A few weeks ago, I went to a training at Mulholland Middle School and got completely lost. While driving around, I was struck by how large the campus was – but then I realized that it wasn’t just one campus; it was seven. On this one giant plot of land in Van Nuys, there are seven schools: Birmingham Community Charter High (9-12), Magnolia Science Academy 2, Daniel Pearl Journalism Magnet, Mulholland Middle School, Valley Alternative Magnet, Independence High (a continuation school) and High Tech LA. In total, it is a 115 acre campus. To put that in perspective – Disneyland is 85 acres. If ever there was an example of colocation, this is it.
Of those six schools, 4 of them have “traditional” high school programs – and we can compare their data a bit. To do this, I only compared 11th grade data for CAASP along with their UC acceptance rates.
Academically, High Tech Los Angeles has the strongest program – the most UC students, very high CAASP scores. Magnolia Science Academy #2 has the weakest program with a 0% acceptance rate to UCs and lower test scores.
But how do these schools differ in terms of demographics. They are on the same campus and draw from the same community – they should be pretty similar right?
Unfortunately, that’s just not the case. The three higher performing schools happen to be whiter than the two lower performing schools, while the two lower schools have student bodies that are almost entirely students of color. Of course, two of those schools are magnets, whose explicit purpose is to create integrated schools. But one of them is a charter like the other two – and it is doing better than the rest.
Interestingly, what we could say about the “whiter” schools is that they are, in fact, more diverse. Instead of being primarily Latino, they have a wider range of students from different backgrounds. In addition, being magnet schools, they also probably draw from diverse parts of Los Angeles through busing.
This sort of creates a chicken and the egg problem. Does diversity create a stronger school environment? Or do the historical inequalities that correlate with ethnic differences result in poorer performance by the two schools with more students of color?
I think its probably bit of both – schools really benefit from being diverse, and schools that are not diverse suffer.