One poll, the authors note, found that 77 percent of Millennials expressed a preference for urban life. Today, however, many middle-class Millennials say they find suburban life sterile and prefer walkable communities. In previous generations, when poor urban areas were often surrounded by wealthy white suburbs, achieving school integration was logistically challenging and involved long bus rides that were unpopular with families. Ninety-six percent of major employers, Wells, Fox, and Cordova-Cobo note, say it is “important” that employees be “comfortable working with colleagues, customers, and/or clients from diverse cultural backgrounds.”Īdding to the political momentum behind integration are changes in the choices middle-class families are making in where to live.
#Parenting across diverse contexts how to
Students can learn better how to navigate adulthood in an increasingly diverse society-a skill that employers value-if they attend diverse schools. For the first time since the founding of the republic, a majority of public school K–12 pupils in the United States are students of color. Middle-class and white Millennials realize that their children are growing up in a very different country, demographically, than previous generations. The authors write: “researchers have documented that students’ exposure to other students who are different from themselves and the novel ideas and challenges that such exposure brings leads to improved cognitive skills, including critical thinking and problem solving.”Īpart from the cognitive benefits, there are additional reasons increasing numbers of middle-class families now want to send their children to diverse schools.
What can give integration real political momentum, however, are not the documented benefits to low-income students, but the emerging recognition that middle- and upper-class students benefit in diverse classrooms.Īs Amy Stuart Wells, Lauren Fox, and Diana Cordova-Cobo of Teachers College Columbia vividly demonstrate in this important new report, “the benefits of school diversity run in all directions.” There is increasing evidence that “diversity makes us smarter,” a finding that selective colleges long ago embraced and increasing numbers of young parents are coming to appreciate at the K–12 level. Diane Ravitch and Michelle Rhee-who represent opposite ends of our polarized debates over education reform-have both recently advocated new measures to promote school integration to raise the achievement of disadvantaged students. Today, however, school integration-using new, more legally and politically palatable approaches-is getting a second look as an educational reform strategy.įor one thing, policymakers and scholars across the political spectrum are beginning to realize that ignoring the social science research on the negative effects of concentrated school poverty is not working to close large achievement gaps between races and economic groups. To some, the decision seemed to spell the end to school desegregation. In a 2007 ruling, the Roberts Court struck down voluntary school desegregation efforts in Louisville and Seattle. The Supreme Court, once a strong supporter of school desegregation, grew increasingly skeptical of government programs that use race in decision-making. Layered on top of political concerns was a new legal challenge. Simultaneously, an equally durable political consensus developed holding that nothing can be done to achieve it. Families rebelled.Īnd so for years, we have been stuck with a tragic paradox: building on Coleman’s findings, a growing body of research produced a social science consensus that school integration-by race and by socioeconomic status-is good for children.
Federal judges ordered school children to travel across town to attend schools to achieve racial balance, giving parents no say in the matter. But when racial school desegregation began to be seriously pursued in the early 1970s, the implementation was often clumsy. Fifty years ago, the evidence in the congressionally authorized Coleman Report put a twist on Brown, suggesting that socioeconomic school integration could increase academic achievement more than any other school strategy.
Board of Education held that separate schools for black and white students are inherently unequal. After decades in the political wilderness, school integration seems poised to make a serious comeback as an education reform strategy.
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