Who Knew? Integrated Schools Can Benefit All Students
Students who attend genuinely integrated schools have advantages.
As the nation becomes more racially and ethnically diverse, our schools are becoming racial and ethnic islands on which fewer and fewer white children learn with and from students of color. Many see the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka as a time to move on, many others view school desegregation itself as a noble but failed experiment. And while many educators seek to hang on to hard-earned increases in their schools’ racial and ethnic diversity, virtually no political or civic leader is raising the prospect of promoting school integration. School improvement agendas—at least the ones that engender public discussion—ignore, if not indirectly disparage, the desirability of racial and ethnic integration.
Despite this national retreat from school integration, there are solid reasons why increasing the number of students who have the opportunity to learn with and from persons whose race or ethnicity are different from their own will advantage those students and benefit society. Who knew? Historically, the case for school integration has focused on the immorality of segregation and the importance to students of color of equal opportunity. These are significant justifications, and there is good evidence that when teachers and administrators use diversity well, students of color in integrated classrooms do have access to richer opportunities to learn and tend to achieve at higher levels than those in more segregated classrooms.
But resting the case for integrated schools on the benefits to students of color fails to provide whites with a powerful rationale for why they should send their children to integrated schools. Many parents of color, too, may wonder why their children need to learn with white children in order to receive a quality education. Why not, these parents (and no small number of policymakers) argue, simply ensure that students of color receive the resources and good teachers they...
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