Thinking Citizen Blog — “Time for State Law Makers to Act on School Integration” (Boston Globe)
Thinking Citizen Blog — Friday is Education and Education Policy Day
Today’s Topic: “Time for State Law Makers to Act on School Integration” (Boston Globe)
Is the Boston Globe editorial correct? Or is integration a distraction from the real issue which is the low quality of schools serving poor communities? Is there any real possibility of reversing the forces that have made segregation worse over the last several decades? Today, a few notes. Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
HOW SEGREGATED ARE BOSTON AREA SCHOOLS? DISTRICTS HAVE LIMITED POWER
1. Duxbury — 94% white and Asian, Wellesley, 84% white and Asian.
2. “In the last decade alone, the number of “intensely segregated” nonwhite schools — that is, schools with student populations that are at least 90% students of color — has grown by more than a third.” (from 143 to 196)
3. “There are limits on what cities like Boston, where only 15% of public school students are white, and Lawrence, where just 3 per cent are white, can do. There are simply not enough white children to go around in those districts to meaningfully integrate their classrooms.”
DON’T ROLL YOUR EYES — IT’S TIME FOR A COMMISSION
1. State Senator Brendan Crighton of Lynn has proposed a bill that “would establish a commission to study school segregation and the residential segregation that undergirds so much of it — and come up with recommendations for ameliorating both.”
2. “Talk of a Beacon Hill commission gets the eyes rolling; too often a commission is where a good idea goes to die.”
3. “But in a state that hasn’t paid serious attention to segregation in decades, a careful examination of how our affordable housing and school assignment policies have fostered destructive racial isolation is a crucial first step in building support for meaningful reform.”
NB: “A similar bill from state Representative Chynah Tyler, a Boston Democrat, would add another worthy task to the commission’s charge: examining successful integration strategies in Massachusetts and nationwide.”
THE METCO MODEL AND TWO OTHER STATE LEVEL BILLS
1. “The Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, or Metco program, has been sending students of color from Boston and Springfield to high-achieving suburban schools for decades. And the results — substantially higher graduation and college enrollmentn rates than peers in urban public schools — have been nothing short of remarkable. But there has been little effort to expand Metco. In fact, just maintaining funding for the program has been a struggle.”
2. State Senator Crighton has also proposed a bill “modeled in part on the federal Strength in Diversity Act” that would provide state grants for districts or regional consortium of districts to develop integration strategies.
3. “A third Crighton bill would alter the state program that helps pay for the renovation of aging school buildings and the construction of new ones. It would double the amount of sales tax revenue set aside for the program, provide more state aid for low-income districts like Lynn, and — here’s where the desegregation piece comes in — add a bonus for projects that promote integration.”
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/04/01/opinion/time-state-lawmakers-act-school-integration/
https://tcf.org/content/report/school-integration-america-looks-like-today/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Crighton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chynah_Tyler
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PDF with headlines — Google Drive
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned in the last week related to education or education policy. Or the coolest thought however half-baked you had. Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to education or education policy that the rest of us may have missed. Or just some random education-related fact that blew you away.
This is your chance to make some one’s day. Or to cement in your own mind something that you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something that is dear to your heart.
