Multiracial Pupils to Be Counted in A New Way

By Michael Alison Chandler and Maria Glod
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, March 23, 2009; A01

Public schools in the Washington region and elsewhere are abandoning their check-one-box approach to gathering information about race and ethnicity in an effort to develop a more accurate portrait of classrooms transformed by immigration and interracial marriage. Next year, they will begin a separate count of students who are of more than one race.

For many families in the District, Montgomery and other local counties that have felt forced to deny a part of their children's heritage, the new way of counting, mandated by the federal government, represents a long-awaited acknowledgment of their identity: Enrollment forms will allow students to identify as both white and American Indian, for example, or black and Asian. But changing labels will make it harder to monitor progress of groups that have trailed in school, including black and Hispanic students.

Racial and ethnic information, collected when children register for school, can inform school board decisions on reading programs, discipline procedures or admissions policies for gifted classes. The government looks at test scores of minority groups to help determine whether schools make the grade under the No Child Left Behind law. In an increasingly data-driven culture, educators also scrutinize such test scores and enrollment figures to pick programs meant to narrow achievement gaps and equalize academic opportunity.

Under the new policy, the count of Hispanic students is expected to grow as the non-Hispanic black and white counts diminish. Many will fall into a new group called "two or more races." In schools with diverse populations, especially in such immigrant destinations as the Washington region, there are likely to be notable demographic shifts, at least on paper. That could shake up how educational challenges are measured and reroute funding for reforms.

"This will make our whole education system look different, and nobody will know whether we are going forward or backward," said Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at the University of California in Los Angeles. Along with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other groups, the Civil Rights Project has raised concerns about how the Education Department will handle the new data.

For decades, students have been counted in one of five racial and ethnic groups: American Indian or Alaska native; Asian or Pacific Islander; Hispanic; non-Hispanic black; or non-Hispanic white. The categories date to the 1960s and were standardized in 1977 to promote affirmative action and monitor discrimination in housing, employment, voting rights and education.

Starting in 2010, under Education Department rules approved two years ago to comply with a government-wide policy shift, parents will be able to check all boxes that apply in a two-step questionnaire with reshaped categories. First, they will indicate whether a student is of Hispanic or Latino origin, or not. (The two terms will encompass one group.) Then they will identify a student as one or more of the following: American Indian or Alaska native; Asian; black or African American; native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander; or white.

The change is mandatory for new students, but the government is urging schools to apply it to all. The U.S. Census reached a similar point in 2000, when 6.8 million people, or 2 percent of the population, were counted for the first time as multiracial. The share was 4 percent for people under 18.

The Montgomery County school system and others in Maryland already have begun asking families for updated racial and ethnic information.

In the Fairfax County community of Reston, Lake Anne Elementary School reflects the evolution of a country now led by a president born to a white Kansan mother and a black Kenyan father. Julian Bryant, a second-grader at Lake Anne, has a white mother and black father. Elena Castrence, also in second grade, inherited her father's Filipino traditions along with those of her white mother. And Giselle Walter, in third grade, claims Latino, Russian and Irish heritage.

"I want my kids to know they are biracial," said Julian's mother, Shelley Bryant. "We say, 'You are a mixture.' We put up his hands and say, 'See? Daddy is a little darker. Mommy is a little lighter. We took a mixture of Mommy and Daddy and made you.' "

How such students have been counted varies from place to place. Many Virginia schools have allowed parents to select "other." But in Maryland and the District, families like the Bryants until now have been forced to choose black or white.

Such choices can be difficult. Charles Guo, a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County, said he feels closely connected to his Mexican-born mother because he grew up with her extended family. But he also looks like his Chinese-born father and tends to identify with Asian Americans at school.

The Fairfax school system, the region's largest, began counting multiracial students in 1994 at the urging of parents. Today, about 10,000 Fairfax students -- or 6 percent of the 169,000 -- are multiracial. The share is 14 percent at Lake Anne Elementary.

Fairfax Superintendent Jack D. Dale said racial analysis of test scores has helped uncover groups of struggling students. A few years ago, officials found that black students in Fairfax lagged those in less-affluent Richmond and Norfolk on state tests. But an increasingly diverse school system needs a more sophisticated snapshot, he said.

"The racial categories have lost their meaning," Dale said. He pointed out that the black or African American group could include a student born in Virginia or Nigeria, while the white group includes students of Middle Eastern descent.

As the counting process changes, so will the way the data are assembled and reported. Only summarized information is reported to the federal government. All students who indicate Hispanic or Latino ethnicity will be counted in that group, regardless of their race. All non-Hispanic students identified with more than one race will be joined in the category of "two or more races."

Many civil rights advocates agree that it's necessary to document the growing number of multiracial students, but they say these categories will mask valuable information about race that could be used to analyze educational challenges some groups face. They say it would be more accurate to report the data in detail, with racial and ethnic combinations.

"If we don't know that some multiracial, Hispanic and black students are doing worse," said Melissa Herman, a sociologist at Dartmouth College, "we can conveniently ignore that they are doing worse."

Education Department officials have said the new rules strike a balance, providing more details about students without creating an overly cumbersome reporting system.

The No Child Left Behind law, signed in 2002, spotlights the test scores of racial and ethnic groups. Sometimes, whether schools meet standards hangs on the performance of a few students. Relabeling students could make a difference.

The new rules will give states flexibility to use existing racial and ethnic categories for No Child Left Behind, creating a double-coding for certain students: A student could be counted as black for some purposes and Hispanic for others. But a Virginia education official said the state will use only the new racial and ethnic categories. An informal poll by the Education Department found that so far, 15 states are planning to use the new categories for No Child Left Behind; most are still deciding.

The 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress tried out the new rules. The Civil Rights Project found that the share of Hispanic students grew significantly compared with the share under the old system and that test score averages fluctuated. In eighth-grade reading, the proficiency rate in many states rose for Hispanic and white students and dipped for black students.

As educators sort through confusion, many families look forward to making a clear statement.

Mary Ann Dawedeit, a Montgomery mother, said that for nearly two decades she has had to choose whether to identify her three sons as black, like their father, or white, like her.

"It will feel good to more accurately say what your kids are," she said. "You have to honor both parents' backgrounds. It's hard to check one box."