How Can School Districts Make Integration Plans Legally and Politically Viable?

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

Abstract

The forth panelist is the nation’s leading authority on the socio- economic integration of K-12 schooling – a strategy for promoting racial and economic integration in a challenging legal environment. He is also an authority on teachers’ unions, private school vouchers, charter schools, turnaround school efforts, and inequality in higher education. He is the author or editor of 17 books.

There has long been a social science consensus that school integration is good for children but an outdated political consensus that taking action to integrate schools is too politically risky. Layered on top of this, the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007 struck down racial integration plans in Louisville and Seattle that considered the individual race of students. This panelist has studied closely how socio-economic integration plans, using public school choice policies with fairness guidelines to ensure integration, can revive Brown v. Board of Education in a difficult legal and political environment.

This panelist has studied how such policies are written, how they are implemented and what the evidence says about whether these plans result in positive student outcomes. On this panel he will explore case studies in New York, Charlotte, Chicago and New Haven school districts – all of which he has worked with personally to implement socioeconomic integration plans using public school choice.

The essential question this panelist addresses is: How can bring together socio-economic and racial integration plans to ensure that district redesign plans capture the true extent of a district’s community and student population?

Author

• Richard Kahlenberg, The Century Foundation