This week U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan took on a subject – ever so briefly – that has virtually fallen off the nation’s education reform agenda: integrating its public schools.
His comments came against a backdrop of increasing racial and ethnic segregation in the nation’s schools, including in California, as I wrote in this commentary on the 50th anniversary on the March on Washington last month.
Asked on a “Back to School” program Sept. 4 on the Diane Rehm Show on WAMU about a racial integration lawsuit in Louisiana, Duncan emphasized the positive impact of attending racially diverse schools on students, especially white ones like himself. He said he could not have done his job as secretary of education without that experience. “You want children to grow comfortable and confident with other people who come from different backgrounds from them,” he said.
Here are Duncan’s complete comments on the issue:
I fundamentally think the need for integration and more integrative schools is very real, and there are things that we can do. Obviously, there are housing patterns that present