The Benefits of Racial and Economic Integration in Our Education System: Why This Matters for Our Democracy
 |
Full Report (pdf, 42kb) Summary Report (pdf, 762kb) |
Policy makers, educators, advocates and parents are all concerned with the achievement levels of K-12 students, and rightfully so. Despite spending more than most other education systems worldwide, our educational outcomes are lower and our schools are plagued by a persistent achievement gap between whites and students of color, and high poverty and low poverty students. Reforms- ranging from teacher quality to class size, are constantly moved in and out of schools in hopes of improving academic performance, yet districts are still struggling to provide a high quality education for all students.
This is in large part due to our failure to address the systemic nature of the achievement gap. In order to create real sustainable educational change we must enact comprehensive, cross-institutional policies targeted at disrupting the segregation of low income populations, particularly people of color, from opportunity. We review the negative effects of both socioeconomic and racial segregation, and demonstrate the positive effects of economically and racially integrated schools.
We conclude by calling for the implementation of the following policy solutions in order to close the achievement gap, raise the achievement levels of all students, harness the social and psychological benefits of integration, and legitimize our democracy.
- In order to promote high achievement for all, fulfill our democratic responsibility, and provide students with the cultural fluency necessary to participate in our pluralistic society, we must make a long-term commitment to end racial and socioeconomic isolation in our schools. This has implications for both student assignment plans and in-school educational practices such as tracking or ability grouping.
- Although many districts are reaching for overly simplistic remedies that can be seamlessly crafted in light of Parents Involved, each school district must take geographic and demographic particularities into account when crafting a custom integration plan. Research supports the utilization of a multi-factor approach that deliberately seeks to uphold racial integration, including such factors as location of neighborhoods of spatially concentrated poverty and neighborhoods of low educational opportunity, family SES, and student academic achievement levels.
- Although the Parents Involved decision limits the means districts have available to achieve racial integration, it lays promising legal groundwork for addressing racial isolation across and within opportunity structures, including housing, public health, economic development and transportation. Research supports the need to work within and across each domain to achieve equity in education, closing the achievement gap and raising the performance level of all students.
- Parents, community organizations, researchers, and others must collectively advocate for integrated education. Policy makers must ensure integration policies and practices are implemented and aligned in the ways necessary to fully harness the benefits of diversity, and to achieve high quality, comprehensive, and effective education.
- In pursuing any educational change, we must be careful not to undermine the very purpose of the public system of education- to give our students the knowledge, and skills necessary to become full members of our democratic society, and to strengthen and legitimize our democracy.
