TECHNOS

July 27, 2008

TECHNOS QUARTERLY Winter 2002 Vol. 11 No. 4

Diverse Schools are Stronger Academically and Socially

By Eileen Gale Kugler

I t happens every year. Well-meaning parents begin their exploration for a new home, a place where their kids can attend a “good ” school. And what’s usually their primary tool for measuring a school’s worth? Spurred by our national obsession with standardized tests, they check out the school’s scores, assuming the highest average scores define the best schools. They check out demographic statistics, fearing that high populations of minority students translate to schools where gangs rule, violence is common, and expectations are low. Far too often, they don’t dig beyond the most basic statistics. They never learn that many diverse schools have challenging curricula, high-achieving graduates, and low rates of violence. The parents never investigate research that clearly shows the benefit of being educated in a diverse environment.

Who loses in the end? We all do. Gary Orfield at Harvard’s Civil Rights Project has found an alarming trend toward resegregation of U.S.schools, even though our nation’s school-age population is becoming increasingly diverse. One of the reasons is that parents with the economic luxury of moving into the neighborhood of their choice select predominantly white neighborhoods that feed into schools where the vast majority of students look and think alike. Or they move into vibrant diverse neighborhoods and send their children to private schools with little racial diversity and even less economic diversity. The escalating separation of our races and ethnic groups by school raises serious concerns.

Our nation’s workforce is becoming more diverse and will continue to do so. Our students must learn how to interact with people different from them — whether as leader, staff, seller, or buyer. This becomes even more significant as our economy becomes more international in scope.

Not only must our students learn how to function in a diverse, global marketplace, they must also be educated participants in our global society. There are serious implications for assuming there is only one lens for viewing history and the events of today. Since September 11, 2001, we have learned that people who view the world far differently can take actions that have dramatic impact on our daily lives in the United States. To be able to appreciate what is happening in our country and understand events in a world context, students must be exposed to people of different experiences and different frames of reference.

The escalating separation of our races and ethnic groups by school raises serious concerns.

Within the borders of the United States, we’ve learned difficult lessons about our traditional definition of a good school, basically a school where middle-class kids score high on standardized tests. Shooting rampages by disaffected teenagers have taught us that a predominantly white middle-class school with high test scores can be missing out on crucial lessons in character and respect for individual differences. What can high SAT scores tell you about positive school climate?

Schools with diverse student populations constantly battle myths that these schools are less desirable. The reality is that a diverse school can provide a first-class academic education. Learning comes alive when wisdom is shared not only by competent teachers and textbooks but also by fellow students with life experiences and cultures that illuminate whole new worlds. With a teacher who encourages all students to speak their minds and respectfully listen to others, classroom discussions with students from varying backgrounds are rich and dynamic, fostering critical thinking skills. Students learn there are a range of perspectives on issues, motivating them to study and thoughtfully define their own views. These schools provide world-class academic environments.

Beyond valuable academic lessons, diverse schools offer unique opportunities to learn significant life skills. Dangerous stereotypes break down as students study, and play ball, and just talk with one another. The seeds of tolerance and respect are planted and bred in schools with students from all over the world.

A well-run school will seize each of these opportunities and build a solid school community where every student, parent, educator, and community member benefits. Yes, these schools present particular challenges to school leadership. But when educational leaders proceed with open eyes, champion the diversity, and commit themselves to serving all students at the school, these schools become academic and social goldmines that offer opportunities which can’t be replicated in homogeneous environments. Many parents, including white parents like myself, would never trade this for a school where our children’s world is limited to those who look and think like they do.

I watched my son and daughter flourish at one of the most diverse schools in the nation, Annandale High in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C., a school with students from more than 85 nations and wide-ranging economic backgrounds. The educational leaders viewed differences in beliefs and practices not as a burden to be overcome, but as human qualities to be respected and learned from. Principal Don Clausen constantly seeks ways to meet the needs of individuals without infringing on the rights of others. And all the students learn valuable lessons. During Ramadan, when Muslims fast during daylight, Annandale High offers Muslim students a classroom where they can study during lunch so they don’t have to enter the cafeteria. Because Ramadan is an accepted part of the school culture, just about every student is knowledgeable about the holiday. At a girls’ basketball game, a parent mentioned to her daughter that the star player wasn’t doing well that night. “Come on, Mom,” her daughter replied, “Don’t you know that it’s Ramadan, and she’s been fasting all day?” While too many people in our society have only stereotypes to associate with Muslims, Annandale High students think of basketball players who fast from sunup to sundown and still go out on the court at night to represent the school.

Many college professors agree that diverse schools provide a particularly enriching environment. Contrary to the myth that public or private predominantly white schools prepare students best for college, professors at some of our nation’s top colleges — Smith and Harvard to name just two — tell me that students from diverse schools are far better able to grasp the important issues of the day. It is the enriching quality of a diverse student body that is at the foundation of the University of Michigan’s legal battle to preserve the diversity of its own campus. This year, university officials will argue before the U.S. Supreme Court that the university needs to retain its ability to consider race as one factor in selecting students for admission, presenting research showing that learning in a diverse environment benefits all students, minority and non-minority alike.

Learning comes alive when wisdom is shared not only by competent teachers and textbooks but also by fellow students with life experiences and cultures that illuminate whole new worlds.

Those of us who stay in diverse school districts and send our kids to the local schools often feel we are speaking through a microphone that hasn’t been turned on. We feel we know some cherished secret that the other families didn’t hear. We keep trying to tell them, but the din of the long-standing negative myths about diverse schools keeps getting their attention. The misperceptions are so ingrained that too many parents trust the wisdom of those who made the choice to send their children elsewhere, rather than listen to those who know the inside of these schools firsthand.

In my research for my book, Debunking the Middle-Class Myth: Why diverse schools are good for all kids, I did find encouraging stories that don’t fit the pattern. Some families don’t fall prey to simple statistics, investigating deeper, trusting their instincts and their hearts. The Fox family in Chicago, for example, ignored the warnings that they would never find a good public school in the city, instead exploring for themselves by visiting schools, attending PTA meetings, and talking to educational leaders. They decided to move into the neighborhood near Blaine Elementary, a school with a sound curriculum and a creative approach to academics and electives, revitalized by dynamic principal Gladys Vaccaezza.

Whole communities have experienced the benefits of diversity and fought to save it, even as courts have questioned the educational value of different races in the school population. The schools of Cambridge, Massachusetts, have determined that one way to achieve diversity in their school enrollment is to consider the significant factor of family income. Parents are permitted to list schools they would like their children to attend and decisions on placement are based partially on creating a mix of poor and middle-income students in the classroom. Other cities including San Francisco and Charlotte, North Carolina, are also using income, rather than race, to create schools that have a broad mix of students.

Beverly Hills High School in California — the real one, not the fictionalized version — has students from many ethnicities and races, with about a third of its student body born outside the United States. One of the ways it maintains its range of student perspectives is by enrolling students from the Los Angeles Unified District, one of the few remaining suburban programs to do so. When the Beverly Hills School Board attempted to end that program, the community was up in arms. A leader of the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce stated that he benefited from the interaction among students from both areas when he attended Beverly Hills in the 1970s, and he wanted his children to have the same advantages. The community won, and the diversity of the school remains intact.

Middle-class parents in Jackson, Mississippi, were frustrated that their schools had become a dual system: underfunded black public schools and largely white elite private academies, which had been formed to circumvent desegregation orders in the early 1970s. By the mid-80s a number of middle-class parents had had enough. They wanted their children to have the benefits of a public education, which include attending a diverse school. These parents began recruiting their peers back to the public schools. Within 18 months, a core group of 20 grew to 800 families. They effectively stemmed the tide of middle-class, largely white, families flowing away from the public schools, making these schools an acceptable alternative for any parent.

Seeing the power of involved parents, the Jackson group evolved into a national organization, called Parents for Public Schools (PPS), with the emphasis on supporting parent efforts to play a proactive role in improving schools in their community. “Our philosophy is unique,” says PPS president Kelly Butler. “We are working to make schools better by helping parents have a voice that supports all kids. We are helping parents across lines of race, language, ethnicity, and economics.” Parents for Public Schools works at the district level, rather than the school level, trying to achieve systemic change that improves all schools in the district. “This is not about ‘my kids.’ This is about all kids. If the schools aren’t good for some kids, they aren’t good for all kids,” says Butler.

Residents of Brandywine School District, a suburban-urban mix including Wilmington, Delaware, have been part of a remarkable cycle in public education. The Brown v. Board of Education case began in Wilmington. In the late 1970s, Brandywine was formed in response to one of the most invasive desegregation court orders in the country. In 1994, the mandate for integration was lifted, but the community has vociferously battled to keep their schools diverse.

Brandywine School Board President Nancy Doorey has been an outspoken advocate for maintaining the diversity in the schools. As a parent, she wants her children exposed to a broad mix of people. She has listened to the students themselves. “During conversations at the high school,” Doorey says, “students say they would never meet others and learn different points of view. They would not have the advantage to learn to get along and learn to work together. The students feel it prepares them to be more successful in a diverse world.”

Just Walk in the Door

I visited an amazing school in Dallas: Walnut Hill Elementary. As soon as I walked into the building I knew I was someplace special. The bright halls were filled with creative work of the students. In every classroom I passed, the students were actively engaged in learning. Every teacher I spoke with was brimming with positive things to say about the students, as well as their colleagues and the principal. The classroom where “gifted and talented ” students received enrichment included students of every race in the school. The teachers enthusiastically spoke of the many collaborative projects involving faculty and students across grades, including new English learners and special education students. Principal Jo Anne Hughes’ office was not only packed with student work, but plaques recognizing the many teachers who have won awards, the national and state honors for the school, and her own recognition as Dallas Principal of the Year. Yet as Hughes and I discussed the innovative approaches to learning throughout the building, we also talked of the many middle-class parents near the school who chose to send their children to private school. I cannot believe that any one of those parents ever stepped foot in the school because once there, every myth they believed about this diverse school would evaporate. Many terrific schools around the country fight this battle every day. “If we could just get the parents in the door ...,” I hear over and over.•

This excerpt from Eileen Kugler’s book, Debunking the Middle-Class Myth:Why diverse schools are good for all kids © Eileen Gale Kugler 2002, is from Chapter 13, “What About Schools Near Me?.” The book is available from Scarecrow Press Education Division at this Web site: http://www.scarecroweducation.com/ISBN/0810845113 (cloth edition, $32.95; paper edition, $20.95). For more information about Kugler Communications, go to this Web site: http://www.embracediverseschools.com/.

Although Brandywine fought it from the outset, the Delaware legislature passed The Neighborhood Schools Act, mandating students attend schools near their homes. The Brandywine School Board went directly to its residents, holding a public referendum on the question of whether they wanted to revert to neighborhood boundaries much like they had in the 1950s. The Board provided the voters with information showing how a plan based exclusively on neighborhoods would relegate a number of schools to pockets of urban poverty, with serious implications for the children who would have to attend those schools. “We had to take this out to the community,” says Doorey. “The average man on the street has to own this. Are we standing by our kids or aren’t we? This was the avenue for the whole community to coalesce.”

Children learn to think for themselves, develop new and broadening friendships, and are simply better prepared for the future in schools that have students from different backgrounds.

“Many people who were supporting the Neighborhood Schools Act hadn’t thought it through and realized the implications,” says community leader Lynne Kielhorn. She led an educational campaign to illuminate the realities of the new school boundaries. “We gave ourselves a name — KIDS (Kids In Diverse Schools) Coalition. We started flooding the newspaper with letters to the editor, distributed flyers door to door, appeared on a local talk show. We supported our position with data showing the negative impacts on students in high-poverty schools. We developed an email list of 200 names. From there our information would fan out to other lists, such as the local YWCA, the local American Association of University Women, and the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League,” Kielhorn said.

“I want this school system to be the best it can be,” says Kielhorn, whose oldest child is in second grade. “I live in a neighborhood where most of the families send their kids to private school. I don’t want to do that. I want them to have the best academic experience they can have, and I think they should be able to get that in the public school. The public school offers so much more ...that’s the diversity,” says Kielhorn. She has resisted listening to the neighborhood tales about the public schools. “You hear warnings from people, and then you go there and find it’s wonderful. You wonder where it is coming from. They are simply being said by people who have never experienced these schools.”

When required by the new state law to submit a neighborhood schools plan,the Brandywine School District fulfilled the requirements of the law, but it also delivered a compelling document — the Brandywine Plan — that supports its current city/suburb school boundaries. Asserting it was not assigning students based on race, which the legislation prohibited, Brandywine said it concluded “that it is necessary for any plan to guard against the creation of schools with unduly high concentrations of children with certain risk factors,” including poverty and special education requirements.

“The entire community came out in droves to support the status quo” at a public hearing, says Eleanor Woodard, another leader of the KIDS Coalition. Students spoke passionately against a neighborhoods-only plan that would separate many of their current classmates into high-poverty urban schools. “How can we create winners and losers among our schools and the students assigned to them?” asked Sharon Greenbaum, who was then a senior at Concord High School. Business leader Beverley Baxter charged the bill was nothing more than “the ‘Wilmington Re-segregation Bill.’ And we don’t want it.” In a striking victory for the community, the Delaware State Board of Education unanimously approved the Brandywine Plan that would retain its diverse schools.

All parents want what’s best for their children. Yet many seem to be overlooking the incredible strengths of diverse schools, strengths that create passionate advocates out of parents and students who attend them. Children learn to think for themselves, develop new and broadening friendships, and are simply better prepared for the future in schools that have students from different backgrounds. In many cases, once parents and students get a taste of true diversity in their schools, they fight to maintain it. Unfortunately, the people on the other side of the fight are often those who build their case on thirdhand information and ungrounded fears. And the parents with young families are caught in the middle as they try to decide which school is best for their children.

A few years ago, I led a meeting in an elementary school library packed with parents who had come to hear firsthand information about Annandale High, the extremely diverse high school that my children attended. Parents of fourth and fifth graders were already putting up moving signs on their front yards rather than risk sending their children to a high school that was not majority white. In an effort to debunk the myths, parent leaders from the high school organized meetings in the local elementary and middle schools, bringing students, parents, and faculty from the high school to give testimony to the positive academic and social environment.

In many cases, once parents and students get a taste of true diversity in their schools, they fight to maintain it.

As the meeting opened to questions, a longtime real estate agent from the neighborhood stood up. His own children had attended Annandale High 15 years earlier, when it was virtually all white. He wasn’t quite sure how he felt about the changes in the surrounding community, which now included an array of immigrants from every continent. “So, what you are telling me is that you are taking lemons and making lemonade,” he said.

“No,” I quickly replied, “we’ve got the most delicious, exotic fruit salad you can imagine, and I hope every child in this neighborhood is lucky enough to taste it.”

Eileen Gale Kugler is a national advocate for diverse schools. She works with educational leaders and parents to develop strategies that build strong multi-cultural school communities. Her new book, Debunking the Middle-Class Myth: Why diverse schools are good for all kids (Scarecrow Education Press, 2002), provides insights from more than 80 educational leaders, parents, and students around the nation.