New Report: Reaffirming the Role of School Integration in K-12 Public Education Policy

Posted by on November 23, 2009

A look at remaining deseg programs

A new report from the Teacher College at Columbia University is the first to comprehensively study the nation’s eight remaining inter-district school desegregation programs, which were expressly created to enable disadvantaged black and Latino students to cross school district boundary lines and attend affluent, predominantly white suburban public schools. The report finds that these programs help close black-white and Latino-white achievement gaps, improve racial attitudes, and lead to long-term mobility and further education for the students of color who participate. One striking finding is that suburban residents, educators, school officials, and students grow to appreciate these programs the longer they continue. In fact, many former opponents are now defending these programs against threats of curtailment, even when continuation would mean reduced funding. Despite these successes, education policies addressing segregation and inequality have generally been limited to within-district solutions, and reform focus has shifted to the use of standards, tests, and accountability systems to improve student achievement, along with school choice policies that allow alternative, private providers to compete for students and their public school funds. The authors suggest that these newer strategies have not delivered, and inequality has grown in many states.

Read more: http://www.tc.edu/news/article.htm?id=7233

See the report: http://www.tc.columbia.edu/news/article.htm?id=7232