CLINTON, Miss.—Nearly five decades ago, this town on Jackson’s outskirts decided to send students to schools organized by grade level, rather than geography.
So all of the kindergartners and first-graders would go to one school, all of the children in second and third grades would be at another, and so forth, all the way through 12th grade. The approach in Clinton was rolled out in 1971 to little fanfare.
Today, the 5,300-student Clinton Public School District is being held up by researchers and educators as a success—and a possible solution as the number of “intensely segregated” minority public schools increases throughout the U.S. The UCLA Civil Rights Project, a research center, defines “intensely segregated” minority schools as those made up of at least 90% of nonwhite students.
Research shows that minorities concentrated in high-poverty schools tend to have lower performance and fewer educational opportunities than those who attend schools in more-affluent areas.
The structure in the Clinton schools assures that public-school students learn alongside each other, regardless of race, economic status or where they live in town. According to state education data, the district has maintained diverse schools in an area of the country with a history of racial division.Clinton’s student population is 54% black, 36% white, 6% Asian, 2% Hispanic and 2% other, with almost half of the students considered low-income.
The community has endured as a greater percentage of minority students in the U.S., especially poor ones, attend “intensely segregated” schools than they did decades ago, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal education data.
“In principle, one could do something like this in any district,” said Sean Reardon, professor of poverty and inequality in education at Stanford University. “Done right—with zones drawn to create diverse schools and with school cultures focused on creating real social and academic integration—it’s a promising model.”
Dr. Reardon found several other districts in the U.S. using a grade-level concept, most with enrollments under 5,000 and in different states.
Students in Clinton who start in kindergarten and go through high school will attend seven schools; most are one or two grade levels. A comparable public-school student elsewhere will attend three schools: elementary, middle and high school.
The concept presents challenges. If the district grows, Clinton Superintendent Tim Martin said, it will have to consider splitting schools that have two grades for manageability, requiring additional school buildings.
Some parents said the number of schools students attend was initially concerning, but the benefits outweigh the challenges.
“We do a lot of busing in Clinton, but it works,” said Sharon Alexander, a college administrator who is black with two children in the district. “The children only see schools, not low-income or upper-class.”
Nationwide, about 9.5 million minority students attended intensely segregated schools in 2018, representing 18% of the number of public schools, with the vast majority of the students low-income. That is up from 2.5 million minority students, or 5% of schools, in 1988, according to the Journal’s analysis.
Achieving schools with racial and economic balance has proved perplexing for school districts across the U.S., including a Maryland school district that recently rankled some in the community with a proposal that would reassign some students to help level out concentrations of poor students. In New York City, many parents decried a recent proposal by a mayoral advisory group to phase out elementary gifted and talented programs, where black and Latino students are underrepresented.
Gary Orfield, co-director of the UCLA Civil Rights Project, said several reasons contribute to resegregation, including the ending of desegregation plans in some large districts, growth of charter schools that are less diverse and fewer white students and more nonwhite students in public schools.
Although white students no longer represent the majority of public-school students nationwide, they still attend schools in which nearly seven out of 10 of their classmates are also white, according to a report Dr. Orfield co-wrote in May.
In classrooms at several Clinton schools recently, students of various races and ethnicities worked with each other during chemistry experiments and classroom discussions, exhibiting a familiarity that comes from going to the same schools for years. Those interactions could be seen after school as clusters of students of various races mingled while waiting for rides.
“I feel like we’ve grown up together,” said Caitlin Carter, a 17-year-old white student working on a chemistry project with several classmates. When asked about the district’s grade-level schools, a look of confusion crossed her face.
“It’s normal,” she said. “I’ve mostly gone to schools with two grade levels.”
The district carries an “A” rating by the state and is ranked No. 3 overall. District officials attribute the success in part to the grade structure, under which principals only focus on the curriculum for a couple of grade levels, compared with the typical school with many grades.
Virgil Belue, who became the district’s first superintendent in 1970, came up with the grade-level schools as a way to integrate campuses. Dr. Belue, who is 87 years old and white, said he made rounds to different community groups, including the local NAACP, to sell them on the idea.
“We mixed it all up,” said Dr. Belue, who retired in 1992 and still lives in Clinton. “About time they get to 12th grade, they know one another.”
Dr. Belue—and his idea—are still lauded years later around town.
“The students that live in Clinton know each other,” said Bobby Hathorn, Clinton’s NAACP president. “That makes it almost like a utopia-type situation.”
Some parents called the district a melting pot of different cultures and races.
“That’s what our world is,” said Laci Pittman, a real-estate agent who is white with a daughter in the district. “Each child will go to school together, from beginning to end.”