Reimagining School Integration

Possibilities for the Future

Edited by:
Jennifer B. Ayscue, North Carolina State University

A volume in the series: Research in Educational Policy: Local, National, and Global Perspectives. Editor(s): Kenneth K. Wong, Brown University.

Published 2024

Since the peak of school desegregation in the late 1980s, schools across the nation have been resegregating such that schools are now as segregated as they were during the late 1960s. Segregation is systematically linked to unequal educational opportunities and outcomes while integration, when well structured, is associated with numerous short-term and long-term academic and social benefits for individuals and society. In a time when public education is under attack and our nation is deeply divided along the lines of race, class, and politics, the potential of integration to create more equitable educational opportunities and outcomes for individual students as well as greater social cohesion for our democratic, pluralistic society is more important than ever.

Seventy years after the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision ruled that segregated schools are inherently unequal, this book reimagines what integration is and could be in our nation’s current context of racial and political polarization, the expansion of unregulated choice in public education, and an increasingly diverse, multiracial public school enrollment. Through an exploration of research and policy, this book develops a new conceptualization of integration by describing the contemporary drivers of segregation and recommending strategies to create a more equitable, meaningful, equal -status form of educational integration for the future. This book is a valuable resource for policymakers, scholars, educators, and concerned citizens who are invested in learning about one way to help create a more equitable and just education system.

CONTENTS
Introduction: Learning From the Past to Conceptualize a New Integrated Future, Jennifer B. Ayscue. PART I: FACILITATING INTEGRATION THROUGH COURTORDERED PLANS AND VOLUNTARY APPROACHES. The Continuing Legacy and Long Tail of Court-Ordered School Desegregation, Chinh Q. Le. Voluntary Integration as a Legacy of Brown: Promise and Challenge, Erica Frankenberg and Gabriella Achampong. Policy Matters: School Choice and Segregation, Casey D. Cobb. Dismantling Triple Segregation Through Two-Way Immersion, Jennifer B. Ayscue, Victor Cadilla, and Elizabeth M. Uzzell. PART II: REIMAGINING INTEGRATION IN METROPOLITAN, URBAN, AND RURAL SPACES. School Boundaries and Segregation in a Racially Diverse and Highly Unequal Metropolitan Society, Genevieve Siegel-Hawley. Transforming Neighborhoods: The Potential of Gentrification in Neighborhood and School Integration, Kfir Mordechay and Sarah A. Cordes. Black Diamonds and Pearls: Mining Counternarratives of Segregated Schools for Community Cultural Wealth, James E. Ford. Reimagining School Integration in the Rural South, Sheneka Williams, Johnathan T. Hill, and Darren Dubose. PART III: ADDRESSING SEGREGATION WITHIN SCHOOLS. Integrated but Unequal: The Damaging Impact of Discriminatory School Discipline Practices and Special Education, Dennis D. Parker. Illusions of Racial Equity in Desegregated Schools: Deconstructing and Reconstructing the Hidden Tracking Political Machine to Achieve Integration, Allison Roda. PART IV: CONCLUSION. Moving Forward, Gary Orfield. About the Contributors.