomic diversity in our schools important? What do we need to be mindful of to build greater economic diversity? What do we need to consider as we work toward being inclusive communities where students from across the income spectrum feel a sense of belonging and realize the potential to achieve success? A critical first step in creating socioeconomic diversity is believing that it is necessary and that it matters. Like other dimensions of diversity that independent schools strive to build, achieving socioeconomic diversity in a school setting makes for more enriching experiences, conversations, and learning opportunities for all students.
As social entrepreneur Leila Janah once said, “Talent is equally distributed but opportunity is not.” Broadening socioeconomic diversity allows schools to find the best and brightest wherever they are, keeping “mission-appropriate” front and center when building the culture and community the school values. Greater economic diversity also ensures that schools combat the frequently held stereotype that high-priced private schools are elitist and only accessible to the very wealthy. To create more of the real-world environment that many parents value, the commitment to socioeconomic diversity must be present and real. In doing so, schools can boast that they are more socioeconomically integrated than their public school counterparts.
Then there’s the public-purpose imperative. By providing access to talented students across the economic spectrum, schools wholly invested in socioeconomic diversity can address and impact the acute social mobility and income inequality challenges that are evident throughout American society. In a January 2018 blog for the Brookings Institution, Harvard economics professor Raj Chetty demonstrates, among other things, that a child born in the lowest income quintile in the United States has just a 7.5 percent chance to reach the top income quintile by adulthood (in Canada, the likelihood is 13.5 percent). For African-American children, this likelihood is a mere 3 percent. Chetty’s research shows that among the things that matter most for improving those odds are: a good kindergarten teacher, a college education, and going to college soon after high school. These are areas in which independent schools excel. As schools expand the socioeconomic diversity of their student bodies, the foundation for success for low- and middle-income students will impact their odds for upward mobility in profound ways.
Saying What You Mean, Meaning What You Say
Perhaps the most necessary tool for creating socioeconomic diversity in any tuition-charging school is the financial aid process. Without a philosophy, methods, and mechanisms for reducing the price tag for families unable to afford it, schools cannot create a socioeconomically diverse community. But having a financial aid budget to make it happen isn’t enough. Schools must see the purpose of financial aid through a different lens; if schools don’t believe the money is best used for building economic diversity, it won’t happen. Further, schools must be effective at distributing aid dollars to that end. A school can have the money and the goal, but if it’s not taking the appropriate actions, the impact on the desired outcome—economic diversity—will be compromised.One strong way to articulate such commitment to socioeconomic diversity is to codify its importance in action-oriented documents. At The Webb Schools (CA), for example, its most recent strategic plan’s goals include, “Create and maintain an optimal enrollment…while further diversifying the student body through the pursuit of middle class families” and “double the financial aid resources to support fully our student selectivity goals and to ensure that every student has access to all Webb programs.”
But saying it’s important and being able to carry it out can be two different things. In the 2016 State of Financial Aid study, NAIS asked U.S. financial aid administrators how important socioeconomic diversity was to them as an objective of their financial aid program. More than three-quarters (77 percent) stated it was “very” (35 percent) or “extremely important” (42 percent). However, when asked how well they felt they met the socioeconomic diversity objective, only 56 percent stated they met this goal “extremely” (18 percent) or “very” (38 percent) well.
If so many highly value it (42 percent), why are so few (18 percent) excellent at doing it? What gets in the way? The easy—and often singular—answer is lack of money (i.e., schools feeling that extending more financial aid to get where they want to be is not financially possible). But in nearly 20 years of experience working with schools, I’ve seen the barriers to building economic diversity center on issues that are not purely financial.
Lack of clear financial aid purpose statements. Lewis Carroll issued a critical reminder of the power of intentionality in Alice in Wonderland when the Cheshire Cat tells Alice, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” Schools investing in financial aid should clearly state as a matter of policy what primary purpose the allocation of financial aid dollars must achieve. If that’s not clear, or if different constituents within the school have different ideas about that, the school may not end up where it thought it should be going, even when it has the resources to get there.
Lack of clearly defined terms for measuring outcomes and progress. Saying your school wants socioeconomic diversity is one thing; knowing you’ve achieved it is something else. Schools must articulate what “perfect” economic diversity looks like. Is it to mirror the economic diversity of the nation; the surrounding city, county, or state; or the draw area for students? Is it an equal balance of students from several income levels, including full-pay families? What do terms like “low income” and “middle income” mean? How to track income of the entire school population instead of just the financial aid applicants to create a complete picture of the community’s socioeconomic diversity? Defining and tracking income distribution within the student body over time allows a school to see whether it’s moving closer to or further away from the socioeconomic diversity
it’s seeking.
Conflicting priorities amid constrained resources. The “Financial Aid Outlook” chapter in the NAIS Trendbook 2015-2016 depicts a shift in independent schools where need-based financial aid awards moved from families in the lowest-earning income quintiles to those in the highest quintile. For example, in 2010-2011, approximately 12 percent of aid awards went to families in the lowest income quintile nationally, while 30 percent of awards went to families in the top earning quintile. Five years later, in 2015-2016, only 9 percent of awards went to the lowest quintile and nearly 43 percent of awards went to the top quintile. One possible explanation is that during the postrecession period, schools were limiting the expansion of financial aid as a financial sustainability issue and choosing to spend limited dollars to yield more students. So even if socioeconomic diversity was a key priority, fiscal conservatism began to compete with that. As a result, a school with $30,000 of financial aid funding to spend, would opt to give six $5,000 awards to higher-income, lower-need families than to one lower-income, higher-need family. The priority to fill seats and generate more net revenue conflicted with the socioeconomic diversity imperative.
Policies that inordinately impact lower-income families. It is common for schools to enact policies that mitigate creating the socioeconomic diversity they want. These approaches are usually, if not always, driven by the lack of funding to support the actions that enrollment professionals know are optimal. One very common example is “financial aid gapping.” Gapping means the school is not able to meet the full demonstrated need of a financial aid applicant. The 2016 State of Financial Aid Survey showed that 67 percent of administrators felt their aid budget was not sufficient to meet the demand, and that, on average, the typical school meets about 77 percent of financial need for eligible students. For example, a student seeking to enroll at a $20,000 school demonstrates he needs $10,000 to enroll, but the school can only give him $7,700 due to its limited funding. The $2,300 gap must be borne by the family, in addition to the rest of the tuition. Instead of paying $10,000, the family must pay $12,300 due to gapping. For higher-income, lower-need families, meeting a gap and still enrolling is likely easier to do than it would be for a lower- or middle-income family. In situations like these, the lack-of-funding tail wags the we-want-greater-socioeconomic-diversity dog.
We’re Here, Now What?
In his 2016 TEDxSquareMile talk, Octavius Black, CEO of MindGym, notes that “it is inclusion that leads to improvement in the behavior, not just the diversity…it’s about how we connect when we are different people together.” He stresses that many businesses often stop at extolling the virtues of diversity in enhancing outcomes but obscure the deeper lesson that it’s the inclusivity and mobilization of the diverse perspectives that drive improvement. So, yes, diversity is important, but inclusion is the key to better outcomes.School leaders must be mindful of how the dynamics of economic differences might negatively play out within the school community, and they must work to reconcile, mitigate, or activate around them. As schools build the socioeconomically diverse communities they value, it is imperative to ask “What do the students feel? How can they tell us? What do they tell us? Are we listening? Are we acting?” In many school environments, low- and middle-income students are brought into environments of great affluence and wealth, and they are expected to know how to get ready for what that transition will feel like on a daily basis. Some work with access organizations like Rainier Scholars in Seattle and The Black Student Fund in Washington, DC, to prepare for the academic and social transitions they will need to make.
But what is the school doing to get ready for what these students will need to avoid the high potential of feeling like an outsider in a community that invited them to join it? How is it getting student-ready to prevent a haves-and-have-nots bifurcation in the school culture? How is it getting student-ready to ensure equivalent access to key elements of the school experience that will ensure each child’s success through graduation? When I worked in financial aid at Lake Forest College, one of my admission colleagues and I would often remind ourselves that our goal was not to get students into school, it was to see that they had every opportunity to graduate. This is singularly important in the context of socioeconomic diversity where both the issues of tenuous financial ability and questions about social belonging intersect to impact a student’s likelihood to persist.
“Schools understand the need to talk about other kinds of diversity, but socioeconomic differences are kept secret,” says Samantha Nolan, an independent school alumna, in “Fight Financial Aid Stigma,” her 2017 U.S. News and World Report article. “And this means that there are students around the country who bear this
burden in silence, like I did.” She shares all-too familiar examples of wealth disparities ranging from where students spent summer vacations to how much they spent on SAT prep tutors to the lavish settings for birthday gatherings, bat mitzvahs, and graduation parties. Ultimately, she laments that there were no opportunities for her to discuss these experiences and feelings more openly. The effect this can have on students’ sense of belonging can be palpable.
While schools cannot eliminate wealth and social disparity while striving for socioeconomic diversity (and financial sustainability), there are things they can do to foster inclusion and belonging amid the differences inherent within the community. Some schools, such as Cate School (CA) and Marin Academy (CA), have initiated affinity groups for students receiving financial aid to have a safe space to gather and talk about issues and share solutions for how to navigate and cope. Like affinity groups based on characteristics like race, ethnicity, or sexual identity, groups centered on socioeconomic difference can provide a context for small interventions with students that can affirm their sense of belonging in a community where they may otherwise feel like outsiders or abnormal. Providing touchpoints for students struggling with money and wealth insecurities creates opportunities for schools to show empathy and to extend simple yet effective messages that can increase students’ sense of belonging: “You belong here. You are not alone. It gets better.” A group of Stanford researchers found that basic interventions like these have positive results on grades and health, noting that “belongingness interventions work best when people are not sure whether they fit in to a new place or situation.”
When the opportunity to take advantage of all the school has to offer is limited by money, that critical sense of belonging and inclusion inevitably suffers. Another important step schools must take is to identify what it means to fully participate in the life of the school and provide support for the costs associated with that. At Pine Crest School (FL), the Inclusion Aid Program does just that. Working across departments, the financial aid office guides a process that includes teachers, the business office, and the head of school to identify the key elements of the “Pine Crest Experience” and to help as many students as possible have that experience without fear of not being able to afford it. Complete with a mission statement and a donor willing to support it, the school has seen its commitment to inclusion aid grow more than five times in just three years.
It’s also useful for schools to consider how they talk about economic diversity. Many people equate the financial aid recipient pool with the socioeconomic diversity they are striving for, and as such, tend to categorize all financial aid recipients in a single, monolithic group. But the experiences of the families in any financial aid recipient pool are not monolithic. Given the tuitions of the typical day and boarding school, and depending on how many tuitions families are paying, financial aid recipients can have incomes more than $200,000. What the $20,000 family receiving aid experiences at a school is clearly quite different from what the $200,000 family receiving aid experiences. It’s important for school leaders to confront stereotypes and misperceptions about who receives aid by being mindful of how phrasing like “on financial aid,” “financial aid kids,” and “financial aid families” can unintentionally set up second class (or two-tiered) status.
The Next Level
When greater efforts are made to educate school communities about the realities and benefits of socioeconomic diversity on campus, it signals that a school is open to talking about economic issues and how to address them within the context of the school mission.Then we can move to the next step to achieve what we actually endeavor to accomplish. In her TEDxVillanovaU talk, Quinetta Roberson, management professor at Villanova University School of Business, says that “instead of just focusing on including each other, we should focus on synthesizing these perspectives. Maybe what we need is something different; not inclusion, but fusion.” It’s the synthesis of the diverse experiences and perspectives from students and parents across the economic spectrum that will propel the excellence of our school communities even further.