Seattle's HCC program, designed to attract white families, is a thinly veiled form of segregation

By Matt Halvorson

The Highly Capable Cohort (or HCC) program in Seattle Public Schools was created decades ago in an attempt to limit white flight from the district. It has been a driver of inequity in our school system ever since. This year, for instance, in 2019, Seattle’s HCC program is roughly 65 percent white. Less than 2 percent of HCC students are Black.

This has been relatively common knowledge for a long time now, but the subtle segregation, systemic bias and overt discrimination have been allowed to persist. Mostly, as far as I can tell, the basis for this has been that the program is considered beneficial to the HCC kids.

Suddenly HCC in Seattle’s schools is a topic of much conversation and much debate, because Superintendent Denise Juneau has proposed to do away with the highly capable cohort model entirely, shifting so-called “highly capable” students out of their segregated cohorts and back to neighborhood schools.

“I’ve learned that this is a generational legacy. This program of segregation has been endorsed by this district for generations,” Juneau said. “This is unacceptable and embarrassing. None of us should want to lead this type of educational redlining.”

The Seattle Times put it pretty clearly on March 25, 1984: the HCC program in Seattle Public Schools was designed for white kids.

She’s right. We have known about this “unacceptable and embarrassing” state of affairs for a long time now, but nothing has happened. HCC has been allowed to chug onward uncontested.

Juneau, to her credit, is responding to new and unacceptable information by taking drastic action to change it.

The mostly white HCC parent crowd, on the other hand, is up in arms over their perception that something might abruptly be taken from them.

It’s telling, and it’s sad.

“If we only assist others when we think our own interests are at stake,” said Dr. Joanne Liu, human rights activist and president of Doctors Without Borders, “we likely acted too late. But if we choose to act out of the belief and basic logic that our own well-being is intertwined with, dependent upon, the well-being of others, we will make better choices. Not perfect, but better.”

This highly capable cohort model is a thinly veiled form of segregation — separate and unequal — and so it’s something that has to change immediately.

A common solution to the HCC problem is to suggest universal testing — if we test every kid, we’ll inevitably get a more perfect cross-section of student demographics, right? The problem with this logic is that to widen the opening into a flawed program — one that is fundamentally a vehicle for racism and segregation (remember, it was literally designed to curb white flight) — won’t solve the problem. HCC values a keyhole-sized view of “capability.”

This is the kind of slog that truly undermines equity work. We’re sitting here forming committees and researching and debating in an effort to fix something that we would never create if we were starting anew today. Yet because it already exists, we feel obligated for some reason to study and discuss and repair something that has been a magnifier of inequity, a courier of segregation and racism, since its inception because that is what it was designed to do.

Most of the mainstream opinions and “reporting” on this issue, from Danny Westneat’s “racially insensitive editorial” to Katie Herzog and the faux-progressive Stranger, is trying to prove from the outset that it would be a mistake to do away with HCC. Dahlia Bazzaz's balanced work with the Seattle Times is one appreciated exception, but very few seem to be hearing from general-education students and parents of color — the most marginalized voices in this conversation — or interested in uncovering why a trusted leader with a track record of fighting effectively for equity might make this proposal. Getting past our fears and personal experiences and initial reactions, what might disbanding HCC be poised to accomplish?

I understand the fear the HCC parents are feeling. They don’t want to send their children into schools and classrooms that weren’t designed for them, into a system that isn’t prepared to fully recognize and nurture their genius. One silver lining in all of this, in other words, is that it might finally be a window for privileged, mostly white families into the reality of raising kids of color in a racist school system.

The bottom line for me is that HCC is a form of systemic oppression playing out in Seattle Public Schools. Even if it’s working for your kid, if the system is a driver of inequity, and you’re a willing participant, then you’re part of the problem. You have taken the side of the oppressor, as they say.

We can’t cover our eyes any longer and pretend that just making the best decisions for ourselves and our kids is enough. That it’s even okay. We have to look at the big picture and make decisions based on our deepest values. We have to look in the mirror and decide if we are willing to be complicit, or if we will take bold steps toward true change. Maybe that means making difficult decisions we never expected to make.

The reality here is that we, as parents and school officials, are comparing, measuring and pitting our kids against each other. As though anyone’s child merits more or better attention than anyone else’s. As though anyone’s child isn’t a genius, doesn’t have something truly miraculous to offer the world. As though anyone’s child deserves less.

It’s shameful, and it’s a conversation that should end right now.

If the mandate is to first do no harm, HCC doesn’t pass the mustard. And now that we know what it is, and what it’s doing, we know that it’s time to do something drastically different. Just as Juneau rightly said that “none of us should want to lead this type of educational redlining,” none of us as parents and community members should want any part of it either. I know I don’t.

Other parents and community members have come together to share the side of this debate that is being willingly ignored. Visit CommunityVoicesSPS.org to learn more and to add your name to the growing list of people demanding a radical shift toward equity in our schools.