Week 3 Task 2 Diversity in the News

New York City takes an important step in improving school integration by measuring diversityAccording to Andre M. Perry, Diversity isn’t simply a student enrollment issue. Inclusion involves the school staff as well. Consequently, the report calls for diversity among “principals, teachers, paraprofessionals, and all other school staff.”

While housing segregation strongly influences the composition of the student body, even in diverse cities, low-income black and brown students are increasingly becoming concentrated in certain schools. This is a result of middle-income, largely white families choosing to cluster in middle- and upper-income schools and neighborhoods in their pursuit of a good education for their kids.

Using standardized testing to measure academic achievement is one way to capture how good a school is, but differences in achievement that promulgate inequality are caused by segregation. Lifting test scores is far from the end goal we perceive it to be. Integration in schools and the workplace, social cohesion, and democratic decision-making are essential goals of a democracy that schools are supposed to encourage. Becoming more educated by being more segregated, which we seem quite comfortable with, should be avoided. Schools should be held accountable to higher-order democratic aims like integration rather than just pushing students to some level of academic progress.

The report tackles the information of wealth and quality by recommending that all schools reflect the diversity of the city and borough they are in. The report asks that schools within each borough of New York City, which is a sub-district, develop student enrollment targets based on the percentage of racial and economic groups, language learners and students with disabilities within the district.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/02/19/new-york-city-takes-an-important-step-in-improving-school-integration-by-measuring-diversity/