Came across this study on planting patterns, "Fractal planting patterns yield optimal harvests, without central control" that bears some closer review.

What's fascinating about this is that it seems to present a real-world solution to a problem commonly referred to as the "tragedy of the commons," in which the self-interest of individuals leads to the destruction and overuse of shared natural resources.

Spatial patterning often occurs in ecosystems as a self-organizing process caused by feedback between organisms and the physical environment. "The centuries-old Balinese rice terraces are also created by feedback between farmer's decisions and the ecology, which triggers a transition from local to global scale control," explains Lansing. "Our model shows for the first time that adaptation in a coupled human-natural system can trigger self-organized criticality."

This is absolutely fascinating, and it's interesting to consider this in relation to other ideas on a "self-organizing criticality" that we've explored here before, such as in brains and sand piles.

For proponents of ed reform who argue against centralized control, this seems like it could be worth digging into further.

The aspect of fractals here is also tantalizing. After chatting with a colleague about the article, he referred me to Ron Eglash, a mathematician who has studied fractals in African history and culture. Do yourself a favor and watch his TED talk, it will blow your mind.

https://www.ted.com/talks/ron_eglash_on_african_fractals#t-995116

Eglash raising an interesting point about self-organizing principles: they can be wonderful, as in Google search, or our brains. But there is also a dark side, such as in the spread of HIV or the damaging effects of capitalism. He suggests that the fractal algorithms employed in Africa could present us with "robust" "ways of doing self-organization — of doing entrepreneurship — that are gentle, that are egalitarian."

I'd love to explore more about how the fractal design of school structures and systems could be utilized for a productive purpose. Please share if you've got more on this.

Another interesting angle on the Balinese rice farmers is suggested in an earlier study reported also on Phys.org, "Phase transitions of rice farmers may offer insight into managing natural resources."

Their study and modeling seems to suggest that smaller self-segregated communities within a society are desirable in the long-run.

They found that the downside of the segregation is that it increases the social disharmony throughout the society as a whole. The upside, however, is that the social disharmony within each community becomes very low. In some communities, individuals are more likely to keep cooperating with each other—using the shared resource fairly—compared to the situation without segregation. These results were very similar to what the researchers observed in the segregated society of the Balinese subak.

This seems to be a dark side unmentioned in the more recent study on how the Balinese farmers exemplify a self-organizing society in harmony with nature. Or perhaps this isn't a dark side -- it's a suggestion that some self-segregation can be positive.

But I don't know anything about the Balinese subak, either, so not sure how much to read into this. Certainly worth going deeper into this. If any readers have knowledge of African fractal algorithms or Balinese subaks, please share!

In a promising development, on Tuesday the Board of Regents of New York finally put on the table an issue that should have been discussed a long time ago.

New York schools have a problem, as do many other schools across our nation. Our children are so segregated from others who aren’t of similar backgrounds that they have difficulty relating to the world at large.

I witnessed this problem first in my own upbringing. I went to a public school sheltered from the experiences and perspectives of others not so fortunate to live next to the beautiful, peaceful coast of San Diego with access to an abundance of resources. Sure, there were kids from less privileged areas bused in—but they were mostly tracked into different classes.

It wasn’t until I went to college that I had the opportunity to interact more with others of different backgrounds, at least to some degree. It took me some time to begin to learn how to talk to people who didn’t share my own background (still learning on that one).

When I later moved to NYC and taught special education, I saw a mirrored experience in the lives of my students. They grew up in a community with little respite from stress, pollution, and noise. Their opportunities for interaction with others of different backgrounds were mostly limited to their interactions with teachers such as I, who may have little understanding of their lived reality.

We were both raised in segregated worlds. I grew up in a privileged community in San Diego; my students grew up in a poor community in the Bronx. Yet in different ways, we were both sheltered from the world at large.

But this isn’t just about me or my students, or San Diego and the Bronx. The problem across our nation is the pervasive, persistent segregation of our communities and schools that commences from day one of a child’s life.

When we prevent children from learning from both adversity and diversity, we increase the fragility of our society.

So what can we do?

There’s two parts to fighting segregation. There’s the private choices we can make as individuals—as parents—about where we live and where we send our kids to school. And there’s the public policies that we can advocate for our representatives and school district leaders to create.

I can’t tell you where to send your kids to school and what neighborhood to live in. But I can encourage you to consider whether a “good” school is defined only by test scores, or whether you also will consider whether a school will provide a diversity of experiences and exposure to different perspectives, such as at a magnet school or a dual language school. And I can ask you to think about whether a “good” neighborhood is only about how convenient and comfortable it is, or whether it’s also about living somewhere that challenges and enriches you.

Safety is of course a paramount consideration. But overzealous sterility can also be deadly in the long-run (read Greg Ip’s Foolproof or Tyler Cowen’s The Complacent Class for more on this idea).

There’s been recent news stories about parents who protest about their property values falling when the possibility of different kids coming to their school is raised. It’s time parents who see the bigger picture push back on such concerns. What about the value that will be added to their child’s experience in learning alongside another child of a different background? What about the value in getting to know families from the other side of the fence and viewing them as human beings rather than derelicts to be feared? What about the value in viewing a public school as an opportunity to be a part of something much bigger than your own limited self-interest?

I’m not saying putting kids of different backgrounds together is easy, nor even sufficient. But real learning and growth has never been comfortable, nor easy.

Similarly, bringing this to our public representatives and school district leaders may make them uneasy, precisely due to the potential backlash from constituents who might espouse progressive values from afar, but who rise up in arms when the phantom menace of other people’s children attending their schools is raised. But the kinds of pitched battles we see take place in places like the Upper West Side also occurs because of poor leadership, not simply because diversity is on the table.

Putting families on the defensive results in ugly turf battles, but proactive communication, involvement, and planning can go a long way. And as the Brookings Institute has recently suggested, when practical factors such as school scheduling and bus timing are carefully considered, parents are much more likely to be engaged.

What would it mean to be proactive about segregation?

That’s where public leadership and policy comes in. Unfortunately, we can’t expect the U.S. Department of Education to provide any guidance on this. A grant program already funded under the Obama administration was canceled by Betsy DeVos, our new education secretary.

So it’s up to the states and districts to lead. Here’s some ways in which they can do so:

Our state representatives and leaders must clearly and consistently communicate that diversity in schools serves a civic purpose and is furthermore backed by substantive research. They must formally state that creating diversity in schools is a system-wide goal. Such policy statements have been made at a state level in Ohio, and at the district level in Nashville, San Francisco, Berkeley, and Fresno.

Public representatives need to pull together the best definitions and models of school diversity they can find, drawing upon the experiences of researchers, academics, community activists, and school leaders. They need to then share these findings widely and transparently and listen to feedback and concerns from communities.

School diversity numbers must be made public and regularly reported, as the City Council has done in NYC, and as it appears NY State is planning to do.

Finally, district-wide admissions and choice programs that will systematically foster greater diversity must be developed, such as a controlled choice program implemented in Cambridge. Schools and programs that are already fostering diversity, such as magnet schools, should be supported, expanded, and invested in.

When parents and public representatives work together, both as individuals and through policy, we can fight the increasing segregation of our kids.

When we leave it to fate, we guarantee the further polarization of our society.

On election day, many New Yorkers experienced a jarring shock; the world we thought we knew transformed before our eyes. We seem to have grown increasingly sheltered within our own social media spheres, where it’s easier to disregard ongoing tensions in communities across our nation between equality and liberty, whether power should reside more in the federal government or in local communities, or between honoring and respecting our differences or developing and maintaining a shared set of values. These are essential arguments that thread back to the founding of our nation.

Similarly, in many of our public schools, students spend their days with others mostly just like them—they may look similar, speak the same language, or share the same values. Any who don’t adhere to these norms tend to be ostracized, whether due to appearance, belief, or behavior.

When students from segregated schools and communities graduate to an institution of higher education, or into a field of employment, they may suddenly discover that many others may not share their values nor experiences, and they must learn to assume a new manner of speaking, navigate a new culture, and demonstrate new behaviors. Many find their way into a niche where they can be accepted and supported in their transition into adulthood. Some young adults, however, find themselves stranded and unable to navigate across this divide. And the norms and practices of their society’s leaders and institutions may end up growing increasingly alien to them.

It’s well past due that New York made it clear that public education is about learning from and about our differences, so we can better foster a shared civic knowledge and understanding. If we are to continue to have a functioning democratic republic, we must increase the access for all of our students to a diversity of experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives.

New York’s schools—both district and charter—have become increasingly segregated by race and class. Students with the greatest needs end up isolated and concentrated in the same schools, with far less access to quality teachers, resources, and opportunities. Meanwhile, students who are raised in greater affluence are provided with few opportunities to learn from the perspectives and experiences of others of different background, culture, or class.

In 2014, a UCLA Civil Rights Project report announced that New York State had earned the infamous status of running the most segregated schools in the nation. And in 2016, EdBuild released a report on the most extremely segregating school boundaries. Rochester, Syracuse, and Utica made the list, making New York number six out of the states with the most segregating districts.

For some school reform advocates, diversifying schools is not a matter of extreme importance. They may argue there are more important considerations that should take precedence, such as an increase in access to a greater choice of new schools or an increase in funding for schools that already exist.

Yet there is a substantial body of research on the benefits for all children from learning in socioeconomically and racially diverse classrooms. And there’s absolutely no reason that developing greater choice nor providing more resources couldn’t be coupled with a focus on increasing diversity in more of our schools.

The Benefits of Diversity

A 2009 study of college students found that racially diverse classrooms led to boosts in critical thinking, and similar studies have confirmed this effect on the thinking and performance of teams of adults. In 2010, a synthesis of fifty-nine studies demonstrated that all students, regardless of class, race, grade, or ethnicity, were more likely to demonstrate higher achievement in mathematics if they attended a socioeconomically and racially diverse school. Other studies have pointed to the benefit of diverse classrooms in early education, the benefits of diversity for students of color, for students from low-income housing, and the short-term and long-term academic benefits for all children in diverse classrooms.

Research from MIT has furthermore demonstrated the importance of face-to-face interactions between diverse populations, finding that “in both the U.S. and European Union, wealth is predicted by the diversity of face-to-face communication and that both poverty and crime levels are predicted by the isolation of a community.”

Yet despite such strong findings on the benefits of racial and socioeconomic school diversity, the vast majority of students of color continue to attend segregated schools where poverty is concentrated. Poverty is well-documented to have a significant negative impact on a child’s ability to learn and is associated with a range of social, emotional, and behavioral issues.

And even more damning, despite this strong evidence of the benefits of diversity in schools, there are absolutely no existing state-level policies nor guidance on increasing school diversity in New York.

Increasing Diversity in New York’s Schools

A sound first step will be for state legislators to sponsor a task force to create a report, eliciting input from experts and communities across the state, that can serve as a guide to districts in crafting local policies to promote school diversity. This report should outline various models and best practices that have been applied and provide guidance for New York-specific contexts, most especially for those districts identified as the most highly segregated.

The New York State Education Department (NYSED) can then make explicit the urgent priority of increasing diversity in schools by publishing a policy statement. This policy statement should clearly establish the vision and purpose for diversity in New York schools. Models of such statements can be viewed at a state level in Ohio, and at the district level in Nashville, San Francisco, Berkeley, and Fresno. Advocates in NYC are currently in dialogue with the NYC Department of Education to craft a policy statement on diversity that can also serve as a guide, if adopted.

Beyond these initial efforts, the state must then seek to build in accountability by monitoring school and district demographic numbers, as the New York City Council recently has done via the School Diversity Accountability Act.

No Excuses

It’s unconscionable, given the evidence alongside the civic imperative, that diversity has not become a clear and explicit priority for our public representatives and institutions in New York state.

New York’s broad and dynamic range of diversity can be our greatest strength and asset. All of our students can benefit from learning from others who are different than them, and this diversity can strengthen the great civic experiment of American democracy.

How did New York end up so segregated? As part of my NY Policy Fellowship, I did a little bit of research to try and answer this question.

The Great Migrations

During WWI, industrial urban cities in the North actively recruited Southern black laborers due to labor shortages and war production demand. By the 1920s, Harlem housed 200,000 African Americans and became an epicenter of black literature, music, and visual arts. NYC’s black population expanded from 140,000 in 1910 to 660,000 by 1940. Only a quarter of that 1940 population were born in New York. Economic demand during and after WWII similarly spurred a large influx from southern states. By 1970, NYC’s black population was at 2,350,000, and Buffalo’s at 108,000. Meanwhile, “NYC's Hispanic population increased by almost twenty times between 1940 and 2010, while its total non-Hispanic White population decreased by over 60% over the same time period.”

Redlining

After WWII, the Federal Housing Authority provided funding for homeownership for many white working class families. However, some banks would refuse to lend money to aspiring black homeowners. The practice of “redlining” refers to maps banks would keep of neighborhood racial demographics, which they would use to determine “bad investments.” Banks would then deny services to African American families, or selectively raise prices. This practice furthered racial segregation, and also guaranteed that many black neighborhoods were either underdeveloped or left in disrepair.

Urban Redevelopment and Highways

Robert Moses engineered passage and amendment to the 1942 Hampton-Mitchell Bill (enacted as the Urban Redevelopment Companies Law), which allowed the displacement of communities (typically low income) by private developers. The NY State Court of Appeals, in a 1949 case, Dorsey v. Stuyvesant Town Corp., later upheld the right of private property owners to discriminate by race. The court ruled: “It is well settled that the landlord of a private apartment or dwelling house may, without violating any provision of the Federal or State Constitutions, select tenants of its own choice because of race, color, creed or religion … Clearly, housing accommodation is not a recognized civil right.”

In a trend-setting development, Moses built the first highway through a crowded urban center, the Cross Bronx Expressway. This development, like the Stuyvesant development on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, resulted in the displacement of lower-income families and reinforced segregation.

Other cities in New York followed suit, with the Skyway in Buffalo and the I-81 in Syracuse similarly stranding low-income families in noisy, polluted inner cities, while creating swift escape routes for suburban commuters. Coupled with strict zoning rules and the lack of affordable housing and public transportation options in many suburban areas, poorer families found it difficult to gain the means either to leave or improve their high poverty neighborhoods.

Loss of Industrial Jobs

While the Fair Housing Act of 1968 made redlining practices illegal, the stagnation of the economy in the 1970s, coupled with deindustrialization, spurred the flight of white and middle class families to suburbs, leaving behind inner city neighborhoods with few employment opportunities and resources. According to EdBuild, twenty nine of the country’s 50 most extremely segregated school districts are in the Rust Belt, with New York State number 6 on that list.

Fruitless Fights for Integration

In the 1950s and 60s, a Reverend in Brooklyn, Milton Galamison, fought for integration, first as chair for the Education Chapter of the NAACP, then as founder of the Parent's Workshop for Equality in New York City Schools. His group “presented a series of integration proposals to the New York City Board of Education, none of which were implemented.” In 1964, Galamison led a group of civil rights organizations to boycott NYC public schools, but he did not gain the support of the teacher’s union and later lost the support of national civil rights groups. In the late 60s, he began fighting for community control of schools, creating tension with the teacher’s union, the Al Shanker-led UFT. This tension came to a head in Ocean-Hill Brownsville in 1968. Tensions between labor rights and community control advocates, as well as between advocates of integration and of black separatism, created fissures in liberal thought that shifted key narratives and perceptions of public education. As Dana Goldstein notes in her book, Teacher Wars, “Ocean Hill-Brownsville created rifts between teacher unions and black civil rights groups, as well as between liberal elites and the union.” These rifts and tensions continue to reverberate today, especially via the critique of teachers unions and traditional district schools offered by parental choice and charter school advocates.

NYC has never been under a desegregation order. There were a few efforts made to increase diversity through an open enrollment program or by shifting zone lines, but the fiscal crisis of the 1970s and subsequent white flight ended any further efforts until very recently.

In 2014, State Commissioner John King and Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch initiated the Socioeconomic Integration Pilot Program (SIPP), providing grant funding to school districts that sought to integrate student populations by socioeconomic status. A number of school districts are now implementing programs, including Manhattan District 1.

Beyond Race & Class: Special Education Segregation

From 1894 through the mid 1900s in New York state, increasing attention was paid to the identification and specialized support for students with disabilities due to legislation. In 1967, a “handicapped child” was defined “as an individual who ‘because of mental, physical or emotional reasons, cannot be educated in regular classes but can benefit by special services and programs.’ This definition summarized state policy, which since the early years of the century had favored removing handicapped children from regular classrooms and schools, and placing them in ‘special classes,’ home teaching, or private schools.” The policy of segregation and outsourcing of support began shifting in the 1960s. Federal legislation, culminating in the 1990 IDEA act, pushed states towards inclusion in a “least restrictive setting,” and NCLB in 2001 introduced school accountability for educating students with disabilities. However, in an IBO report as of 2013, 25% of students identified with a disability continue to be educated in separate, “self-contained” programs. The outcomes for self-contained students are not positive, while some research seems to suggest that including students with disabilities in general education classrooms has more positive outcomes for them, while not harming the outcomes of general education students. Yet the populations of students with disabilities are far from evenly distributed between schools.

It’s well past due that New York made it clear that public education is about learning from and about our differences, so that we can better foster our shared knowledge and understanding. Increasing student access to a diversity of experiences, backgrounds, and people must be an explicit priority of our system of education if we are to continue to have a functioning democratic republic.

On election day, many New Yorkers experienced a jarring disjoint; the world we thought we knew transformed before our eyes. We have grown increasingly sheltered within our own immediate social media spheres, where it’s easier to disregard the arguments in different communities across our nation about the ongoing tensions that exist between equality and liberty, the power of the federal government vs. local communities, and between honoring our differences and backgrounds while developing and maintaining a shared set of values and understanding. These are essential arguments that thread back to the founding of our nation.

Similarly, in many of our public schools, students spend their days with others who are mostly just like them -- they may look similar, speak the same language, or share the same values. And any who don’t adhere to these norms tend to be ostracized, whether due to appearance, belief, or behavior. Human beings, most especially children and adolescents, are highly attuned to differences. When I first began teaching, I was taken aback by how much attention my students paid to the state of my shoes!

And while there is much talk of a “culturally responsive” or “relevant” curriculum, the reality is that even a basic core curriculum is all too often lacking, not to mention access to adequate resources and opportunities and experiences beyond the school. Schools require coherent, well-structured, and thoughtfully sequenced content that will build students' understanding of their wider society and world.

When students from segregated schools and communities graduate to an institution of higher education, or into a field of employment, they may suddenly feel a sense of disjoint between their social identity and the norms of the institution they’ve joined. They may discover that many others may not share their values nor experiences, and they must learn to assume a new manner of speaking, navigate a new culture, and demonstrate new behaviors. Many find their way into a niche where they can be accepted and supported in their transition into adulthood. Some young adults, however, find themselves stranded and unable to navigate across this divide. And the norms and practices of their society’s leaders and institutions will grow increasingly alien to them.

It is the fundamental mission of public education to support our student’s success in that transition into adulthood, to equip them with the knowledge, skills, and mindsets that will enable them to question and clarify other’s perspectives who are different, while effectively communicating and refining their own. To empower them to partake in the great debates of our nation and expand those conversations to include themselves.

Yet if we are honest in our reckoning, New York state is patently failing in this mission. In 2014, a UCLA Civil Rights Project report stamped NY with the shameful status of host to the most segregated schools in our nation. And this year, EdBuild released a report on the most extremely segregating school boundaries across the nation. Rochester, Syracuse, and Utica made the list, making NY number 6 out of the 50 states with the most segregating districts.

Families and neighborhoods with the most wealth continue to have the greatest access to a high quality education and positive life outcomes. For children less fortunate than others, segregation manifests in less access to resources, quality teachers, and safe and clean learning spaces.

And for both populations, an increasing lack of shared understanding and communication leads to further disengagement from participation in the civic institutions that should serve us all.

Last Monday evening, I attended an interesting event at Brooklyn Law School, "Opportunities and Challenges in Integrating NYC's Public Schools."

On the panel were City Council members Ritchie Torres and Brad Lander, who co-wrote an op-ed on the issue, and worked to pass the School Diversity Accountability Act in the City Council earlier this year; Clarence Ellis, a Superintendent in Crown Heights; Jon Rosenberg, a former civil rights lawyer and a charter network CEO; Kevin Young, a PTA President at PS 133; and Todd Sutler, a cofounder of Compass charter school. The panel was facilitated by Arva Rice of NY Urban League (who I later also saw at the Common Core Task Force hearing).

Here's a quick overview of what I found to be key takeaways:

• Zoned schools are a barrier to integration
• Some possible tools are weighted admissions (at a school-level) and controlled choice (at a district level)
• Diversity is a necessity for quality at a systemic level
• Lenses for viewing diversity at a school-level can be socioeconomic, racial, language-based, and cognitive
• Advocacy needs to focus on changing legislation that prevents integration across districts
• We must be persistent and aggressive in advocacy, recruitment, and admissions
• Nurturing diversity within a school requires building a common language

Read on for further details.

Lander made the point that magnet schools are one important mechanism for integration, with a hat tip to This American Life episode 2. I agree -- though let's also be brutally honest -- quality magnet schools cost money. And even with that money invested, as we can see with Hartford magnet schools, it continues to require a sustained and aggressive effort in recruitment and outreach.

After highlighting the work that PS 133 and 130 have done at a school-level (weighted admissions), and that BK Districts 1 and 13 have done at a district-level (controlled choice), Lander made the great point that we have a real need to "codify the tools" that can be used for achieving integration. The good news is that the School Diversity Act will begin measuring diversity in NYC, so starting this December 31st, we can more accurately begin talking about where and how tools (such as controlled choice and weighted admissions) should be applied.

Rosenberg highlighted the important point that when it comes to integration, "we need to be persistent." He also highlighted, as did others at the panel throughout the evening, the fact that a major barrier to integration is that elementary schools are zoned.

Rosenberg delineated between a "blunt" method of integration: rezoning, and a softer method, which is either to create "something new" and to be "unburdened by history" (such as charter or magnet schools) to avoid battles such as those that playing out in Brooklyn and the Upper West Side, and to work to protect those few, "fragile" existing schools and areas that are already integrated. However, Rosenberg later presented a challenge that charter operators face, in that even when they wish to work to diversify, they are confined by state zoning legislation, and end up perpetuating segregation. He presented the example of a school in district 2 in Manhattan unable to integrate students and families from district 4 in East Harlem (or vice versa) due to this legislation.

Torres grounded the panel in the more dire reality of the Bronx, pointing out that in districts heavily poor and segregated, there is little opportunity nor will to integrate, either socio-economically or racially. He pointed out that there is a palpable lack of political will in our country and city to integrate, and that segregation has been a public policy choice and mindset (Rosenberg also echoed this sentiment as well -- and why his reminder to "be persistent" is important to bear in mind).

I appreciate Torres' directness in evaluating the situation -- he called out Mayor De Blasio and Chancellor Farina's deliberate inaction on this issue as "disheartening." He had what I thought was the money quote for the evening when he pointed out that while you can have quality schools without diversity, the reality is that "if you want quality at a systemic level -- then you need diversity."

Young brought some interesting within-school perspective on integration, pointing out that it can be a challenge at first, and that a common language must be built. But this also, as he suggested, provides an opportunity for students and staff to look at what is the same in our human experience, rather than focusing on differences and deficits. He then threw some oblique shade on Success Academy when he suggested that we can better attract diversity at schools that are "progressive," rather than "test factories," like the "charters in the news."

Sutler brought in another aspect of "diversity" that is rarely discussed but I agree is important to mention alongside socio-economic and racial diversity: cognitive diversity -- and that this work to include and integrate is the work of our schools and classrooms. This is an issue close to my own heart, as I work in the field of special education, and inclusion is a fundamental principle for me. Sutler urged the audience to push our legislators on this issue, and he also highlighted the critical need for a school to conduct outreach to achieve better integration.

Sutler later made the case that in terms of increasing diversity in the teaching profession, we need to 1) raise the bar for education graduate programs, 2) elevate the craft and profession of teaching, and 3) make aggressive recruitment efforts to attract people of color.

I'm leaving out a lot of other key points made, but these were the ones that most stuck out for me.

A few of my posts on integration:

• Studying Segregation in NYC
• Integration, Inclusiveness, and Interdependence
• Racial Relations in the US: A Call for Integration
• On Segregation: The Good and the Ugly
• On Segregation: Social Status, Prejudice, and Race
• On Segregation: Forcing Integration

• This American Life: The Problem We All Live With, Part 1
• This American Life: The Problem We All Live With, Part 2
• Tampa Bay Times: How the Pinellas County School Board neglected five schools until they became the worst in Florida
• NY Daily News, Sarah Garland: Separate. Unequal. Still. How public school segregation plagues New York City, and why it matters
• NY Daily News, Brad Lander and Ritchie Torres**: How NYC can break the cycle of school segregation
• NY Daily News, Editorial: Mix, match, learn by integrating city public schools

Something especially caught my attention in Part 2 of This American Life's series that relates to our past explorations of the principle of obliquity:

Enid and her staff show up at baseball games in the suburbs, talk to parents about Hartford magnet schools. They leave brochures in suburban libraries. They show up at Girl Scout troop meetings, Mommy and Me groups, the YMCA. They study this market meticulously. And they consult professional marketing firms. Not your little mom and pop places, either, Enid tells me proudly, but people who advise companies like Apple. . . . This is how integration works in Hartford. Sometimes white families are happy to see it. But it's not usually why they show up. Their neighborhood school is often pretty good. But they were looking because their kid was bullied, or there was too much standardized testing, or the other parents seemed annoying. Enid, who is selling them on magnet schools, which exist to promote integration, also does not mention integration. The long history of segregated schooling doesn't come up. The current reality of segregated housing is irrelevant. No one here is being moved by a sense of collective responsibility. It is as if John Brittain never happened. Instead, the experience Enid is curating is for comfort. All the details she considers, like making sure there are white kids in the brochures. Or if parents do tour a school, Enid does her best to have their child shadow a white student. That way they can see they won't be the only one. [Bold added]

This is fascinating, and insightful.

There's a couple of ways to read this.

1. All white people are inherently racist.
2. Parents of all stripes don't vote with their feet based on grand ideals, such as "collective responsibility" or "pluralistic democracy"***, but rather based on whether they think their child will be safe, welcomed, nurtured, challenged, and provided with opportunities.

I believe the latter point is true. This speaks to the universal desire of parents to seek better opportunities for their children.

I've talked about "forcing" integration before on this blog, and this is the kind of force I'm talking about. There's an army of effort going on behind the scenes to make this effort at integration work. But arguably, such targeted marketing of magnet schools may ultimately be the most effective method, avoiding the ugly blow ups of mandated busing.

Instead of being explicitly about integration, it's about providing an innovative opportunity for all kids. That's something most any parent can buy into.

The grand ideal, the ultimate purpose, hides obliquely behind the machinations of brilliant minds, heroic hearts, and hard work of people like Enid Rey and John Brittain.

*might be literally true, if you're a teacher or administrator! In the Bahamas, catching that last bit of sun prior to the onslaught of a new school year. Yeah, I see you.

**He's the Council Member for my school's district in the Bronx! Great to see him taking a stand on this.

***Though I certainly wish more of us did.

For more of my thoughts on integration and segregation, see the following:

• Race Relations in the United States: A Call for Integration
• On Segregation: The Good and the Ugly
• On Segregation: Social Status, Prejudice, and Race
• On Segregation: Forcing Integration
• Beyond Profiling: Deepening Classroom Discussions About Race

In my last post on segregation, we looked into distinguishing race and class when discussing race relations, while acknowledging both can be intertwined, and I also presented why I believe desegregation of white communities is critical.

Some seem to argue that if we can just get people to be less prejudiced, then we'll become naturally more inclusive. It's certainly critical to combat conscious and unconscious prejudice, but I also believe that we need mechanisms that "force" integration of some schools, workplaces, and housing to occur. In this post, I will present a few selections from various sources to begin the conversation of this case.

Even Polygons Only Integrate When They Have To

In the Parable of the Polygons by Vi Hart and Nicky Case, a wonderful open source set of interactives on segregation between triangles and squares, one scenario presents a world that is already segregated (as ours is), and when you lower the slider for "bias" . . . well, you'd expect that some squares and triangles would start intermixing. Except . . .

See what doesn't happen? No change. No mixing back together. In a world where bias ever existed, being unbiased isn't enough! We're gonna need active measures. [Bold added]

But what happens when parameters for some level of diversity is set for squares and triangles? Very different scenario:

. . . all it takes is a change in the perception of what an acceptable environment looks like. So, fellow shapes, remember it's not about triangles vs squares, it's about deciding what we want the world to look like, and settling for no less. [Bold added]

Teen Cliques Are Tamed By Design, So Why Not Society?

In another article, Why Cliques Form at Some High Schools and Not Others by Derek Thompson on The Atlantic, the argument for deliberately cultivating diversity is also made:

. . . the natural instinct for teenagers to separate themselves into clusters and hierarchies is weakened when schools force kids to partner with peers they wouldn't otherwise want to be around to see first-hand the benefits of unlikely friendships. What's behind the difference between schools, if the instinct to be around similar people is universal? McFarland says it's not about the students. It's about the schools, themselves. The way high schools are designed—their size, their level of diversity, and the way they treat students—can either drive students to segregate based on things like household income and race, or force them to build relationships that are more about their high school life than their socioeconomic backgrounds. [Bold added]

Notice that uncomfortable word repeated? Forced. Inclusion, integration, and diverse relationships don't form organically, and we would be naïve to hope they would.

Anyone who has lived through middle school knows all about cliques. Cliques are the reason schools and certain organizations and communities sometimes suck. They're the reason I argue for forced integration.

In smaller schools, and in smaller classrooms, you force people to interact, and they are less hierarchical, less cliquish, and less self-segregated. School size wasn’t the only factor that affected cliques and hierarchies. Schools that grouped students by academics and created other ways to force kids with different backgrounds to cooperate (whether in clubs or on sports teams) were less ruled by segregation and hierarchy.

But By What Mechanisms?

In a report released by Education Pioneers, "From Intention to Action," some recommendations for achieving diversity in organizations are well worth considering:

1\. Customized vision and strategy for diversity and inclusion 2\. Leadership and accountability 3\. Talent recruitment and staff development practices 4\. Intentional and strategic dialogue about diversity Interviews revealed that these organization-wide conversations are not happening because of rapid growth or competing organizational priorities. Several study participants admitted that conversations about diversity are unsettling or tense, and thus they have avoided them. Diversity conversations rarely make the priority list, and when they do, they often are not implemented successfully.

All of these recommendations go well beyond intent. We must move beyond good intentions to actual mechanisms and strategies put in place and reinforced to create diversity.

Policies and Housing Are Key

Richard Rothstein has a long and good piece up at The Economic Policy Institute diving into the history of segregation that led to modern-day Ferguson, creating the divided sort of environment in which Michael Brown's killing at the hands of a mostly white police force occurred.

Rothstein does a nice job of laying out the case for why policies, not simply private prejudice, led to this situation.

Many practical programs and regulatory strategies can address problems of Ferguson and similar communities nationwide. One example is to prohibit landlords from refusing to accept tenants whose rent is subsidized – a few states and municipalities currently do prohibit such refusal, but most do not. Another example is to require even outer-ring suburbs to repeal zoning ordinances that prohibit construction of housing that lower- or moderate-income residents – white or black – can afford. Going further, we could require every community to permit development of housing to accommodate a “fair share” of its region’s low-income and minority populations – New Jersey, for example, has taken a very modest step towards this requirement.97 But we won’t consider such remedies if we remain blind to how Ferguson became Ferguson. It is impractical to think that the public and policymakers will support remedies to problems whose causes they don’t understand. We flatter ourselves that the responsibility is only borne by rogue police officers, white flight, and suburbanites’ desire for economic homogeneity. Prosecuting the officer who shot Michael Brown, or investigating and integrating Ferguson’s police department, can’t address the deeper obstacles to racial progress. [Bold added]

There's so much more to say on this, obviously. But I hope I've sparked some thought through this examination. There are folks out there, such as Richard D. Kahlenberg and Halley Potter at The Century Foundation, doing great work in examining and advocating mechanisms for achieving greater integration in schools.

I hope that in 2015, we can push into new frontiers in policy that can bring greater opportunities for inclusion and diversity.

In my last post on segregation, I stated that "schools that are not only predominantly black, but furthermore predominantly high poverty, could blow predominantly white and wealthier schools out of the water, if given half a chance." A very Moskowitzian statement, though I qualified this with the need to acknowledge the great barriers "which have been erected, historically, consistently and systematically, by our (once) predominantly white society." Barriers such as socioeconomic status and the quantity and quality of funding.

In this sense, then, when we examine issues of race, we also need to examine issues of social class. It would be nice if all issues relating to race were merely a matter of socioeconomic status, but unfortunately, the two must be distinguished, while at the same time examined for how they are all too often interwoven. To those who might say that racial issues stem solely from class related issues, examine the period during Reconstruction when the white and black working classes were more frequently divided, rather than fighting together for greater opportunity and mobility. No matter their socioeconomic status, African Americans experience prejudice on a daily basis. Racial hatred has a dark place in American history that makes efforts to render current racial issues a mere matter of class misplaced. We need to look at both.

But in so distinguishing the complication of racial prejudice, I think we also need to similarly avoid the simplistic view that all issues of race are that of prejudice. To be raised in poverty, regardless of race, presents significant challenges to social mobility. Now add race and prejudice into the mix.

I'm no historian, so my presentation of these issues are no doubt facile, but I'm trying to outline what my thinking is without ending up on a tangent. Ultimately, I must speak from where my experience lies, and my experience is that of a white male, raised in a geographic area of high socioeconomic status that is predominantly white.

In my work in hospitality and retail, prior to becoming a teacher, I also served many people in higher socioeconomic echelons, as well, so I have a fair amount of experience with that realm, where people of color continue to remain more the exception than the norm. And those experiences are the very reason why I so strongly advocate for integration. My experience is that predominantly white communities greatly suffer from a lack of exposure to diversity. There is a sense of entitlement among many whites that is compounded by a near obliviousness to the circumstances, perspectives, and cultures of others.

And it's not just a "white" thing, either. It's human nature to self-segregate. It's my opinion that American society and culture is much more interesting and enriching when we learn and interact with people of many different backgrounds and perspectives.

There's research to suggest that such diversity presents pragmatic benefits for decision-making for organizations. But beyond any pragmatic considerations, I also have a frustration with the reality of continuing prejudice against others who are "different" than a vanilla norm. In my view, so long as different cultures and communities are distanced from one another both geographically and socially, people will continue to demonstrate prejudice due to ignorance.

So my position, therefore, as I stated provocatively in my first post on this issue, is that white people should be "forced" to work and live more with African Americans and other populations, as well as that people in higher socioeconomic classes should be "forced" to live and work with those of lower status. "Forced," because otherwise, I don't see how things will greatly change.

In my next post, I will present fodder for why I continue to use the unsavory word "force."

In my last post, I delved into a more sensitive topic – race – acknowledging that I was probably going to stick my foot in my mouth. Race is a sensitive topic for me to discuss because 1) our society has a long and sordid history of prejudiced treatment of people of color, and  2) I'm white.

But if our concern here at Schools & Ecosystems is to promote socio-­ecological perspectives on public education, then the topics of race, class, and diversity are central to that mission. The specific context of US history and education demands it. So I'm going to keep on sticking my foot in my mouth. Apologies in advance.

Let me acknowledge that in my last post, I presented a pretty simplistic and idealistic vision, stemming from a need to desperately say something in response to Ferguson (and now, Eric Garner). The topic of segregation is much more complex than simply stating that our government needs to force white people to integrate more with black people. But that is my penultimate position, and I'd like to get more into the nuance behind how I've come to that position, so I can untangle some of the thorns wound up all around in it.

There's a simplistic and dominant progressive narrative on segregation, which is that “segregation is bad, so we need to desegregate.” This was the narrative born out of Brown v. Board of Ed. I don't think it's that simple. It's easy to say segregation is bad, but it's much harder to say why it's problematic, and even harder to say what we should do about it. There's also a possibly racist connotation that can lie behind that narrative, which is the implication that black institutions are inferior, and so integration with white institutions is necessary. To uncover this mindset, you can ask, “Can a predominantly black institution (such as a business or school) be one of the highest performing in our nation?” If you're white, chew on that for a minute.

Someone might then continue to ask, "But why aren't there more successful black institutions?" It is your answer to that question that determines where you stand. The fact that many people rarely ever get to that point of thought, but rather make the unsaid assumption that there is a failure in black communities and culture, is why we are nowhere near to living in a “post­racial” society.

My own answer to the first question is that a predominantly black institution can be one of the highest performing in our nation. And schools that are not only predominantly black, but furthermore predominantly high poverty, could blow predominantly white and wealthier schools out of the water, if given half a chance.

And I furthermore believe that successful, predominantly black institutions are necessary for the well­-being of black communities. (“Wait, what? I thought you said you wanted integration?!” I'll return to this in a later post.)

But we need to acknowledge the incredible barriers to that success which have been erected, historically, consistently and systematically, by our (once) predominantly white society. I don't feel the need to get into the details and history of this – there's been plenty of ink spilled making this case elsewhere. But any cursory glance at the course of US history and policy makes it clear that black communities have been starved of access to critical resources and left to fester.

So when some people confidently point their fingers at black communities and say, “This is a failure of culture,” we know that sort of reductionism completely ignores the wider context and impact of history, and the continued—daily—impact of white prejudice.

Yes, I know, this is old hat to most of you who might be reading this. But I need to be clear about where I stand so that when I arrive at my conclusion – that white communities should be forced to integrate with black communities – then you'll understand how I arrived at that seemingly radical pronouncement.

I'm going to leave it there for now. In my next post, I want to continue to explore the impact of segregation, and I'm going to bring in another sensitive topic – class – into the discussion.

I've been thinking about #Ferguson (not just the place, you see, but the happening—like Vietnam the war, not just the country) and Tamir Rice, and how these tragedies join an uninterrupted thematic patterning of race relations in our country. I think it's easier for white people to process (or ignore) these as isolated events, rather than disturbing motifs.

So I'm going to put my thoughts out there, however malformed and incoherent they might be, because I think it's better that we talk about this, rather than ignore it. This is a bit different than the norm on this blog, but I think it has everything to do with public education.

There are wounds in this country we can't pretend away. Wounds so deep they surface visible in the skin.

White people may only know this subconsciously, flinching when a black male crosses their radar. Black people probably can't forget it, saddled to an everpresent self­-awareness. How one comports oneself in mixed company, when around the presence of a policeman, when in a downtown department store.

So it's important to bring this to the fore. To hash it out, however convoluted, via blog posts, protests, and media feeds. To experience that discomfort, and contemplate how it relates to the deepseated longsuffering of a community.

But I have the sense that so long as white and black people live wholly segregated lives, both culturally and geographically, then the problems of skin will remain perennial. It's hard to empathize with someone when you lack any context beyond what's portrayed on a screen.

I respect the inclination of some in the black community to choose to remain separate from white people.

But I do not respect the inclination of white people to self-segregate.

I believe that our society has an obligation to promote inclusion and diversity, both racial and economic. And by promote, I mean by the force of law.

Let me rephrase that in yet more stark terms: I believe that white people should be forced to live and work alongside black and brown people. And I believe that wealthier people should be forced to live and work alongside poorer people.

Some will say that we tried that out already with federally mandated busing to diversify schools, and look how that turned out? Except we didn't really try it. Not for long enough to have any kind of impact.

It's the natural tendency of human beings for like to congregate with like, and for the rich to get richer. So in the absence of any regulation, economic and racial segregation will only increase.

When Ta­-Nehisi Coates wrote in June about a case for reparations, this made sense to me in terms of a "moral reckoning" for our nation. We can only begin to square up with our sordid history of race relations when we take concrete action in the form of policies that create inclusive housing, schools, and businesses.

It's convenient for white people to either pretend blackness, as a concept and as a representation of the divisive history of the United States, doesn't exist at all, or to pretend that the problems that stem from that blackness are something that they can swoop in and fix, like a superhero.

I don't think any problems will be fixed until they become all of our problems. And they won't become all of our problems until we live and work together.

That's my take on this. Let me know what you think.