Why Diversity in Schools Is Critical to Our Democracy
An op-ed on the urgent civic and educational imperative for racial and socioeconomic school diversity across New York State, originally published in The Hechinger Report.
Originally published in The Hechinger Report on March 7, 2017.
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.