Integration through School Consolidation: Diversity, Democracy, and Lessons for Educational Justice

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

Abstract

Segregated schools have become “the problem we all live with.” By some estimates, schools have grown more segregated since the 1980s. And while scholars have long studied the effects of racially segregated schools, much less has been written about 21st century integration attempts. This paper examines a contemporary case: the consolidation of two adjacent neighborhood elementary schools in Chicago, one predominantly Black and low income (Jenner) and the other an affluent, plurality white (Ogden). I show how the consolidation that the Chicago Tribune called “a grand experiment in desegregation” came to be. In doing so, I interrogate essential questions about diversity, democracy, and self-determination in efforts to change the schooling status quo.

Between October 2015-June 2019, I attended 60 meetings/events in the Ogden and Jenner school communities and I conducted 114 in-depth interviews with 95 parents, teachers, and community members (twice interviewing key respondents). For this paper, I draw heavily on 25 interviews, official meeting transcripts, ethnographic fieldnotes, and some historical primary sources.

First, I lay out the neighborhood context that produced the unusual spatial arrangement where two demographically disparate schools existed less than one mile apart from each other. I show how this is the result of decades old policy decisions about public housing and school boundaries. Next, I trace the origins of the consolidation idea and shed light on how both school communities reacted initially in a mix of excitement, anger, and skepticism. I then explore the actions of a small group of committed parents and community leaders – most of them white and middle class – who took on the task of convincing the school district to approve this unconventional consolidation in the name of educational equity and diversity. Finally, I contrast how district leaders responded positively to the Ogden/Jenner community but negatively to Black schooling communities who had fought to keep their schools open just a few years earlier in 2013 (protesting the largest mass school closing event in the nation).

I make several theoretical arguments through these findings. Ogden/Jenner offers lessons about the democratic possibilities of school creation – even if its own process wasn’t entirely democratic. I contend that communities should have the democratic right to self-determine their own schooling futures and I lay out some possible ways of achieving this. My findings also signal the ways in which diversity is deployed contradictorily both as a universal ideal to be strived for as well as a delicate condition which can be upset through adding more Black students. Thus, I trouble the notion of school diversity overall. Furthermore, I caution against treating diversity as conceptually interchangeable with equity and justice. I end by addressing the limitations of ostensibly equitable school creation projects like Ogden/Jenner. If changes are to be made to the schooling status quo, they must be geared towards robustly repairing past injustices.

Author

• Maximilian X. Cuddy, University of Chicago