New to School Integration?
Most parents and caregivers – and particularly White folks – would deny that racism plays any part in our decisions about where to send our children to school. Yet our narratives around “good” and “bad” schools are shot through with assumptions that involve race and perpetuate racially biased systems. These resources provide background for understanding the segregated state of education in this country, the value and promise of integration, and the ways that we can start changing the conversation about our schools.
How White &/or Privileged Families Interact with School Integration
Awkward Conversations Guide
For those of us thinking about integration and racial justice, the “schools” conversation can be messy, nuanced, and complicated; fraught issues of parenting, community, race, and class are all at play. Developed by Integrated Schools, this guide is designed to help you engage in the schools conversation in ways that ultimately transform the toxic schools narrative, one playground encounter at a time.
This American Life (2015). A two-part podcast on desegregation with Nikole Hannah-Jones.
Hannah-Jones, Nikole (2016). An essential read by the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter covering racial injustice for The New York Times Magazine, creator of the landmark 1619 Project, and inaugural Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at the Howard University School of Communications, Nikole Hannah-Jones.
Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education
Rooks, Noliwe (2017). American studies professor Rooks provides a trenchant analysis of our separate and unequal schools and argues that profiting from our nation’s failure to provide a high-quality education to all children has become a very big business.
Children of the Dream: Why School Integration Works
Johnson, Rucker (2019). We are frequently told that school integration was a social experiment doomed from the start. But as economist Rucker C. Johnson demonstrates in Children of the Dream, it was, in fact, a spectacular achievement. Drawing on longitudinal studies going back to the 1960s, Dr. Johnson shows that students who attended desegregated and well-funded schools were more successful in life than those who did not — and this held true for children of all races and for their children.
Learning in Public: Lessons for a Racially Divided America from My Daughter’s School
Martin, Courtney (2021). Many of us are newly awakened to the continuing racial injustice all around us, but unsure of how to go beyond hashtags and yard signs to be a part of transforming the country. Martin discovers that her public school, the foundation of our fragile democracy, is a powerful place to dig deeper. Martin examines her own fears, assumptions through conversations with other moms and dads as they navigate school choice. A vivid portrait of integration’s virtues and complexities, and yes, the palpable joy of trying to live differently in a country re-making itself. Learning in Public might set your family’s life on a different course forever.
Beyond Test Scores: A Better Way to Measure School Quality
Schneider, Jack (2017). When it comes to sizing up public schools, test scores are the go-to metric of state policy makers and anxious parents looking to place their children in the “best” schools. Yet ample research indicates that standardized tests are a poor way to measure a school’s performance.
Schneider joined us for an episode of our podcast.
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
Tatum, Beverly Daniel (1997/2017). Is self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy? Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is essential if we are serious about enabling communication across racial and ethnic divides. A classic, essential read.
Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation
Delmont, Matt (2016). This groundbreaking book shows how school officials, politicians, the courts, and the media gave precedence to the desires of White parents who opposed school desegregation over the civil rights of Black students. Why Busing Failed shows how antibusing parents and politicians ultimately succeeded in preventing full public school desegregation.
Delmont joined us for an episode of our podcast