Real Diversity in Public Schools

Finding an appropriate learning environment for kids is a huge challenge parents and educators alike face. Children need an environment where they are engaged, challenged, and stimulated academically, where they can gain the skills they need to achieve in college or in the workplace. School is also a time for children to grow socially and behaviorally. This is a place where kids learn how to get a long with one another, make friends, work together, and stand up for themselves. 

Educators have found that children often thrive in diverse learning environments, where there are children of various racial, cultural, economic, and academic backgrounds in the same classroom. This is good way to help students frame their world view and gain perspective on other cultures and people. 

Easier said than done, of course. How do you put together the right combination of diversity and please everyone? Public schools have been struggling with this for decades. Inner-city schools struggle because of lack of economic diversity while suburban schools thrive due to lack of economic diversity. People attend school according to where they live, which means that they go to school with other kids who can afford to live in the same neighborhood as them--or can't afford to live anywhere else. Academically advanced kids ought not be held back by being mixed into classrooms with students who haven't been as successful, yet without these students further ahead, the class as a whole often fails. 

It's a huge puzzle, but most would agree the more diversity the better for all. DC's population is rapidly changing, and the school districts are finding pockets of white students and middle to upper-middle class students attending particular elementary schools in upper NW DC and Capitol Hill as more Gen-Xers and Millenials choose to raise kids and live in the city. The DC Public Schools are currently working to even out the population and create more diversity in neighborhood schools, so that students can still attend a school in their neighborhood, and hopefully attend with students from various economic, racial, and academic backgrounds. 

I listened to the Kojo Nnamdi Show from yesterday titled "Changing City, Gentrifying Schools" and what I found most interesting was listening to a particular caller who noted that many people had called in to say they/their kids attended a very diverse school and benefited from it. What he noted is what's true for many school systems and private schools--they've found a way to create a racially and culturally diverse atmosphere where they celebrate diversity and culture and learn about far away traditions and peoples. What they haven't managed is a way to integrate students in a way that is economically and academically diverse. This particular caller even went as far as to say that these particular pockets of "diverse" schools in the city, suburb, or private schools, become more culturally diverse but conform further in ways of thought. The schools become a place where everyone thinks in the same way, and children aren't learning things that are different than them after all. Some of our area schools even show their students poverty and "poor" people as a "lesson"--people learn about poverty by gawking at it and throwing canned food at a food bank. These schools aren't teaching children about people that are different than them, certainly not how to interact with people that are different than them. Students often self-segregate in school halls, too, based on who they know from their neighborhood or their old school or who's in their classes (because many schools separate classes by academic achievement by offering things like Honors, AP, etc). Thus we've created another problem by attempting to understand diversity. Complex, right? 

I think what's important to take away from this is that diversity doesn't stop at skin color. It has to be about people that think differently and really perceive things differently. This comes down to money. Integration isn't easy when there is so much disparity between a child who grew up with money and a child who didn't, but being able to attend the same school and take the same classes is an equalizer and a step in the right direction. Diversity is something to celebrate to a point. In other ways (such as money and family's educational achievement history), I think it is something that ought to be downplayed as much as possible in schools. Uniforms and dress codes help, having the same expectations for all students lets students know that educators believe they can do the same as their peers. Equality in these areas is going to win over diversity, but by allowing people of diverse backgrounds access to this sameness.

--Megan