This is the first entry in a seven-part series on “Reinventing the Urban School Experience” in Austin ISD through equitable, well-integrated schools. There is a conversation emerging in public school systems across the United States. While our schools are clearly re-segregating by class and race, a new generation of students, parents, and school leaders are having an honest dialogue on a modern form of school integration. It’s a dialogue of centering on justice and equity and honoring cultures. It is a dialogue that incorporates social and behavioral science where previous desegregation efforts fell short. Most importantly, perhaps, it’s a dialogue led by our nation’s students. This is the lens through which we’ll examine the potential for REAL School integration in Austin ISD (AISD). Since the Brown vs the Board of Education of Topeka in 1954, Americans have wrestled mightily with this Supreme Court ruling, and AISD can claim no better. In fact, Larry Cuban, Professor Emeritus at Stanford, summarized Austin’s attempt to comply with Brown as a 30-year integration enacted with “all deliberate slowness” in contrast to Brown II’s demand of “all deliberate speed.” AISD leadership and proposed plan after plan to seeking a path of least effort to integrate while still passing Federal muster. This involved teacher exchanges, closures of black schools and unidirectional bussing, multi-directional bussing, magnet schools, and open enrollment and cross-cultural academic programming. This is probably a good time a to stop and wonder...why are we talking about integrated schools? What values does it promote? How does it feed the educational experience? A think tank called The Century Foundation has been at the forefront of modern school integration research, combed volumes of academic journals, and concludes from the literature the following benefits of socioeconomically and racially diversified schools: Academic and Cognitive Benefits:
Civic and Social-Emotional Benefits:
Economic Benefits:
These benefits address many of the challenges faced both by our schools and by broader society.. Would it not be worth exploring if we had the opportunity? One of the most diverse yet segregated school systems in the country, the New York City Department of Education is also the nation’s largest school system educating 1.1 million students. Students in New York schools began to take notice of their segregating school policies. Those desiring to lead the change formed a student-led organization called IntegrateNYC. Among their accomplishments was to broaden the definition of schools to include the 5 “R’s” of REAL School Integration summarized below: R1: “Race and Enrollment” makes the demand that every student attends a diverse and inclusive school. As in most school systems, this would require an altered enrollment design to many if not all schools to accomplish. R2: “Resources” adds an equitable sharing of programmatic and financial resources to ensure all students share in a similar educational experiences. R3: “Relationships Across Group Identities” makes a significant leap to include multiple aspects of modern sociology, linking the quality of the educational experience to multi-directional relationships grounded in empathy and power-sharing across group identities. R4: “Restorative Justice” makes another significant leap to include restorative justice principles to reduce the disproportionalities in school discipline. R5: “Representation of School Faculty” adds the nuance that a diverse faculty is best-equipped to offer a culturally responsive and inclusive educational experience.
In Austin, we might add a sixth “R” to include a “Respect for Culture and Language”. As a Sun Belt city with a school district comprised of 55% Hispanic students and 27% English Language-Learners speaking over 90 languages from a myriad of cultures, mutual respect is a particularly important ingredient to civic harmony in Austin, Texas. The students of IntegrateNYC have done a remarkable job defining the “R’s” of a REAL Integration. They captured the nuance that 80% of the value of integration stems from sociological changes to our education system, like sharing of power, promoting justice, and ensuring inclusion, and not simply moving numbers of students around to integrate school buildings. Their work was incorporated into system-wide policy recommendations and influenced Mayor Bill deBlasio’s recent report to better integrate all New York City schools. Can Austin follow suit? In Part 2 of this series, we’ll begin to explore the potential for REAL integration within Austin ISD. The Case for REAL School Integration in Austin ISD is a seven-part series on “Reinventing the Urban School Experience” in Austin ISD through equitable, well-integrated schools. Part 1: What is REAL School Integration? Part 2: What kind of integration opportunity does Austin ISD have? Part 3: How many Austin ISD schools are balanced by socioeconomics and race? Part 4: Why should REAL school integration be a guiding principle in Austin ISD’s recent Reinvention plan? Part 5: How are other school systems in the US addressing school integration? Part 6: By what methods could Austin ISD better integrate our schools? Part 7: With the opportunity, what would REAL School Integration look like in Austin ISD, and is it worth the challenges to achieve it? Comments are closed.
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