How Black Parents Use School Creation to Move Beyond Diversity

• In Event: Opening Up New Possibilities for Race and Equity: Contexts and Controversy in School Creation

Abstract

The project to integrate schools in the United States since Brown vs. Board of Education has been widely accepted as beneficial for Black families (Hallinan, 1998; Linn & Welner, 2007; Mickelson, 2018). Holding that separate schools could not mean equal, Brown intended to create a more just educational system. If school segregation indicates a racist society, integrated schools, should represent progress toward an equal one. However, we know that schools are more segregated today. Still, diverse schools are seen as beacons of school integration. Access to diverse schools is taken as evidence that Black students have better educational opportunities than their counterparts in majority-Black schools. Why then, do some Black parents reject the option of diverse schools and seek out schools with a higher Black student population?
This research examines a community where many Black parents are making that choice
at the community level. In Evanston, a small city north of Chicago, historically-Black Ward 5 is the only area without a neighborhood school since 1967 when the all-Black Foster School was closed to facilitate school district integration. Then in March 2021, after decades of parent organizing, School District 65 announced plans to open a new elementary school in Ward 5, the
first since integration. Now, the opening of a school in this neighborhood is challenging the district’s diversity ideology and racial inclusion. I utilize interview data, content analysis, and thematic coding analysis to examine:
1) Why do some Black students and their parents leave or reject diverse schools? How do they engage with diversity discourse when
navigating school choice?
2) How do Black families understand and value neighborhood schools? What is at stake for Black students in the decision to
attend a neighborhood school?
3) How does opening a new school in a historically-Black neighborhood context impact diversity ideology and the meaning of racial equity for a community?
The absence of a neighborhood school in this historically-Black area leaves many Black
students in the district commute farther than their peers, are less likely to have neighbors that attend the same school, and vulnerable to schools that mask experiences of racism behind student diversity (Lewis and Diamond, 2015; Lewis-McCoy, 2014). For decades, Ward 5 residents and parent groups brought attention to the disparity in District 65 many times, but to no avail; they continuously faced votes against the new school. Then, towards the end of summer 2020, a climatic time of racial uprisings, their advocacy was given renewed attention. Still, some parents raised concerns that opening a new school in Ward 5 would re-segregate the district.
Race-based outcomes in diverse organizations, such as schools, illustrate that the goals
and results of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts remain limited. When we consider the range of educational choices that Black parents make in the face of expanding opportunities for integrated schools, we must ask how and why diverse schools are serving or failing to serve the students they were intended to benefit.

Author

• Jennifer Etienne, University of Chicago