Evidence That Integration Works

• In Event: Diversity by Design: New Visions for School Districts That Serve All Students

Abstract

The first panelist is a national authority on the economics of education: most recently he has published a landmark book on the success of integration and has joined the current national discussion of the need for integrating schools for the common good of all. For too long there has been an unexamined assumption that integration efforts failed; debunking that myth, as this panelist has done, is an important step in creating a new commitment to organizing schooling on the basis of excellence and equity.

The panelist will lay out the evidence that the efforts to integrate schools after Brown v. Board of Education had a significant and enduring impact on the academic and life outcomes of black students. For instance, he found that black children who experienced integrated schools from K-12 completed a full year of education more than comparable children in segregated schools, five years in a desegregated school led to increased wages and work hours that, combined, came to a 30 percent increase in earnings, and exposure to desegregated schools in elementary school led to a 22-point decline in the probability the student would be incarcerated as an adult.

This evidence provides a firm foundation for understanding that diversity has a powerful positive effect on student outcomes. The panelist will expand on his work during the symposium and bring new evidence that school district plans that are based on diversity designs promote higher levels of achievement for all students.

The essential question this panelist will address is: what we have learned about past integration plans that can help shape integration designs in the future.

Author

• Rucker C Johnson, University of California - Berkeley