In Ossining: An Integrated School District Striving Hard to Serve All Students
In a society threaded through with racism, creating racially integrated public schools that serve all the children is a job that must be actively undertaken all day every day. The effort must be intentional and constant, because unless there is an intervention, primary social institutions like schools will reproduce the society in which they are set. Confronting institutional racism is a huge challenge.
Once Racially Troubled, a District Shrinks the Achievement Gap is the story of one school district, in Ossining, New York, where staff have thoughtfully and persistently examined challenges for black and Hispanic students and worked together to help children from all racial and ethnic groups cross racial boundaries.
This is at the same time an inspiring and very mundane story. How to build enrollment of black and brown students in Advanced Placement classes? How to help students arriving at the high school as new immigrants with few English skills learn chemistry and advanced math? How to close a sad and frightening racial-ethnic gap in high school graduation?
The efforts that have paid off in Ossining did not feature expensive consultants, on-line