Will the Obama administration now focus on desegregating schools?
When Arne Duncan steps down as education secretary in December and John King takes over, nothing much is expected to change in the world of federal education policy.
Except for maybe one thing.
King will perhaps take steps to focus the department’s energy — and money — on encouraging states and school districts to create integrated schools. That’s what a number of activists, lawyers and researchers are hoping, based on King’s past actions and recent statements.
In one of his last acts as New York’s education commissioner, King used federal money to encourage schools to create more diverse student populations.
This was a novel use of federal school improvement grants, which were aimed at a handful of tactics, such as turning troubled schools over to charter operators or replacing school staff members. But none of those programs acknowledged that most struggling schools are segregated, and filled with poor minority children.
“Clearly, Duncan, to his credit, put turning around failing schools at the very top of his agenda. And yet his primary method for doing so was to fire teachers, or bring in charter school operators,” said Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank.
“The idea that you would actually tackle the underlying cause of the problem — segregation — didn’t enter into the equation.”
Kahlenberg has written frequently about the power of socioeconomic integration; research has shown that poor children do better in mixed-income classrooms than in segregated ones, and middle-class children are no worse off.
He said he met with King privately and was convinced that the next education secretary is serious about trying to encourage school integration.
“President Obama has been taking on issues toward the end of his term that he wouldn’t touch in earlier years. So to me, the moment is ripe for the administration to take some important steps on integration,” Kahlenberg said.
“You have a new secretary of education who is deeply committed to the issue. You have a president who appears willing to expend some political capital toward the end of his term to address issues that are important to him. And you have the backdrop of unrest in a number of segregated urban areas. Will the Obama administration now focus on desegregating schools? - The Washington Post:
