A New Argument for More Diverse Classrooms
U.S. Education Secretary John King will argue that interactions with children from different backgrounds prepare students for the workforce.
Perhaps no U.S. education secretary has had more personal experience with the power America’s public-school system has to lift up students who have the odds stacked against them than John King. At least when it works as intended.
A Puerto Rican and African American whose parents had both passed away by the time he was 12, King has repeatedly credited New York public schools for saving his life and shaping its trajectory. King attended P.S. 276 in Canarsie and Mark Twain Junior High School in Coney Island, at the time both diverse schools that exposed him not only to high-quality curriculum, but to students and teachers from backgrounds and cultures wildly different from his own.
“As a kid, it gave me a sense of different cultural experiences that people had and different traditions that people had, and as a parent, that has been an important part of thinking about the schools for my daughters,” King said during an interview at his Washington, D.C., office.
On Friday, Secretary King will call on parents and teachers at the National PTA Convention in Orlando to create diverse schools where students of all racial and socioeconomic backgrounds have access to good teachers and learning opportunities like he did. “Like math and reading, like science, social studies, and the arts, diversity is no longer a luxury,” King will say. “It’s essential for helping our students get ready for the world they will encounter after high school and, increasingly, throughout their lives.”
Research has long suggested that all students benefit when they attend diverse schools. But many schools remain largely segregated and those that serve children of color tend to have less-experienced teachers, fewer advanced courses, and resources stretched thin. And while more than half of the nation’s students are now children of color, more than 80 percent of teachers are white, and the majority are female.
Although many parents say they care about all children and support the creation of diverse schools, some, particularly affluent white families, have balked at attempts to integrate schools. So King will make the case that integration benefits not only black and brown students, who are disproportionately low-income, but their affluent white peers, too. “We have this emerging body of research around Education Secretary John King Will Call for More Diverse Schools in Orlando Speech - The Atlantic:
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