How Integration Changed Us: The Experiences and Long-Term Impact of Socioeconomic School Integration in Chile

• In Event: Can National and State Policies Ameliorate Systemic Inequities?

Abstract

This paper explores the experiences of former low-income children that, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, were integrated into St. George’s College, an elite private school in Santiago, Chile. Using a qualitative design and focusing on the retrospective experiences and perceptions of former students, we explore what happened to the low-income students that attended St. George’s as part of a revolutionary institutional reform that is now the inspiration for proposed reforms of Chile’s national school choice system. In doing so, we also explore what can be learned from this evocative case study of socio-economic integration. The paper presents findings from three focus groups of ten people each and oral surveys and structured interviews with 66 former students.

Authors

• TJ D'Agostino, University of Notre Dame

• Cristóbal Madero, Universidad Alberto Hurtado