Socioeconomic Diversity as a School Turnaround Strategy: The Politics of New Integration Efforts in the United States

• In Event: Critical Policy Research Meets the Politics of Education

Abstract

In December 2016, then-Secretary of Education John King announced a new $12 million grant aimed at increasing socioeconomic diversity and student achievement in public schools. The Opening Doors, Expanding Opportunities program sought to support Local Education Agencies (LEAs) to analyze barriers and solutions for increasing socioeconomic diversity in schools and establish blueprints for increasing academic performance in lowest-performing schools via socioeconomic diversity; these blueprints could also serve as resources for school communities across the country interested in implementing similar plans. The program signaled
a brief commitment to school diversity at the federal level, which had all but been abandoned in prior administrations.

In January, 2017, a total of 26 districts declared their intent to apply for the program. In March, however, shortly after taking office Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos cut the Opening Doors grant program, claiming that using tax dollars to fund programs focused on planning, not implementation, would be imprudent. While the Department of Education’s (DOE) decision to retreat from school diversity efforts was not surprising, given the Secretary’s agenda to focus on increasing school choice, the decision made clear that school diversity would most likely not be a priority in the current administration, and that it would be left to states and LEAs whether to pursue such efforts. Yet, while the Opening Doors applications that were submitted by districts to the DOE were not funded, the submitted applications provide an indication that many districts
are interested in increasing school diversity.

For this paper, we conduct interviews with school district officials in four districts that submitted grant applications for the Opening Doors program. We specifically target school districts that had not actively been pursuing integration previously and thus that are “new” to diversity planning. We examine the motivating forces behind district efforts to integrate, the political dynamics affecting those decisions, whether they are proceeding in absence of federal funding, and if so, the scope of efforts undertaken. In our critical policy analysis of the adoption and implementation of diversity plans, we draw on literature that highlights the political nature of reform, particularly in urban contexts (see, e.g., Henig, Hula, Orr & Pedescleaux, 2001), as well as well as interest convergence theory (Bell, 1980).

Authors

• Sarah Diem, University of Missouri

• Jennifer Jellison Holme, The University of Texas - Austin