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Diversity < Integration

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Why diversity is not enough to reach real integration in schools: Prudence Carter at TEDxStanford

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Teachers and Diversity in Elementary schools

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Teachers and Diversity in Elementary schools

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Social Studies, level: Elementary
Posted Tue Feb 14 07:58:22 PST 2006 by Meghan Webb ( megs_118@yahoo.com).
Marshall University, Huntington, WV
Materials Required: basic
Activity Time: 45 minutes
Concepts Taught: Diversity of Families

I. Title of Lesson: Diversity of Families
Grade Level(s): 1-3
II. Rationale: Powerful Social Studies

This lesson plan is relevant and meaningful to the students because every child in the classroom has some type of a family--whether it is a parent, a relative, or a friend. This lesson plan will be integrative because it builds onto some of the curriculum that the children have already acquired--basic reading and writing. This lesson plan will be value-based because throughout the classroom discussions, children will be educated on the diversities of families in our classroom. This lesson plan will be challenging to the students because they will be expected to think, participate, and show interest in the discussions. Furthermore, this lesson plan will be active because it requires the students to think reflectively and to make connections between different types of families.

III. Objectives:
Students will be able to:
make connections to different types of families in the classroom
create a "School Family Tree" that builds on the diversity of the students in the classroom

IV.
Procedure:
1. The teacher will start out this activity by giving each student a piece of construction paper and a pencil.
2. The teacher will then prompt the students to start a 2 minute brainstorming/writing activity: use words or phrases to describe the word "family".
3. After all the students have completed this task, ask the students to put down their pencils.
4. Teacher may then start to read: Our School Family Poem. (Attached)
5. After reading the poem, ask the students to pick up their pencils and turn over their papers.
6. The teacher will then prompt the students into another brainstorming/writing activity session. The teacher will again challenge them to come up with even more words or phrases to describe the word "family".
Note: The purpose of asking the children to do the brainstorming/writing activity twice is to see if students can think critically and come up with a new meaning to the word "family" after hearing the poem.
7. Once the students have completed this task, ask the students to share their work including what they wrote about families and why they wrote it. Do they feel that it what they wrote applies to their family or someone else's family? What exactly defines a family?
8. Whenever the teacher feels that the children are beginning to make the necessary connections between the diversity of the word "family" he or she then needs to emphasize the fact that within "our school family" many people come from two parent families, single-parent families, extended families, blended families, or even another type of family.
9. The teacher will then pass out construction paper cutout parts of a tree to each student. Once, every student has received all parts of the tree including the trunk and the leaves, he or she can ask the students to print their full name on the tree trunk. The student can then label the leaves with the names of people in their biological family or school family. This activity is very important because when teachers build on the diversity found among their students, social studies is personal, relevant, and important.
10. To conclude this lesson, give the students a piece of writing paper and allow them to write a short essay of 1.) What they think a family is and 2.) Why they think families are important.
V. Homework:
Ask the students to bring in pictures of their biological or school families for show and tell. Also, ask the students to come up with one thing that they would like to share about their family to the class--this could be a tradition, funny story, etc.
VI. Evaluation:
The teacher can evaluate the effectiveness of this lesson by the group discussion participation and the completed family tree activity. The teacher can also evaluate the effectiveness of the lesson by reading the students brainstorming and essay papers describing what a family is and why they are important.

VII. Modifications for Diverse Learners:

If there were any students in my class that needed assistance, I would pay special attention to accommodating my lesson to their educational needs, as well as my regular students' educational needs. If required, I would work one-on-one with the student or assign the student with a "study buddy". I feel that in using these types of services, I will be providing the best possible and least restrictive learning environment for a child with a mild to moderate disability.

Our School Family
Our family comes
From many towns:
Our hair is straight,
Our hair is brown,
Our hair is curled,
Our eyes are blue,
Our skins are different
Colors, too.
We're girls and boys,
We're big and small,
We're young and old,
We're short and tall.
We're everything
That we can be
And still we are
A family.
We laugh and cry,
We work and play,
We help each other
Every day.
The world's a lovely
Place to be
Because we are
A family.

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Lesson Plan #3676. Diversity of Families

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Social Studies, level: Elementary Posted Tue Feb 14 07:58:22 PST 2006 by Meghan Webb ( megs_118@yahoo.com). Marshall University, Huntington, WV Materials Required: basic Activity Time: 45 minutes Concepts Taught: Diversity of Families I. Title of Lesson: Diversity of Families Grade Level(s): 1-3II.

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Tips for Teachers with English- Learners 

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Tips for Teachers with English- Learners 

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As a veteran theater professor, Andrew Kahn knows a great acting job when he sees one.

During his twice-a-week visits to Lafayette International High School in Buffalo, N.Y., there's a newly arrived student from the Congo who pretends to struggle with his locker combination. The student knows the numbers to his combination, Kahn said, but he seizes any opportunity to connect one-on-one with someone in the school.

"He likes the presence of someone who's going to be with him for five minutes," said Kahn, a theater professor at the University of Buffalo, State University of New York.

For students who are still learning English and those who are immigrants, forging even small connections with educators and their classmates-as simple as a hallway conversation-can be crucial to keeping those students coming to school and motivated to persevere, both educators and researchers say.

With students who hail from dozens of countries and speak a wealth of languages, Kahn and the staff at Lafayette International are teaming up to do just that: create a communal experience for these newcomers, focusing less on differences and more on how they're alike-their shared struggle of learning a new language.

"The kids get it because they're from [places] where 'we before me' is part of their DNA," said Kahn, who directs the Anne Frank Project, an initiative that uses storytelling as a tool to help students explore their identities and build connections.

Setting a Positive Tone

Boosting literacy for English-learners and ensuring a greater share of such students reach proficiency in speaking, reading, writing, and understanding the English language is a growing concern in the nation's K-12 schools.

As more English-learners land in the nation's classrooms, more researchers and educators are exploring the role peers play in determining how quickly students learn the language and how they stay connected to school.

Kahn and John Starkey, the principal at Lafayette International, think they've found a formula that works. Led by the Anne Frank Project staff, the students draw up "village rules" that are translated into each language, all 45 of them spoken at the school, and post the rules around the building.

"It creates parameters and rules for our engagement with each other that really helps set a positive tone in the classroom and the school," Starkey said.

Charlene Liu, a Utah educator, uses similar strategies to get English-learners in her school district connected to and vested in their learning.

"Even though we might be from different cultural backgrounds or speak different languages, we look to create opportunities for us to explore and find out how we're so similar in so many ways," said Liu, the director of educational equity for the Granite school district in Utah's Salt Lake County.

"We can find those commonalities and similarities and overcome some of those obstacles."

Combining Strengths

Some research has questioned the effects of grit-one's perseverance toward goals-on students and their academic performance, specifically for first- and second-generation English-learners.

A study led by Colleen O'Neal, an assistant professor of school psychology in the University of Maryland's college of education, found that the perseverance of a student's peers was twice as influential as individual grit in predicting literacy growth.

The Internationals Network for Public Schools, a New York City-based nonprofit that focuses on serving immigrant students, rely heavily on project-based work that encourages students to work together.

That could pave the way for students adept in a subject, such as math or science, to team up with classmates who may have a greater grasp of English. Those sorts of pairings afford students opportunities to shore up their weaknesses and capitalize on their strengths.

"It allows students of different strengths to combine those into something that's even stronger," said Joseph Luft, the executive director of the Internationals Network.

Starkey, the principal at Lafayette International, has seen English-learner students relying on each other for years as he's transitioned from an English-as-a-second-language teacher in the Bronx to an administrator in New York City and Buffalo.

Lafayette's academy for newcomers is based on a model developed by the Internationals Network.

Early on, it remains important for students to sit and form bonds with people who are most like them, often students who speak the same native language, Starkey said.

Over time, the school pushes students out of their comfort zone. Starkey's school, which serves English-language learners almost exclusively, has relied on the Anne Frank Project.

"Not only was their English strengthened," Kahn said, "but their confidence was strengthened [along with] their ability to look us in the eyes and converse and be proud of what they had learned and process what they had learned."

In her district and across Utah, Liu said the students and families that public schools serve have become more diverse, but the state's teaching corps hasn't changed at the same rate.

In her position, Liu helps teachers to confront their potential biases or misconceptions that may make it more difficult for educators to connect with students.

"It's not so much curriculum that we're looking at," Liu said. "It's the attitude of our teachers."

At the start of O'Neal's study, students completed an eight-question survey to measure grit as well as reading-performance tasks to gauge English proficiency.

The students then repeated the process twice more during a four-month period to measure progress on literacy achievement. The research team calculated peer-grit scores by using the average of the class scores.

The study's 142 participants-mostly Spanish-speaking Latinos-were 3rd to 5th graders from a suburban elementary school where 95 percent of students receive free or reduced-price meals.

Since almost all the participants had "strikingly low" literacy levels, O'Neal cautioned that the research did not take into account the wide variation of language development among English-learners.

'Our Communities'

Ha Yeon Kim, an associate director of the Global TIES for Children Center at New York University, has explored how students' relationships with their peers and teachers, shape their academic motivation and self-concept-who the children think they are and what they aspire to be.

Kim's research on classroom experiences for Hispanic English-learners at the elementary level found that advanced English-language proficiency allowed for deeper engagement in the school experience.

The research explored the role that teacher-student relationships and peer connections play in social and academic adjustment.

Peer connections can hold particular importance for Latino students, Kim's research found, because values such as helping others and building positive relationships are often ingrained in their culture.

In the study, students who struggled with picking up the language became increasingly disengaged over time.

Liu estimates that a third of the 60,000 students in Granite are current or former English-learners.

It's a striking contrast from the start of her teaching career four decades ago when there were so few students tagged as ELLs in the state, the education department didn't track data on them.

"We need to make them feel comfortable," Liu said. "These are our little communities."

Published in Print: October 18, 2017, as For English-Learners, Peer Pressure Can Be a Good Thing

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nurturing students' climb to success series

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For English-Learners, a Positive Side to Peer Pressure

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As a veteran theater professor, Andrew Kahn knows a great acting job when he sees one. During his twice-a-week visits to Lafayette International High School in Buffalo, N.Y., there's a newly arrived student from the Congo who pretends to struggle with his locker combination.

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Has thousands of links on racism, sexism, and other prejudices, with searchable databases and fascinating interactive exercises. Very well done!

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April 1999 | Volume 56 | Number 7
Understanding Race, Class and Culture Pages 64-67

Carrie Rothstein-Fisch, Patricia M. Greenfield and Elise Trumbull

I wanted to understand my students better so I started studying Mexican culture. Then I realized that the children in my class came from many distinct regions, each with different histories and traditions. I just knew that I would never know enough. I had to give up trying.

-Kindergarten teacher

This kindergarten teacher voiced the frustration experienced by many teachers. However, she had a different outlook after attending a workshop called Bridging Cultures, which focused on a basic value system common to Latino cultures that transcends languages, histories, and traditions: collectivism (Triandis, 1989). Collectivism is common in Mexico and in Central and South America, particularly among the rural poor who have had limited formal education. Because many Latino immigrants come to the United States with this kind of background, understanding collectivism becomes invaluable for teachers serving immigrant Latino children.

Collectivism Versus Individualism

Collectivism is a cluster of interrelated values that emphasize the interdependence of family members (fig. 1). Within this value system, children are taught to be helpful to others and to contribute to the success of any group they belong to-beginning with the family. Even knowledge of the physical world is placed within a social context.

In contrast, schools foster individualism, viewing the child as an individual who should be developing independence and valuing individual achievement (Greenfield, 1994). Unlike collectivism, which emphasizes the social context of learning and knowledge, individualism emphasizes information disengaged from its social context (Hofstede, 1980). When collectivistic students encounter individualistic schools, conflicts that are based on hidden values and assumptions can occur:

A kindergarten teacher was showing her class an actual chicken egg that would be hatching soon. She was explaining the physical properties of the egg, and she asked the children to describe eggs by thinking about the times they had cooked and eaten eggs. One of the children tried three times to talk about how she cooked eggs with her grandmother, but the teacher disregarded these comments in favor of a child who explained how eggs look white and yellow when they are cracked. (Greenfield, Raeff, & Quiroz, 1995, p. 44)

The first child's answer was typical of the associations encouraged in collectivistic cultures, where objects are most meaningful when they are used in connection with social interactions. However, the teacher expected students to describe eggs as isolated physical entities and did not value the object as a connection among people in social relationships.

The teacher was unaware that her question was ambiguous. Children who shared her orientation assumed that she was interested in the physical properties of the eggs, even though she had not made that point explicit. Children who did not share her orientation made different assumptions. They assumed that she was interested in the object as a mediator of social relationships (Greenfield, Raeff, & Quiroz, 1995).

To help teachers understand the assumptions underlying individualism and collectivism, we developed the Bridging Cultures Project as a research-based, professional development program. We introduced elementary school teachers serving large immigrant Latino populations to a new way of understanding the values that influence behaviors.

Promoting Helpfulness

When teachers understood that helpfulness is highly valued in collectivistic cultures, they questioned certain classroom practices. For example, in collectivistic households, older children are expected to help younger ones, even when it means putting aside their own task. But teachers often assign individual children to classroom roles, such as chalkboard cleaner or attendance monitor. When friends help one another, teachers may admonish them, saying, "That's Marco's job. You have your own job to do!"

However, once teachers understood the importance of helpfulness in collectivistic cultures, they no longer considered the helpfulness that children learned at home a discipline problem. Teachers began to appoint two children to each task or to allow children to help one another. Clean-up time became pleasant because children helped until the class was clean. These classroom changes increased efficiency, task completion, and classroom harmony. Teachers supported children for being helpful instead of punishing them for interfering with a classmate's responsibility. Helpfulness, a child development goal important to Latino immigrant parents, was valued at school.

Sharing Group Success

A 3rd grade Bridging Cultures teacher, Amanda Perez, mindful of the collectivistic orientation, initiated curriculum changes to systematically expand group learning. First, she increased choral reading so that it became a regular part of daily language arts. Trying out their burgeoning English skills in a group allowed the limited English proficient students to practice the rhythm and the sound of English without being spotlighted.

Perez also used the value of helpfulness in an academic context. At the end of each reading session, she gave each child a copy of the homework. The children discussed the questions, but were not allowed to write down the answers until they were at home. In this way, students more proficient in English helped classmates rehearse the homework. This literacy practice and preview resulted in a 100 percent homework return rate, surpassing the teacher's highest expectations. Perez stated,

Most teachers keep students isolated by levels. Now I mix them up. I have also learned that helping one another is not cheating! Because of the Bridging Cultures project, their English is improving. It is so nonthreatening because of the group experience.

In math, group celebrations incorporate an element of collectivism while recognizing individual academic achievement. For example, when an individual student advances to the next level of the multiplication table, the child rings a bell, stopping all action in the classroom and allowing everyone to clap. In this way, classmates share individual success, and one child's success becomes a success for the total group. Individual academic achievement, an intrinsic school value, is accomplished, and children are appreciated for their contribution to the group goal of multiplication mastery.

Scientific Information and Social Context

Understanding collectivism can also eliminate problematic assumptions about what constitutes scientific knowledge. For example, 4th and 5th graders in Marie Altchech's class were learning about plants and animals. Before the children took an excursion to a nearby wetlands, a park docent visited the classroom to prepare them. He asked, "What do you know about hummingbirds?" Students began to tell stories about their family's experiences with birds, but the docent became impatient and said, "No more stories!" He expected students to use scientific language to talk about hummingbird anatomy or ecology, that is, to talk about birds out of their social context. When the children were told to stop telling stories, they became silent.

However, in a Bridging Cultures workshop, Altchech had learned about and analyzed the egg example mentioned earlier. She knew that her students would first consider scientific information in the context of shared family experiences. She also knew that the children did possess the ability to describe physical and behavioral aspects of birds, but that this knowledge might be embedded in a social context. She developed a plan to tap both sets of knowledge.

After the docent left, Altchech invited the children to tell their family stories about birds. Her goal was to give them a collectivistic way to engage in scientific discoveries. As the children shared their family experiences, the teacher wrote story highlights on the left side of the chalkboard and scientific aspects of the children's experiences and observations on the right. This process honored the children's stories while producing a rich and dynamic list of topics for scientific discourse. The teacher and the class valued the stories and the scientific information equally.

In one story, a child reported being in the garden with her grandmother when she noticed that hummingbirds seemed to stand still in the air. This family-based story led to a discussion about how the wings of hummingbirds must beat rapidly to sustain their apparent stillness. The children, fascinated by the topic, engaged in scientific discourse, scaffolded by the teacher, about how body mass, metabolism, and food intake are related. Whereas the docent conveyed the message that the storytelling approach was wrong, the teacher validated the students' stories and used them to build a bridge to the scientific culture valued in school.

When teachers understand and respect the collectivistic values of immigrant Latino children, the opportunities for culturally informed learning become limitless. Our examples in classroom management, reading, math, and science demonstrate that educators can design instruction responsive to diverse groups that does not undermine home-based cultural values.

Although the framework of individualism-collectivism is only one tool for understanding cultural differences (and we caution against sweeping generalizations), it does open the door to new ways of thinking and acting for teachers. Instead of advocating cultural sensitivity in a general way, this framework alerts teachers to specific cultural differences that are likely to diverge from school-based practices and values. Most important, the framework encourages teachers to recognize their own practices as cultural in origin rather than as simply the "right way" to do things.

The frustration caused by the feeling of "not knowing enough about each culture" can be abated when teachers use their knowledge of individualism and collectivism to understand the underlying motivation behind specific cultural practices, including those of the school.

References

Greenfield, P. M. (1994). Independence and interdependence as developmental scripts: Implications for theory, research and practice. In P. M. Greenfield & R. Cocking (Eds.), Cross-cultural roots of minority child development. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Greenfield, P. M., Raeff, C., & Quiroz, B. (1995). Cultural values in learning and education. In B. Williams (Ed.), Closing the achievement gap: A vision for changing beliefs and practices. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture's consequences: International differences of work-related values. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Rothstein-Fisch, C. (1998) Bridging cultures: A pre-service teacher training model. San Francisco: WestEd.

Triandis, H. C. (1989). Cross-cultural studies of individualism and collectivism. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 37, 43-133.

Authors' note: The Bridging Cultures Project is sponsored by the Language and Cultural Diversity program of WestEd, a regional educational laboratory based in San Francisco, California. The Bridging Cultures teachers are Marie Altchech, Stoner Avenue School; Catherine Daley, Magnolia School; Kathy Eyler, Hoover Elementary; Giancarlo Mercado and Pearl Saitzyk, Westminster School from the Los Angeles Unified School District; Amada Irma Perez, Mar Vista School, from the Ocean View School District; and Elvia Hernandez, Ada Wilson School, Los Nietos School District.

Carrie Rothstein-Fisch is Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology and Counseling at California State University, Northridge, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge, CA 91330-8265 (e-mail: carrie.rothstein-fisch@csun.edu). Patricia M. Greenfield is Professor of Psychology at UCLA, 1282 A Franz Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1563 (e-mail: greenfield@psych.ucla.edu). Elise Trumbull is a Senior Research Associate with the Language and Cultural Diversity Program at WestEd Regional Educational Laboratory, 500 12th St., Oakland, CA 94612 (e-mail: etrumbu@WestEd.org).

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Bridging Cultures with Classroom Strategies

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April 1999 | Volume 56 | Number 7 Understanding Race, Class and Culture Pages 64-67 Carrie Rothstein-Fisch, Patricia M. Greenfield and Elise Trumbull I wanted to understand my students better so I started studying Mexican culture. Then I realized that the children in my class came from many distinct regions, each with different histories and traditions.

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PPT, Lesson and Worksheets for Culture and Diversity

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PPT, Lesson and Worksheets for Culture and Diversity

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Social Studies Free Presentations - What is culture?

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How the name of your students and the way you pronounce it effects them?

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How the name of your students and the way you pronounce it effects them?

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DefJam

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Here are practical ways to reach students when they speak what you don't.

David spent two months in a Northern Virginia kindergarten classroom last year, arriving from Bolivia just as the local cherry trees burst into famous bloom. He didn't speak a word the entire time. But this year, in his first-grade classroom at Bailey's Elementary School for the Arts and Sciences, located just a few miles from the White House and a few blocks from the corner convenience store where Bailey's Salvadoran fathers wait for day laborer gigs, David is blossoming, too.

"Apple green, apple red, an apple fell on David's head!" What a silly song, says first-grade teacher Nora Brent, as she glides a wooden pointer under each colored word on her upright easel. Would Josseline like a turn? Why, yes, she would. Would Monica? Of course! And José? And David?

Yes!

In Brent's classroom, about 80 percent of her first-graders are learning English as a second language. Their parents come from all over the world-from Syria to El Salvador-seeking something a little better for their children. They find it at Bailey's, where support for English-language learners (ELLs) and their teachers is institutionally strong. (Ahem, there are all of 13 children in Brent's class, and she has more than 10 ELL specialists on campus to call on.)

But there are students like David all over the country, often in places you might not expect to find them, from the rugged blue mountains of North Carolina to the apple valleys of southern Idaho, and their numbers are multiplying daily. According to the U.S. Department of Education, more than 5 million ELLs were enrolled in public schools in 2003-about 1 in every 10 students. That's a greater than 65 percent jump since 1993. By far, most are Spanish-speakers, but they also come from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and every other corner of the globe.

"Classrooms that have rarely seen these students are now needing to address the opportunity that this diversity brings," said Rufina Hernández, Director of NEAHuman and Civil Rights.

If you don't yet have a David, sitting silently as his English-speaking classmates line up for lunch, chances are that one day you will. And, more likely than not, you won't be ready for him. Just 12.5 percent of teachers with English learners in their classrooms have participated in a scant day's worth of ELL-related training during the past three years, according to a National Center for Education Statistics survey. And it's not because they don't want to-the training often isn't available, particularly in rural or otherwise isolated districts.

But with just 27 percent of teachers saying they feel "very well prepared" to teach English learners, according to the same survey, it's not surprising these students often struggle. In 2001, of the states that tested ELLs in reading comprehension, only 18.7 percent were assessed at being at or above the norm.

While no one is happy with those results, educators' frustration can be palpable. "I remember one teacher just venting all over me, 'Take this kid out of my class and bring him back when he knows English!'" recalls Patricia Majors, a nationally certified ELL teacher in Charleston, South Carolina. "Basically, she cared about him...but she just didn't know what to do."

So there is the problem. A whole lot of kids who don't speak English fluently, and way too few mainstream teachers who are prepared to work with them. (And don't forget to factor in the No Child Left Behind law, which demands that your English learners get up to speed-and quick.)

It sounds impossible, doesn't it? But there are solutions. "The NEA believes strongly that our members can build on the assets these children bring," Hernández said. And, while the NEA works with other organizations to address national policies, you can make it work in your classroom.

Many of your colleagues, especially those specializing in English-language learners, have plenty of good advice and strategies to help you open the lines of communication.

A Welcoming Classroom

One simple way to start connecting with your students who don't speak English is to put yourself in their shoes. Their common predicament was brought to life for Marcie Burlett, a third-grade teacher at Upward Elementary in Fletcher, North Carolina, during a recent workshop. In one of exercise, participants sat and listened to a woman speaking Korean for 20 minutes. Sat, and sat, and sat. "I was so bored," she sighs.

Yes, it is frustrating to have a student who doesn't understand you-especially if you have 37 other kids, little specific ELL training, and limited school-wide support for working with that child. But, like Marcie Burlett, imagine what it's like for him.

Tips for Teaching
Specialist Kathleen Fay, co-author of Becoming One Community: Reading and Writing with English Language Learners , offers five ways to help bring your students up to speed:
1. Create opportunities for conversation. For example, pause during read aloud, after solving a math problem, or before a writing exercise, and encourage students to talk about the lesson or assignment. If other students in the class speak the same native language, they may choose to pair off and speak in either language. This gives children the opportunity to check understanding or share thoughts with less risk than speaking out to the whole group. Buddy reading provides another great way to encourage productive chatter between peers.

2. Honor the languages represented in your classroom. Ask students to teach greetings to the class and incorporate them into your morning rituals. Have the class learn how to count to five or say "Happy Birthday." When students feel their native languages are valued, and you have taken the risk to learn a little about their culture, it establishes trust.

3. Find opportunities to use English authentically. Students could write a letter to the principal asking about a school rule; read a book aloud to younger students; figure out how many school lunches need to be ordered for the third-grade field trip. Practicing the English language in a meaningful context will make it easier for students to understand you during lessons.

4. Post your class schedule each day. A predictable routine is easier to follow. When students know what is coming-every day they'll write stories at 2 p.m.-they will be better prepared to participate. You might also add photographs or sketches next to tasks on the schedule to aid comprehension.

5. Don't feel you must correct every grammatical mistake. Students could become discouraged if they are constantly corrected. Accept approximations and respond to the meaning behind the comment. It takes time to become fluent in a second language, and approximations are a natural part of language development.

That's why, before the first "Good Morning" comes out of your mouth, it's important to get your mind in the right place, suggests Wendy Hammerstone, another North Carolina National Board-certified ELL teacher. A little compassion "will come through in your teaching," she says.

When you do say "Buenos días"-it can be a kind gesture to practice greetings in other languages-do it in a way so all students feel genuinely welcome. And when a new ELL joins your class, first introduce her and then ask another student-preferably one that speaks the newcomer's language or another friendly, responsible peer-to be a special buddy.

Modify Lessons

You probably have students who can't remember a word you say unless they also see it on paper; some who can't focus for five minutes; and others who delight you with their vocabulary, but depress you with their lack of math skills. You deal with their varying levels of ability on a daily basis.

A lack of proficiency in English is a curveball, to be sure, but in a certain way, it's not that different from dealing with other challenges. Good teachers regularly modify lessons for different learners, and you'll need to do the same for your ELLs, notes Patricia Majors.

Last year, as Thanksgiving approached, Karen Christenson's Burley (Idaho) High School 10th-graders were reading George Orwell's satiric novel, Animal Farm, and working on projects that showed their comprehension. Some riffed fluently on Orwellian themes in long dramatic essays-while others, still fresh from the isolated valleys of southern Mexico, did more visual presentations. One new English learner was making a model of the farm and connecting parts of it to significant quotations from the book. By not forcing a "one size fits all" approach, each student was able to learn in a meaningful way, at his or her own level.

When teaching your ELLs, think different assignments, different assessments, and different presentations of the material. Christenson pulls out key vocabulary words and makes sure her Spanish speakers understand them first in Spanish, then English. (This is easier when bilingual students are able to help-less so, if your student is the school's lone Estonian.)

Christenson also provides key information in writing on the board, where it's less likely they'll misunderstand it (some students find it easier to read a new language before they can hear and comprehend it). In addition, she works on giving her students opportunities to talk to each other, usually in small groups, which can be less intimidating than discussions involving the entire class.

Of course, all of these individualized lessons require "a lot of work," says Christenson-who also stays after school to tutor her English learners. "They're good kids. They want to learn and they're very cooperative, but it's an enormous task. There's a limit on the time that you have to modify lessons."

Make sure your administrators-and union representatives-are aware of just how much time you spend on these tasks. When it comes time to distribute resources to schools each year, your testimony can be used to prove the need for new or additional staffing.

See it, Say it

Check out Nora Brent's silly apples song again-"Apple green, apple red, an apple fell on David's head." When she hands a copy of her home-made book to David, he reads the first two words fluently, taking hints from the color of the ink and the fruit drawn to the side. Then he stops abruptly at "red."

"Tell me in Spanish, what color is this?" she asks.

"Rojo," David answers.

"Let's take our magic tape and write rojo, and you can say that," she says, as she covers up the word "red" with white tape and writes rojo on it. (Don't be afraid to use a student's native language, our specialists say: Often students have extensive vocabulary in a native language, which can be used to aid comprehension. Eventually, they will learn to match English to Spanish, or Russian, or Korean.)

Brent and David continue, and he pauses again on the last line: "An apple fell on David's head." What's this word? Next to the text, Brent draws a little picture of a tousled head next to those final four confusing letters and touches his black hair.

"Head!" he exclaims.

"Did the picture help you?" Brent asks, and he nods. "Readers use pictures to help them sometimes, so it was smart of you to look at the picture for help."

And it was smart of Brent to draw them into her book. Teachers use all kinds of strategies to reach their students, and visual hints can be especially useful, says her colleague Kathleen Fay, co-author of Becoming One Community: Reading and Writing with English-Language Learners.

In her own workshop with a class of kindergartners at the Bailey school, Fay gathers them on the floor in a lumpy, touchy-feely group of denim knees and hair braids, and tells a story about the strange noise that woke her from her sleep. What was making the strange noise? "I couldn't see the owl," she says, pointing to her eyes. Then she tugs on her ear: "But I could hear the owl."

Fay urges the children to tell a story of their own to a friend and then draw it, too. "There were monkeys!" Marcos excitedly tells his buddy, as nearby Sabrina complains, "It was raining really hard and I couldn't sleep!" Meanwhile, Fay walks around, helping students get started and stay on track.

This kind of workshop setting is very supportive, Fay says. "There's a little time to teach directly, and then they go off to work where you can offer one-on-one help." Plus, when kids are sharing, they're talking. And even if you suspect that they're chatting about toys or clothes, it doesn't matter-talking about anything still leads to language acquisition.

It's All Good

If there's one thing Vicky Goodman wants her mainstream colleagues to do, it's this: "I tell people to just relax," says Goodman, a Nationally Board-certified ELL teacher in western North Carolina.

It takes five to seven years to learn English. No matter how quickly NCLB asks for test results, you simply can't make it happen much faster than that. A new language will come eventually-faster if your students have a good foundation of literacy in their native language.

Of course, that's easy to say-there's not many scarier things than having a sophomore who doesn't speak English walk into your biology class (except perhaps a junior!). At that age, you expect students not only to speak English, but to have a foundation of academic knowledge, especially in content areas like science and history.

But try not to get discouraged, and take a final tip from one of Bailey Elementary's fifth-graders, who knows something about enjoying the journey: José is working on a map of his home in El Salvador-a prelude to writing a story about it. In America, he says, roads are straight and smooth. "In my country, instead of a road that is straight, there are a lot of rocks and it's bumpy-but it's good," he says.

Kind of like the road he's on right now.

Photos by Danny Peck

Entering stage left, the English-Language Learner

Theater workshops require students to try on facial expressions, use body language, and talk, talk, talk.

When he begins his 10-day drama workshops, Daniel Kelin, director of the Honolulu Theater for Youth, doesn't hear much from the English-language learners. But by the end they're giggling, running from role to role, urging each other to "open your mouth like fish," and acting out Pacific Island stories about the sea and its magic men. Even more impressive, the students are able to narrate their own stories, using the English language in a purposeful new way and growing in confidence in themselves.

"It was awesome," said Jennifer Wolf-Moon, whose English-language learners at Kealakeh High School have attended annual workshops with Kelin for the past three years. "When you put them in a drama situation, it gives them an opportunity to express themselves in a different way."

Often, success with English-language learners depends on giving them frequent opportunities to talk, especially in genuine ways- practice makes perfect, after all. Drama provides that opportunity, and makes it easier by providing physical cues to language. There are props, body movements, and voice inflections-all of which assist in comprehension.

"In the beginning, we talk about ways we communicate, both verbally and physically," says Kelin. "I'm not trying to teach them directly to use language. I'm trying to set them up in situations where they have to learn language."

Kelin starts off with a few exercises to get their bodies moving. "What are the things people do at the beach?" he asks. And, because this is Hawaii, after all, he quickly offers a qualifier: "What we don't want is, 'I want to go surfing!'" from 10 different students.

The students' answers, first spoken aloud, come to life through thoughtful actions. Here is a lone surfer, balancing precariously on a killer wave; over here, a shell-seeker, stopping to pick up a treasure; and down the beach, there's a surf-caster, sensibly casting his hook far from the surfer.

The English-language learners on Hawaii's Big Island, where Kelin regularly works with students of all ages, come mostly from the Philippines and other Pacific islands, like the Marshall Islands and Micronesia, but also from Mexico. Many Hispanic parents work on the famous Kona coffee plantations. Overall, ELLs represent about 10 percent of the total student population on Hawaii. As on the mainland, their numbers are growing, says Precille Boisvert, a state Department of Education ESL resource teacher. Also mimicking mainland trends, they arrive with varying degrees of English.

The beauty of the drama program is that it doesn't matter how much English they have, Boisvert says. "They can respond with the limited language they have, with a text that is more normal, more natural."

Getting students to the point where they can narrate their own stories, using oral and physical representation, is a gradual process. After creating a beach "tableau" and trying on different physical roles, the students listen intently to Kelin's tales of island myths and build more dramatic skills.

Toward the end of one of his workshops, he nods toward a few reluctant actors and says, "Everybody in this room has to talk today. Francie, Clarence. You have to play a character and your character has to talk."

And the thing is, they do.

Photos: PACIFIC RESOURCES FOR EDUCATION AND LEARNING

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David spent two months in a Northern Virginia kindergarten classroom last year, arriving from Bolivia just as the local cherry trees burst into famous bloom. He didn't speak a word the entire time.

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Foreword

After decades in the political wilderness, school integration seems poised to make a serious comeback as an education reform strategy.

Sixty-two years ago, Brown v. Board of Education held that separate schools for black and white students are inherently unequal. Fifty years ago, the evidence in the congressionally authorized Coleman Report put a twist on Brown, suggesting that socioeconomic school integration could increase academic achievement more than any other school strategy. But when racial school desegregation began to be seriously pursued in the early 1970s, the implementation was often clumsy. Federal judges ordered school children to travel across town to attend schools to achieve racial balance, giving parents no say in the matter. Families rebelled.

And so for years, we have been stuck with a tragic paradox: building on Coleman's findings, a growing body of research produced a social science consensus that school integration-by race and by socioeconomic status-is good for children. Simultaneously, an equally durable political consensus developed holding that nothing can be done to achieve it.

Layered on top of political concerns was a new legal challenge. The Supreme Court, once a strong supporter of school desegregation, grew increasingly skeptical of government programs that use race in decision-making. In a 2007 ruling, the Roberts Court struck down voluntary school desegregation efforts in Louisville and Seattle. To some, the decision seemed to spell the end to school desegregation.

Today, however, school integration-using new, more legally and politically palatable approaches-is getting a second look as an educational reform strategy.

For one thing, policymakers and scholars across the political spectrum are beginning to realize that ignoring the social science research on the negative effects of concentrated school poverty is not working to close large achievement gaps between races and economic groups. Diane Ravitch and Michelle Rhee-who represent opposite ends of our polarized debates over education reform-have both recently advocated new measures to promote school integration to raise the achievement of disadvantaged students.

What can give integration real political momentum, however, are not the documented benefits to low-income students, but the emerging recognition that middle- and upper-class students benefit in diverse classrooms.

As Amy Stuart Wells, Lauren Fox, and Diana Cordova-Cobo of Teachers College Columbia vividly demonstrate in this important new report, "the benefits of school diversity run in all directions." There is increasing evidence that "diversity makes us smarter," a finding that selective colleges long ago embraced and increasing numbers of young parents are coming to appreciate at the K-12 level. The authors write: "researchers have documented that students' exposure to other students who are different from themselves and the novel ideas and challenges that such exposure brings leads to improved cognitive skills, including critical thinking and problem solving."

Apart from the cognitive benefits, there are additional reasons increasing numbers of middle-class families now want to send their children to diverse schools. Middle-class and white Millennials realize that their children are growing up in a very different country, demographically, than previous generations. For the first time since the founding of the republic, a majority of public school K-12 pupils in the United States are students of color.

Students can learn better how to navigate adulthood in an increasingly diverse society-a skill that employers value-if they attend diverse schools. Ninety-six percent of major employers, Wells, Fox, and Cordova-Cobo note, say it is "important" that employees be "comfortable working with colleagues, customers, and/or clients from diverse cultural backgrounds."

Adding to the political momentum behind integration are changes in the choices middle-class families are making in where to live. In previous generations, when poor urban areas were often surrounded by wealthy white suburbs, achieving school integration was logistically challenging and involved long bus rides that were unpopular with families.

Today, however, many middle-class Millennials say they find suburban life sterile and prefer walkable communities. One poll, the authors note, found that 77 percent of Millennials expressed a preference for urban life. This development raises new possibilities for integrated schooling.

Adding further to the political and legal sustainability of integration is the emergence of new policies that rely on choice and incentives rather than compulsory busing, and that use socioeconomic rather than racial indicators as the primary basis for integration.

New policies rarely rely on compulsory busing of the type used in 1970s, the authors point out. They note, for example, that more than forty interdistrict magnet schools have been created in the Hartford, Connecticut region to serve 16,000 students in schools with distinctive pedagogical or thematic approaches that are filled through voluntary choice.

New policies that emphasize socioeconomic status avoid the legal impediments to using race, and connect to Coleman's research findings, replicated in subsequent studies, that the socioeconomic status of classmates is a critical driver of student achievement.

When The Century Foundation (TCF) commissioned me to write a book about socioeconomic school integration in 1996, just two districts in the nation, educating about 30,000 students, were pursuing such policies. Today, as TCF's Halley Potter and Kimberly Quick demonstrate in a new paper, "A New Wave of School Integration," the number of districts and charter school chains using socioeconomic status as a factor in student assignment has risen to ninety-one. Located in thirty-two states, both red and blue, these districts educate some 4 million students.

One particularly innovative example can be found in New York State, where the commissioner of education (now acting U.S. secretary of education) John King created a socioeconomic integration pilot program to turn around struggling schools. Rather than firing teachers or bringing in charter school operators, as is common in many school turnaround efforts, King's innovative program seeks to invigorate schools with a broad cross section of students.

New policies-emphasizing choice and socioeconomic status-are proving popular among a new generation of parents. Wells, Fox and Cordova-Cobo point, for example, to a remarkable change in attitudes in Louisville, Kentucky. In the early 1970s, compulsory busing for racial desegregation was opposed by 98 percent of parent. By 2011, a choice-based system emphasizing socioeconomic alongside racial integration was supported by 89 percent of parents.

With leadership, such success stories can be replicated to help us move, at long last, beyond separate and unequal to something far better for all American students.

Introduction

A growing number of parents, university officials, and employers want our elementary and secondary schools to better prepare students for our increasingly racially and ethnically diverse society and the global economy. But for reasons we cannot explain, the demands of this large segment of Americans have yet to resonate with most of our federal, state, or local policymakers. Instead, over the past forty years, these policy makers have completely ignored issues of racial segregation while focusing almost exclusively on high-stakes accountability, even as our schools have become increasingly segregated and unequal.

This report argues that, as our K-12 student population becomes more racially and ethnically diverse, the time is right for our political leaders to pay more attention to the evidence, intuition, and common sense that supports the importance of racially and ethnically diverse educational settings to prepare the next generation. It highlights in particular the large body of research that demonstrates the important educational benefits-cognitive, social, and emotional-for all students who interact with classmates from different backgrounds, cultures, and orientations to the world. This research legitimizes the intuition of millions of Americans who recognize that, as the nation becomes more racially and ethnically complex, our schools should reflect that diversity and tap into the benefitsof these more diverse schools to better educate all our students for the twenty-first century.

The advocates of racially integrated schools understand that much of the recent racial tension and unrest in this nation-from Ferguson to Baltimore to Staten Island-may well have been avoided if more children had attended schools that taught them to address implicit biases related to racial, ethnic, and cultural differences. This report supports this argument beyond any reasonable doubt.

Why the Emphasis on the Educational Benefits of Diversity Now?

The call for more attention to intense racial segregation in our nation's schools and communities is coming from parents, educators, and employers who are realigning their priorities and understandings in light of our increasingly global economy and the rapid changes in our nation's demographics and migration patterns. ¹ For the first time, the K-12 student population in the United States is less than 50 percent white, non-Hispanic. Meanwhile, in many of our major metropolitan areas, we see large-scale migration patterns, as more black, Hispanic, and Asian families move to the suburbs and more whites return to "gentrifying" urban neighborhoods. In both contexts, de facto diverse communities are forming, if only temporarily, before patterns of racial segregation re-emerge. ² These recent developments suggest we are at a critical moment in history-at a juncture between a future of more racial unrest and a future of racial healing when our society can become less divided and more equal. It is also clear from our history that absent strong leadership at the federal, state, and local level to sustain diverse neighborhoods and schools, it is likely we will recreate high levels of racial segregation in both urban and suburban contexts. ³

In this report, we review the research and reasons why, in the field of education in particular, policy makers should listen to the growing demand for more diverse public schools. Drawing on the research from both higher education and K-12 education, we demonstrate that there are important educational benefits to learning in environments with peers who grew up on the other side of the racial divide in this country. Indeed, in recent years, most of this research on the "educational benefits of diversity" has been conducted in colleges and universities and then put forth as powerful evidence to support affirmative action in higher education.

This year, as the U.S. Supreme Court considers affirmative action once again in the Fisher v. University of Texas ⁴ case ( Fisher II), it is an important moment to consider how those arguments translate into the K-12 educational context. In fact, researchers, policy makers, and educators in K-12 were, once upon a time, much more focused on the problem of racial segregation than they have been in recent decades. This shift in focus is due in large part, we argue, to the changing policy context in elementary and secondary education over the last several decades-away from school desegregation policy and toward a focus on outcomes and accountability in racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically segregated settings. In fact, the emphasis in K-12 education on narrow student achievement measures has moved the entire field away from examining cultural issues related to race, ethnicity, and the social and emotional development of children. ⁵ Given the demographic and attitudinal changes discussed above, now is the time to refocus the K-12 agenda on issues of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic integration and the educational benefits that accrue from students learning from each other in diverse schools and classrooms. We use the term racial "integration" and not "desegregation" to convey that we mean something more than merely moving students to balance racial enrollments. When we discuss the research evidence on the educational benefits of diversity, we are talking about a more meaningful form of racial and ethnic integration, leading to greater mutual respect, understanding, and empathy across racial lines. ⁶

This report provides an overview of the forces within the K-12 educational system-demographic, educational, and political-that could help move our public school system into the twenty-first century on issues of racial/ethnic diversity and the educational benefits of teaching and learning in diverse schools and classrooms. While we do not deny the many factors working against the creation and sustainability of more diverse schools and classrooms, we believe that K-12 researchers, policy makers, and parents should pay more attention to the arguments put forth in higher education court cases regarding the educational benefits to all students. Furthermore, we argue that there already exists a body of research in K-12 education that similarly supports an argument in favor of the educational benefits of diversity, but that unlike the higher education research, it has been largely ignored in recent years.

In light of recent events of racial profiling, police shootings, campus unrest, and the rise of a movement that sadly seeks to remind us of the self-evident fact that "Black Lives Matter," such interracial respect, understanding, and empathy is what we should all strive for in our increasingly diverse society. There is no institution better suited to touch the lives of millions of members of the next generation than our public schools. This report will give voice to the millions who can envision this future for K-12 education and help us get there.

Evidence on the Educational Benefits of Diversity

Tracing the history of public policies to create racially diverse schools and universities in America-most notably school desegregation in K-12 and affirmative action in higher education-from the mid-twentieth through the early twenty-first century, we see important distinctions between these two educational sectors. These distinctions help us explain why, at a time of increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the school age and young adult population in the United States, the policies of K-12 and higher education seem so completely disconnected regarding how to address these demographics changes.

We argue that particularly in the last twenty-five years, the higher education and K-12 paths have drifted apart on the issues of campus, school, and classroom level diversity (see Figure 1). This difference is grounded in at least two key factors:

1. The Research-Jurisprudence Alliance in Higher Education. An alliance of the higher education jurisprudence on affirmative action, and the higher education research on the educational benefits of diversity has strengthened colleges and universities' commitment to racially diverse student bodies and educational settings in which students learn from each other across cultural boundaries.

In the K-12 arena, on the other hand, the jurisprudence and the research alliances around school desegregation policy have focused less on the educational benefits of diverse classrooms in which students can learn from classmates with different backgrounds and perspectives and more on the potentially beneficial "outcomes" of racially balanced or "desegregated" public schools as measured by test scores, graduation rates, and the like. These benefits are real and substantial, but this focus on student outcomes almost exclusively as the central measure of equal educational opportunity, has, in the long run, led to less emphasis on the educational experiences of students in racially diverse schools and classroom, and thus, fewer efforts to support integration efforts.

2. The Recent Policy Context of K-12 Education. There are several political reasons for the distinctions between higher education and K-12 education, not the least of which is the heavy-handed, test-based accountability system that has been implemented in the K-12 system over the last twenty-five years. In this era of what some have referred to as " neo-Plessyism"-an emphasis on "separate but equal"-in K-12 education, the policy focus has been on educating all students to high standards and closing achievement gaps as measured by standardized tests wherever they are, in racially isolated schools or not. In fact, many policy makers on both sides of the aisle believe the standards and accountability movement should assure that all students have access to a challenging curriculum, no matter what the racial make-up of their classmates may be. ⁷

This policy context, coupled with the place-based nature of K-12 education amid severe residential segregation, highly fragmented school districts, and the limitations on interdistrict desegregation remedies after the 1974 Supreme Court decision in Milliken v. Bradley, ⁸ add up to a public educational system that is simultaneously becoming increasingly diverse in terms of its student population and increasingly segregated and unequal. ⁹

In other words, in the past few decades, prominent higher educational leaders, lawyers, and researchers have worked together to support race-conscious admissions policies, allowing college campuses to remain more racially and culturally diverse than most of the public schools their students attended prior to attending college. Meanwhile, college admissions offices and campus tour guides consistently cite the diversity of the student body as a major asset that enhances the learning of all students in higher education. While our colleges and universities still have much work to do to make their campuses more diverse and more welcoming to students of all racial, ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, at least there has been institutional support for race-conscious admissions policies, which is a sharp contrast to the policy focus in K-12 education for the past twenty-five years. The question then becomes: How might K-12 educational policy makers and researchers play a role in bridging the higher education-K-12 divide on these issues?

Takeaways from the Higher Education Research on the Educational Benefits of Diversity for K-12 Educational Policy and

Since the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke ¹⁰ Supreme Court ruling in 1978, federal judges' understanding of the societal value of racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse university campuses has been strongly influenced by social science research on the positive relationship between student learning and exposure to peers of different backgrounds. ¹¹ This research continues to inform jurisprudence and public policy on affirmative action in higher education. ¹²

Thus, in recent years, when federal judges have been less likely to support remedial arguments for affirmative action in higher education, ¹³ the research on the "educational benefits of diversity" has become even more central to legal arguments put forth by universities whose race-conscious affirmative action policies are being challenged by white plaintiffs. These arguments are couched in a First Amendment argument about the rights of universities to define their educational settings, an argument put forth by university leaders and grounded in social science research. ¹⁴ For instance, in an amicus brief filed in the Fisher II (2015) case this fall, a group of highly selective institutions, including Brown, Columbia, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale Universities, strongly supported race-conscious admissions policies intended to make their student bodies more racially and ethnically diverse.

Buttressing these arguments on the part of the universities is a growing body of evidence demonstrating several key academic and social outcomes related to student diversity on college campuses. The central takeaway from this scholarship is that students who attend colleges and universities with more racially and ethnically diverse student bodies are said to be exposed to a wider array of experiences, outlooks, and ideas that can potentially enhance the education of all students. ¹⁵ In fact, the majority of amicus briefs filed in the Fisher II case prior to oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court support, bolster, and enhance prior research findings demonstrating the educational benefits of racially and ethnically diverse college campuses. ¹⁶ Below we present key quotes and highlights from these briefs, organized into the most positive outcomes for all students on diverse campuses:

Enhanced Learning Outcomes for Students in Diverse Educational Contexts

Several amicus briefs in the Fisher II case underscore that research more strongly than ever supports the benefits of college diversity and demonstrates that exposure to diversity enhances critical thinking and problem-solving ability, while also improving several other attributes related to academic success, including student satisfaction and motivation, general knowledge, and intellectual self-confidence. ¹⁷ One brief states "a diverse student population creates a richer learning environment because students learn most from those who have very different life experiences from theirs." ¹⁸

Another brief argues that researchers have documented that students' exposure to other students who are different from themselves and the novel ideas and challenges that such exposure brings leads to improved cognitive skills, including critical thinking and problem-solving. ¹⁹ In addition, there is evidence that college students who experience positive interactions with students from different racial backgrounds results in more open minds and engaging classroom conversations. And improved learning actually occurs in these classrooms because abstract concepts are tied directly to concrete examples drawn from a range of experiences. ²⁰

Beyond the ways that diversity helps all higher education students, there are benefits for "nonminority" white students specifically, as well as students of color. For instance, the American Psychological Association's brief reviewed evidence that the "negative effects associated with insufficient racial diversity extend to members of nonminority groups," most notably the persistence of implicit bias toward members of minority racial groups that interferes with the educational process. Recent events across the country concerning policing and campus unrest have raised more awareness of implicit, subconscious biases and how they can produce discriminatory behavior. Indeed, the APA's brief notes that implicit biases can also disrupt cognitive functioning for members of both the majority and minority, as well-intentioned students exert significant mental effort "in order to combat the expression of stereotypes and negative attitudes that are often activated automatically and unintentionally." ²¹ Efforts to manage negative thoughts inhibit mental capacity by occupying the brain's executive function and depleting cognitive resources related to attention and control. ²² Proactive efforts to increase campus diversity can significantly reduce this implicit bias and its detrimental effects. ²³ White students in particular benefit from racially and ethnically diverse learning contexts in that the presence of students of color stimulates an increase in the complexity with which students-especially white students-approach a given issue. When white students are in racially homogeneous groups, no such cognitive stimulation occurs. Research shows that " the mere inclusion of different perspectives, and especially divergent ones, in any course of discussion leads to the kind of learning outcomes (for example, critical thinking, perspective-taking) that educators, regardless of field, are interested in." ²⁴

Diversity benefits that are more specific to the academic benefits of students of color include the decreased risk of experiencing stereotyping and discrimination, which can otherwise undermine black, Latino, and Asian students' academic achievement on less diverse college campuses. "Isolation, subordination, and negative stereotyping are commonplace in settings where minority numbers are especially low and the norms and behaviors of majority groups dominate." ²⁵ These experiences become less prevalent and less detrimental to black, Latino, and Asian students when campuses are more diverse and minority students are not tokens, thereby enhancing their learning experience and outcomes.

Increased Intercultural and Cross-Racial Knowledge, Understanding, and Empathy

In addition to the robust social science evidence on the positive relationship between student body diversity and academic outcomes, there is a similarly impressive body of research supporting the correlation between campus and classroom diversity and an enhanced ability of students to exhibit interracial understanding, empathy, and an ability to live with and learn from people of diverse backgrounds. The amicus brief filed by Brown and other elite universities in the Fisher II case highlights that "diversity encourages students to question their assumptions, to understand that wisdom may be found in unexpected voices, and to gain an appreciation of the complexity of today's world." ²⁶ Other research includes analyses of how racially diverse educational settings are effective in reducing prejudice, by promoting greater contact between students of different races-both informally and in classroom settings-and by encouraging relationships and friendships across group lines. ²⁷

The takeaway for policy makers in the K-12 education context is that there is extensive and solid evidence that intergroup contact and cross-racial interaction improves interracial attitudes toward an entire group and reduces prejudice and the implicit biases discussed above. ²⁸ Indeed, as we discuss below, research on these issues in K-12 education with similar findings was, at one time, far more central to policy debates in elementary and secondary education.

Better Preparation for Employment in the Global Economy

Throughout the recent briefs in the Fisher II case, and building on an already rich body of social science evidence amassed for this and prior affirmative action cases, university officials and business leaders argue that diverse college campuses and classrooms prepare students for life, work, and leadership in a more global economy by fostering leaders who are creative, collaborative, and able to navigate deftly in dynamic, multicultural environments. ²⁹

A brief filed by nearly half of the Fortune 100 companies, including Apple, Johnson & Johnson, and Starbucks, argued that to succeed in a global economy, they must hire highly trained employees of all races, religions, cultures, and economic backgrounds. They noted that it is also critical that " all of their university-trained employees" enter the workforce with experience in sharing ideas, experiences, viewpoints, and approaches with diverse groups of people. In fact, such cross-cultural skills are a "business and economic imperative," given that they must operate in national and global economies that are increasingly diverse. A workforce trained in a diverse environment is critical to their business success. Such college graduates, companies argue, provide more creative approaches to problem-solving by integrating different perspectives and moving beyond linear, conventional thinking. Employees are:
better equipped to understand a wider variety of consumer needs, including needs specific to particular groups, and thus to develop products and services that appeal to a variety of consumers and to market those offerings in appealing ways; they are better able to work productively with business partners, employees, and clients in the United States and around the world; and they are likely to generate a more positive work environment by decreasing incidents of discrimination and stereotyping.³⁰
Diverse educational environments also enhance students' leadership skills, among other skills that are helpful when working in racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse workplaces. A longitudinal study found that the more often first-year college students are exposed to diverse educational settings, the greater their "gains in leadership skills, psychological well-being, intellectual engagement, and intercultural effectiveness." ³¹ Indeed, the APA brief argues, in addition to obvious academic pursuits, colleges and universities also prepare students to be effective economic and political leaders on local, national, and global levels. "Effective leadership begins with prejudice reduction." ³²

Increased "Democratic Outcomes," including Engagement in Political Issues and Participation in Democratic Processes

And finally, students' experiences in diverse classrooms can provide the kind of cross-cultural dialogue that prepares them for citizenship in a multifaceted society. ³³ Students develop improved civic attitudes toward democratic participation, civic behaviors such as participating in community activities, and intentions to participate in civic activities resulting from diverse learning experiences. One meta-analysis synthesized twenty-seven studies on the effects of diversity on civic engagement and concluded that college diversity experiences are, in fact, positively related to increased civic engagement.

The four findings listed above are the most robust, but there is additional evidence of other positive results that flow from creating racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse learning environments for students. Research clearly and strongly supports a legal or policy argument in favor of greater student diversity on college campuses as a mechanism to potentially enhance the educational experiences of all students. ³⁴ And this is not solely the conclusion of those who study higher education. Drawing on decades of research from organizational scientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists, and demographers, an article in Scientific American argues that diversity even enhances creativity and actually encourages the search for novel information and perspectives, leading to better decision making and problem solving. Therefore, diversity can improve the bottom line of companies and lead to unfettered discoveries and breakthrough innovations. " Even simply being exposed to diversity can change the way you think." ³⁵

Moving from Whether to How

As the list of benefits of diversity in higher education and in the workplace continue to accrue, diversity on college campuses is seen not just as an end in and of itself, but rather an educational process. In fact, some research in higher education has shifted away from questions about whether students benefit from diverse learning environments in their post-secondary institutions to questions about how universities can foster the best conditions to maximize that impact. ³⁶

Hopefully, the question of how universities and their faculty can support the development of these educational benefits in classrooms and assignments will foster an examination of the level and nature of student engagement in the learning process. For instance, diverse student bodies in higher education classrooms are more likely to produce the above-noted outcomes when group discussions in classrooms are focused on an issue with generally different racial viewpoints-for example, the death penalty. ³⁷ Indeed, students benefit the most from racially and ethnically diverse campuses-inside and outside the classroom-when a set of mutually supportive and reinforcing experiences occur. ³⁸ These research findings should help inform higher education officials when they consider and address the type of student frustration and campus unrest we have witnessed at the University of Missouri, Yale, and Princeton in recent months. This shifts discourse from an emphasis on what students know to an additional focus on whether they know how to think and, more importantly, whether they are acquiring the skills needed to live and work in the twenty-first century. A twenty-first century education, it's argued, is best accomplished through intentional educational practices that are integrated in nature, provide experiences that challenge students' own embedded world views, and encourage application of knowledge to contemporary problems. ³⁹

These new developments in higher educational research on how to foster the educational benefits of diversity are still evolving and in many ways actually pick up where the K-12 research left off in the 1990s, during which the policy focus for elementary and secondary education shifted away from issues of racial and ethnic diversity. In the following section we consider the evidence-old and new-within the K-12 research literature that we argue can be more tightly connected to and inspired by the important higher education work on diversity and learning.

The K-12 Educational Research on School Desegregation Outcomes

A robust body of research related to K-12 school desegregation and its positive outcomes was developed following the success of federal courts and officials in implementing more than three hundred school desegregation plans in the 1970s and 1980s. This included an examination of both the short- and long-term outcomes of attending racially and socioeconomically integrated schools. The main focus of most of this research, however, has been on the short-term academic performance (measured primarily by test scores) of students attending racially diverse versus racially segregated schools. Many studies have examined the impact of school desegregation on the achievement of African American students; some have also measured outcomes on other racial/ethnic groups. An examination of issues related to the "educational benefits of diversity" has included looking at the relationship between attending a desegregated public school and students' social and civic engagement, inter-group relations, emotional well-being, and life course trajectories. ⁴⁰

Closing the Achievement Gap

The bulk of the K-12 educational research on the impact of school racial and socioeconomic composition on measurable academic outcomes documents that attending racially segregated, high-poverty schools has a strong negative association with students' academic achievement (often measured through grade-level reading and math test scores). ⁴¹ Attending racially diverse schools is beneficial to all students and is associated with smaller test score gaps between students of different racial backgrounds, not because white student achievement declined, but rather that black and/or Hispanic student achievement increased. ⁴² In fact, the racial achievement gap in K-12 education closed more rapidly during the peak years of school desegregation than they have overall during the more recent era in which desegregation policies were dismantled and replaced by accountability policies. ⁴³

We see this in a local context in Hartford, Connecticut, where racially diverse interdistrict magnet schools were created by the Capital Region Education Council (CREC) in the greater Hartford area. As Figures 2 and 3 illustrate, these "CREC interdistrict magnet schools," which draw black and Latino students from the city of Hartford and white students from the suburbs, are closing the achievement gap between students of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Indeed, 2013 state reading test scores in CREC regional magnet schools showed that the gap between black and white and between Latino and white students was eliminated in the third grade. The same was true between Latino and white students' scores in fifth grade reading. Additionally, by tenth grade the gap in scores between students from low-income families and other students shrunk to just under 5 percentage points in reading in interdistrict magnet schools, compared to 28 percentage points at the state level. Taken together, the achievement gaps between students of different races in these regional, interdistrict magnet schools are significantly smaller than the state overall. ⁴⁴
Figure 2. Figure 3.
While there are a handful of studies that challenge the link between school desegregation policy and positive academic outcomes, they represent only a small slice of the literature. ⁴⁵ As we argue below, it is highly likely that any less-than-positive short-term academic outcomes of desegregation reported are related to complex issues of implementation and a lack of attention, particularly in the early years of school desegregation, to students' overall experiences within schools.

Furthermore, these positive academic outcomes, particularly the closing of the achievement gap, make sense given that integrating schools leads to more equitable access to important resources such as structural facilities, highly qualified teachers, challenging courses, private and public funding, and social and cultural capital. ⁴⁶

Other research has examined academic outcomes of racially segregated and diverse schooling that are closely tied to students' post-secondary careers and college trajectories. The gap in SAT scores between black and white students is larger in segregated districts, and one study showed that change from complete segregation to complete integration in a district would reduce as much as one quarter of the SAT score disparity. ⁴⁷

For one thing, the educational expectations from school staff and performance of students who attend racially integrated schools are significantly higher than those of staff and students from racially segregated schools. ⁴⁸ This also means that students themselves hold higher educational aspirations than their peers who attend racially segregated schools. ⁴⁹ Further, dropout rates are significantly higher for students in segregated, high-poverty schools. ⁵⁰ During the height of desegregation in the 1970s and 1980s, dropout rates decreased for minority students, and the greatest decline in dropout rates occurred in districts with the greatest reductions in school segregation. ⁵¹ More recently, the interdistrict magnet programs in Hartford, on average, recorded far higher graduation rates than even some of the more affluent suburban districts in the region. This can be largely connected to an overall improved school climate in racially integrated schools. ⁵² These schools not only have lower levels of violence and social disorder than segregated schools, ⁵³ but they are also more likely to have stable staffs composed of highly qualified teachers-the single most important resource for academic achievement. ⁵⁴

Additional Benefits, Including Learning Outcomes and Interracial Understanding for All Students

The findings on the racial achievement gap are particularly notable given that school desegregation policy was too often implemented without much attention to students' day-to-day experiences within racially mixed schools. There has been no distinction drawn as to how different student outcomes were related to the various ways in which students experienced desegregation in their schools and communities. ⁵⁵ Most early research said nothing about the local context of desegregation or how students' experiences within racially diverse schools were shaped by the actions and attitudes of educators. Thus, the degree to which all students were treated equally or had teachers with high expectations for them was not a factor, despite the impact of such factors on student achievement data. Further, this early literature failed to calculate the prevalence of segregation within individual schools via tracking, or the extent to which black and white students were exposed to the same curriculum. ⁵⁶ Despite this lack of focus on what happens within diverse schools, the outcome data in K-12-as with higher education-still demonstrates that diverse educational experiences lead to positive learning outcomes and better intergroup relationships. A growing body of research suggests that the benefits of K-12 school diversity indeed flow in all directions-to white and middle-class students as well as to minority and low-income pupils. For instance, we know that diverse classrooms, in which students learn cooperatively alongside those whose perspectives and backgrounds are different from their own, are beneficial to all students, including middle-class white students, because they promote creativity, motivation, deeper learning, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills. ⁵⁷ These skills that students gain from diverse learning environments are in line with what policy-makers say should be among the primary focuses of K-12 education. ⁵⁸ They are also skills that are highly desired by employers. ⁵⁹

In addition, there is a pedagogical value inherent in having multiple vantage points represented in classrooms to help all students think critically about their own views and to develop greater tolerance for different ways of understanding issues. It allows for positive academic outcomes for all students exposed to these diverse viewpoints. ⁶⁰ Much of the research on higher education cited before applies to the elementary and secondary educational context. For instance, evidence on how the persistence of implicit bias toward members of minority racial groups can interfere with the educational process by disrupting cognitive functioning for members of both the majority and minority could certainly apply to elementary and secondary students as well. ⁶¹ Also, the finding that efforts to increase university campus diversity can significantly reduce implicit bias and its detrimental effects would no doubt apply to K-12 schools and would carry over to apply to students experiences in higher education. ⁶²

In fact, in a prior era of American history, when hundreds of school districts were implementing school desegregation policies, there had been a focus, albeit small, on "intergroup contact" in K-12 public schools. It showed that while racial segregation and isolation can perpetuate racial fear, prejudice, and stereotypes, intergroup contact and critical cross-racial dialogue can help to ameliorate these problems. ⁶⁵ More recently, attention has pointed to the role that diverse schools play in preparing students to live in a multicultural society-particularly in terms of promoting interracial understanding and comfort, friendship building, and fostering civic and democratic engagement. ⁶⁶ Further, a longitudinal study on the link between K-12 and post-secondary exposure to diverse learning environments showed that the positive relationship between diversity in higher education and outcomes related to satisfaction, well-being, and racial attitudes are stronger among students who had already had more experiences with diverse learning environments before college. ⁶⁷

This suggests a strong and powerful link between K-12 and higher education experiences when it comes to students' educational benefits of attending diverse schools. Still, as with the higher education research, we need to more fully explore not only the what of K-12 school diversity, but also the how -how do elementary and secondary school educators create classrooms that facilitate the development of these educational benefits of diversity for all students? To answer this critical question, we need to look at yet another body of K-12 research from the desegregation era and beyond.

How Public Schools Can Help Foster the Educational Benefit of Diversity

Perhaps the ultimate irony of the current lack of focus on the educational benefits of diversity within racially and ethnically diverse public schools is that prior to the rise of the accountability movement in K-12 education, there had been an intentional focus on multicultural education that explored curricular improvements and teaching issues within racially diverse schools. Much like higher education's shift in focus from questions of "why" to "how" university faculty can foster the educational benefits of diversity within racially and ethnically diverse classrooms, the K-12 research on school desegregation had also started to shift focus from student outcomes to exploring within-school segregation and the curriculum and teaching issues related to racially and ethnically diverse schools. ⁶⁸ It was trying to understand the "how" as well.

Intergroup Relations

Indeed, by the late 1970s and early 1980s, a small cadre of researchers was going inside of schools and trying to understand the "how and why" aspects of student experiences in desegregated schools. Much of this work focused on how students interacted across racial and ethnic groups-what is commonly called "intergroup" relations-and was conducted primarily by sociologists, social psychologists, and anthropologists. They raised important issues about how school desegregation policies should be implemented to create successful desegregated schools. ⁶⁹ They also helped to illustrate the so-called second-generation issues of school desegregation; that is, the process of placing African American students in low-level classes separated from their white peers. This research was also methodologically distinct-consisting mainly of qualitative, in-depth case studies that focused on the process of school desegregation and the context in which it unfolded. ⁷⁰

Through looking at students' intergroup relations and how educators could create conditions that would foster intergroup understanding, the research stressed the importance of the equalization of academic status between students across racial groups in a manner that enabled students to learn from each other and thus experience the educational benefits of diversity. ⁷¹

Perhaps the most prolific of the researchers on intergroup relations was Elizabeth Cohen, ⁷² who examined the experiences of students within desegregated schools and how educators could create learning conditions that would foster intergroup understanding and an equalization of academic status (often otherwise correlated with racial background). Like the most recent work in higher education and efforts to understand "how" to achieve the educational benefits of diversity, Cohen focused on pedagogical practices that enabled students to learn from each other. ⁷³ In keeping with the need for a more contextual approach to studying school desegregation, Cohen wrote:
The more I have studied the desegregated situation, the more I have come to understand that what happens to children inside a particular desegregated school is a product of changing socio-historical forces which brought that particular school to the "desegregated" state, a product of the status and power relations of minority to majority in the society and community, as well as a product of social and structural forces within the school.⁷⁴
Understanding these status and power relations outside of schools and how they permeated the classroom walls was central to Cohen's efforts to construct learning experiences for students in which these external forces of differential status were minimized as much as possible. Psychologist Gordon Allport long ago described a "contact hypothesis" in his 1954 book The Nature of Prejudice, in which he argued that racial and other forms of prejudice can be reduced through equal-status contact of members of one or more racial/ethnic groups in the pursuit of common goals. ⁷⁵ The "equal-status" and "common goals" aspect of this hypothesis are central to the sort of intergroup contact that can facilitate fundamental changes in the way students make sense of each other and question stereotypes they may have heard from adults and peers. Public schools, therefore, are the natural setting in which such contact can occur. Few other institutions have the potential to bring students together across racial, ethnic, and social class lines to facilitate active learning to reduce prejudice. Much of this later school desegregation research helped to illustrate many of the problems associated with implementing school desegregation, including within-school "resegregation" via tracking and grouping. It highlighted very complex issues related to teachers' attitudes and beliefs about the ability of black students to succeed, as well as their willingness to talk about race as a salient issue within their schools and classrooms. There was a need to illustrate this complexity of desegregation and teaching in racially diverse classes, the day-to-day experiences of students in racially mixed schools, and a greater focus on the "sociocultural" dimensions of schooling as students are coming together across racial/ethnic lines, often for the first time. Teachers were found to have inconsistent views about African American students' potential to learn and conform to the dominant school culture. ⁷⁶ In another study of a desegregated middle school, it was actually taboo for faculty or students to talk about race, as if it did not shape the daily experiences of students. ⁷⁷

Other intergroup relations studies focused more on the psychological impact of school desegregation on students, particularly African American students. They tend to be inconclusive, because they imply a relationship between the particular conditions established within racially mixed schools and the ways in which children come to see themselves vis-a-vis students of other racial groups. ⁷⁸ Like the research on student achievement, studies examining students' self-esteem and/or racial attitudes suffered from the same central problem; They generally lacked contextual data to help explain how different students were experiencing school desegregation in different schools and how that influenced the way in which they understood themselves and others. Tracking and ability grouping in desegregated schools often perpetuated within-school segregation across race and class lines. Again, identified as second-generation desegregation issues, this was starting to be addressed in schools across the country and drawing more attention from researchers by the 1990s and early 2000s. In examining the impact of tracking within racially diverse schools, qualitative researchers emphasized the importance of social and cultural factors such as how teachers perceived students' academic ability, who was considered popular or good looking, and whose perspective, background, and experiences were most valued in classroom discussions. Despite educators' pronouncements to be "colorblind" and to treat all students equally, differential treatment according to race was the norm, even when different-race students had the same prior achievement and social-class backgrounds. ⁷⁹ Today we call such differential treatment by educators or police officers "implicit bias." ⁸⁰

Woven throughout this within-school segregation/desegregation literature was a deepening emphasis on the critical need for racially diverse schools and classrooms to address sociocultural issues related to whose knowledge, understanding, and meaning is valued in academic settings. Overall, there had been a lack of attention paid in older " outcomes-focused" desegregation research to what happened inside of schools and classrooms, especially as it related to the dignity of students of color. ⁸¹ Interestingly, insights and deeper understandings of how to create meaningful and more equal intergroup relations within racially diverse public schools were being written at the same time as the jurisprudence related to school desegregation was being reversed, and levels of racial segregation within schools and whole school districts were increasing. ⁸² While this particular literature did include many appropriate and well-placed criticisms of what was and was not happening pedagogically within these racially and ethnically diverse classrooms, it did not offer many suggestions regarding the appropriate pedagogy for these classes. That came from yet another body of related work in the area of multicultural education.

Multicultural Education and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: The Curriculum and Teaching Strand of Successful Diverse Schools

As sociologists and others were examining the structural issues of resegregation within racially diverse schools and trying to understand their impact on intergroup relations and students' sense of marginalization in the 1980s and 1990s in particular, other researchers and educators were coming up with instructional strategies and curricula to address the sociocultural issues discussed above. Much of it falls under the broad umbrella of "multicultural education" and echoes the calls within the higher education literature for more focus on the "how" of the educational benefits of diversity in higher education. ⁸³

Perhaps the broadest definition of multicultural education comes from one of the best-known authors in this area, James Banks, who argued that its central goal is to "help all students to acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to function effectively in a pluralistic democratic society and to interact, negotiate, and communicate with peoples from diverse groups in order to create a civic and moral community that works for the common good." ⁸⁴

Framed around the changing demographics of this country and the backdrop of policies such as school desegregation that created more racially and culturally diverse schools and classrooms with a complex cultural make up, multicultural education was attuned to a wide range of issues, including the cultural orientations of students' families and issues of linguistics. Broadly defined as a research agenda "to unpack the cultural variable" so that differentiating characteristics within cultures could be understood by educators teaching diverse groups of students, ⁸⁵ multicultural education and the exploration of cultural issues in schools analyzed students' culture in terms of its variable influence on individuals, in contrast to approaches which assign an equal value to culture for all members of a group." ⁸⁶ This kind of finer-grained analysis of cultural and community life allows educators to more clearly recognize the daily cultural life of the individual child and how it relates to their understanding of history, literature, science, and even math." ⁸⁷

At the same time that multicultural education was emphasizing this "finer-grained analysis" of the cultural lives of individual students, it was also linked conceptually to an emphasis within curriculum and teaching on the societal implications of culturally diverse nations, with racially and ethnically diverse schools often seen as microcosms of that nation. These cultural issues connected more tightly to a look at the process of preparing teachers-particularly white teachers-to work in racially diverse schools as part of a larger effort to encourage white Americans to reconsider their "whiteness." ⁸⁸ Pedagogical issues around cultural diversity in schools and classrooms also connect to issues of democracy and democratic learning. ⁸⁹ This multicultural education literature, itself an important body of work in K-12 education-echoed in the higher education literature cited above-on the democratic goals of education and how they relate to racial and ethnic diversity. Critical work on the democratic goals of education echoes not only the concept of multicultural education, but also issues of democracy and pedagogy on racially diverse college campuses. ⁹⁰ Indeed, there is a crucial connection between the discussion of controversial political issues among people with disparate views and the health of our democracy. ⁹¹ Supporting the growing body of evidence on the educational benefits of diverse classrooms, researchers have found pedagogical value inherent in having multiple vantage points represented in classrooms, helping all students think critically about their own views and develop greater tolerance for different ways of understanding issues. Research documents positive academic outcomes for students exposed to these diverse viewpoints. ⁹²

Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

Building on the groundwork of multicultural education research, CRP has also remained focused on the intersection between school and home-community cultures and how that intersection relates to the delivery of instruction in schools. ⁹⁵ But CRP has been more directly applied to the teaching and learning of African American students in contexts that are racially and ethnically homogeneous as opposed to diverse schools and classrooms. While CRP does focus on the importance of culture in schooling, it always focuses directly on race, in part, perhaps, because it is so often adapted in all-black, one-race schools and classrooms.

Another critique of CRP is that its more recent application is far from what was theorized early at its inception. ⁹⁶ Specifically, the superficial, decontextualized, and fragmented application of CRP-and multicultural education-has sometimes resulted in the marginalization of Asian American students due to their limited inclusion in curricular content. ⁹⁷ This is made worse by teachers who have had little training in culturally relevant pedagogy or content and therefore "reinforce a tokenized perspective of 'minorities' in this country through an emphasis on celebrations, contributions, food, and heroes." ⁹⁸

There are thus new linkages developing between CRP and a broader understanding of how culture and race interact in the educational system. ⁹⁹ Multicultural education, and pedagogies that have evolved from it, have the potential to advance desegregation and racial/ethnic equality because, when they can address many of the social and cultural aspects of racially/ethnically diverse classrooms that previous noncurricular reforms have failed to tackle. ¹⁰⁰ There is much potential for a culturally relevant approach to help all students in racially and ethnically diverse public schools learn from each other in a manner that challenges their own assumptions and indeed makes them "smarter," more creative, and more thoughtful.

Most recently, a reflection on the misuse of CRP has called for the rethinking of original theory and welcomes a shift to the theory of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy, which aims to foster cultural pluralism as part of the goals of a democratic society. ¹⁰³ According to pedagogical theorist Gloria Ladson-Billings, culturally relevant pedagogy should include the multiplicities of identities and cultures that help formulate today's youth culture. "Rather than focus singularly on one racial or ethnic group," she writes, Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy "pushes us to consider the global identities that are emerging in the arts, literature, music, athletics, and film." ¹⁰⁴

Clearly, there is much rich information, conceptualization, and understanding in the K-12 literature on teaching and learning as it relates to issues of race and ethnicity more broadly. The next step in utilizing these more culturally based understandings of schools and curricula is to apply this thinking to diverse schools and classrooms more specifically. Educators in schools across the country-some isolated in single classrooms and some working on a school-wide set of pedagogical reforms-are starting to grapple with these issues in racially and ethnically diverse classrooms. Some of these efforts are documented in studies of the de-tracking movement and the work on civics education noted above, but far more research on the "how" dimensions of these pedagogical efforts is needed. ¹⁰⁵

Demographic, Educational, and Political Forces Fostering the Benefits of Diversity within the K-12 Educational System

The fact that the educational benefits of racially and ethnically diverse campuses and classrooms has been a more central argument and defining theme of higher education jurisprudence, leadership, and research than it has in the area of K-12 research and policy is problematic, given the added attention generally to issues of teaching and learning in the K-12 literature. But as we highlight in Figure 1, there are several reasons why issues related to the educational benefits of diversity appear to have fallen off the K-12 research radar screen in the last twenty-five years. This includes, most notably, a highly fragmented and segregated K-12 educational system of entrenched between-district segregation that cannot be easily addressed after Milliken v. Bradley. Meanwhile, this fragmented and segregated educational system is governed by accountability and legal mandates that give no credence to the educational benefits of learning in diverse contexts. As noted above, several areas of research on the sociocultural issues related to teaching students of different racial and ethnic backgrounds that could help inform our understanding of the pedagogical approaches that foster educational benefits of diversity in the K-12 system are disconnected, often designed to address the needs of students in the racially segregated school system they attend.

Still, despite the many factors working against efforts to embrace and develop a parallel "educational benefits of diversity" argument in K-12 education, there are several counter forces influencing the public educational system that could eventually foster a movement to embrace this argument. In this section, we highlight the demographic, educational, and political forces that we think may have the potential to shift the system in that direction.

Demographic Forces: The Changing Population and Metro Migrations

Much attention has been paid to the fact that the U.S. population overall is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse (see Figure 4). The media have pointed out repeatedly that by the middle of the twenty-first century, this country's population overall will no longer be majority white, non-Hispanic. Even more notably, this transition is happening much more quickly amid our younger population. As of September 2014, for the first time in our nation's history, white, non-Hispanic students no longer constitute a majority of the overall public school enrollment, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Rapid growth in the Hispanic and Asian populations, coupled with a black population that has remained constant and a decline in the percentage of whites, has led to a total K-12 enrollment of 49 percent white, 26 percent Hispanic, 15 percent black; and 5 percent Asian for the 2014-15 school year. ¹⁰⁶
Figure 4.
Coinciding with the changing racial makeup of the country and our public schools is a profound shift in who lives where. In many contexts, our post-World War II paradigm of all-white suburbs and cities as the places where blacks and Hispanics live has been turned on its head. For instance, we know that after World War II the government subsidized a movement of millions of white, middle-class families to the suburbs, and many cities became predominantly black and/or Latino. ¹⁰⁷ By 1980, 67 percent of blacks and 50 percent of Latinos, but only 24 percent of whites, lived in these city centers. ¹⁰⁸ At that time, only 23 percent of blacks lived in the suburbs. Black suburbanization rates were even lower-about 12-15 percent-in the Northeast. ¹⁰⁹
Figure 5.
In the 1990s, journalists and researchers were increasingly reporting on the growing number of distressed suburbs that were coming to resemble poor inner-city communities. For instance, from 1990 to 2000, while some newly developing suburbs experienced rapid growth in people and jobs, " many older suburbs experienced central-city-like challenges, including an aging infrastructure, inadequate housing stock, deteriorating schools and commercial corridors-and population decline." ¹¹² In 2000, while suburbs were still more affluent than cities on average, certain cities were becoming less poor and their residents were more educated than their suburban counterparts. ¹¹³ By 2008, an Atlantic Monthly article highlighted the impact of the sub-prime mortgage crisis on suburban communities experiencing high rates of foreclosures. But the author was quick to note that declining suburban neighborhoods did not begin with the mortgage crisis, and they would not end with it as more people with high incomes move into the cities. ¹¹⁴

This leads to what is conceptualized in the current, post-2000 era, as the still- evolving period of metro migrations, which we refer to as "trading places," with affluent whites moving back into cities and lower-income people of color moving to the suburbs-either by choice or via displacement in gentrifying city neighborhoods. ¹¹⁵ This pattern has continued in the last decade, as black and recent-immigrant suburbanization has continued, and a growing number of upper-middle-class and relatively more affluent whites are moving back into urban centers. ¹¹⁶

Lured by the convenience, excitement, and culture of city living, increasing numbers of highly skilled whites in so-called " global cities" such as New York and San Francisco have opted out of long daily commutes by living in nearby urban, and often gentrified, neighborhoods. ¹¹⁷ City life, once considered by many whites as dangerous, dirty, and crowded, is now increasingly associated with excitement, fun, and convenience. ¹¹⁸ Indeed, a recent poll found that 77 percent of Millennials expressed a preference for urban life. ¹¹⁹ In her recent book, The End of the Suburbs, Leigh Gallagher of Fortune magazine notes that 2011 was the first year in decades that population growth in the cities outpaced that of the suburbs, and home builders now say their best markets are the urban, gentrifying neighborhoods. ¹²⁰ Cities and suburbs have experienced a "demographic inversion" as a result of their changing racial composition. ¹²¹

The New York City metropolitan area represents a prime example of the most recent trading spaces phenomenon. The percentage of whites in Manhattan increased 28 percent between 2000 and 2006, while it declined in nearby suburban Nassau County. During the same six-year period, the Hispanic population declined by 2 percent in Manhattan, but increased by 20 percent in Nassau. This twenty-first century urban aristocracy-or "gentry"-is driving up home prices in select city neighborhoods, sometimes pushing lower-income residents-mostly black and Latino-into outlying urban and inner-ring suburban communities. ¹²²

Meanwhile, a growing number of American suburbs where more than half of the U.S. population-about 53 percent-still lives are increasingly diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, and culture, giving the suburbs a far more cosmopolitan feel than in the post-World War II era. In fact, today, in the fifty-largest metropolitan areas, 44 percent of residents live in racially and ethnically diverse suburbs, defined as between 20 and 60 percent non-white. ¹²³

Overall, these fluctuating metropolitan characteristics suggest that traditional paradigms of "cities" versus "suburbs" are rapidly evolving in ways that we cannot yet completely comprehend. Indeed, it is increasingly clear that contemporary urban and suburban communities each contain pockets of both poverty and affluence, often functioning as racially and ethnically distinct spaces. In fact, by 2005, one million more poor people lived in suburban compared to urban areas. ¹²⁴ While the rate of demographic change differs by context as well, there are moments of "de facto" racial/ethnic diversity in our cities and suburbs that are affecting more than just neighborhoods.

Urban and Suburban Public Schools amid Demographic Changes

This demographic "trading places" phenomenon, or the "great inversion," ¹²⁵ has many implications not just for housing patterns and property values, but also the public schools in these transitioning communities. In Brooklyn, New York, for instance, a growing number of communities that were, only ten years ago, almost entirely minority and low-income are now becoming (or have already become) predominantly white and affluent. The families who had sent their children to the public schools in these communities for years are now being "displaced" from their neighborhoods and their public schools. Ironically, in in-depth interviews we are conducting, white gentrifiers state that one reason they moved into the city was to live in neighborhoods more diverse than the homogeneous suburbs where many grew up. Similarly, they note that they want their children to attend public schools with other children of different backgrounds.

Thus, while much of the focus of anti-displacement has been on housing policy, too little attention has been paid to school policies that affect who is being "displaced"-physically and academically-from schools as well. There is much hard work to be done at the school level to assure that all students enrolled have the opportunity to achieve to high levels. In public schools with a growing population of more affluent students, educators often seek assistance in meeting the needs of a wide range of students.

In the last decade, a small but growing body of literature has documented the impact of urban gentrification on the enrollment and culture in public schools. ¹²⁶ Still, most of it examines the gentrification process and its impact on public schools through the eyes of white, middle-, or upper-middle-class parents, and rarely does it examine deep pedagogical issues in schools related to a changing student body in which issues of race, class, power, and privilege are being lived, if not explored, in the classrooms.

There is also an emerging focus on the impact of changing demographics on suburban public schools. ¹²⁷ In our research on Long Island, for example, we studied inner-ring suburban schools that shifted demographically from having a more than 90 percent white, non-Hispanic student body in the 1990s to only 15 percent white, non-Hispanic by 2014. In other suburbs, further from the New York City boundary, the white, non-Hispanic population has stabilized at about 50 percent. In both contexts, educators and students are grappling with racial, ethnic, and cultural differences that many of them had not encountered before.

When we think of education policies and practices to support and sustain the increasingly diverse public schools in both urban and suburban contexts, it is clear that K-12 educators and educational researchers have much to learn from the higher education research on the educational benefits of diversity in efforts to both close racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps while helping all students succeed. And just as fair-housing advocacy has increasingly prioritized the stabilization and sustainability of diverse communities, education policy needs to follow suit. Unfortunately, too few policy makers see the need for such programs, even as a growing number of educators in diverse schools are clamoring for help to close those gaps and teach diverse groups of students.

The current mismatch between the policies and the needs of an increasingly racially and ethnically diverse society inspire us to fill the void with compelling success stories of public schools working toward a greater public good by tapping into the possibility of changing neighborhoods to teach children how to thrive in a society of racial and cultural differences. One of the schools we are studying in a gentrifying area is helping build more cross-racial understanding across the Hispanic and white parent groups by trying to assure more equal voice in the decision-making processes-everything from the kind of food and music available at the fund raisers to the mix of various field trips to cultural institutions. Another school, in a suburban school district, is trying to develop a new set of elementary school attendance zones, and/or moving toward a mini-controlled choice model to avoid the segregation of the growing Hispanic student population into one elementary school.

Schools and communities on the front lines of demographic change face significant obstacles to realizing the sort of educational benefits of diversity that can help us all understand and appreciate differences. Urban history suggests that when a racial group begins migrating to a new community, the existing population is likely either to be pushed out or to flee, setting into play a perpetual cycle of segregation and resegregation. At the heart of these cycles are public schools with educators who are rarely prepared to facilitate the "educational benefits" of a diverse student body-a concept supported by the higher education research and the federal courts.

Even in the most unstable and rapidly changing contexts, there are moments of "de facto school diversity" within demographically changing neighborhoods. ¹²⁸ In these spaces, higher education research on the educational benefits of diversity could be extremely helpful to assist educators in garnering the academic benefits of diverse schools and classrooms to help prepare all students for the twenty-first century. The most disadvantaged students are the most negatively impacted by such a failure.

Political Forces in Favor of More Racially and Ethnically Diverse Schools and Their Educational Benefits

Thus, as leaders in higher education have relied heavily on social science evidence to put forth a powerful legal and policy argument in support of the educational benefits of diverse campuses and classrooms, the policy priorities in K-12 public education have gone in the other direction, with a strong focus on narrow accountability measures within increasingly segregated schools. This K-12 policy emphasis is not only out of line with higher education's priorities, but it is also extremely shortsighted and problematic given the demographic changes among younger generations, and the growing demand from both universities and employers for high school graduates with experiences in diverse contexts and the ability to cross cultural boundaries.

In this last section, we provide an overview of two key political forces-changing racial attitudes and the backlash against standardized tests as the central measure of "good" schools-that support a return in K-12 education policy focus to the issue of racial and ethnic diversity.

The Growing Demographic Diversity Reflected in Attitudes

Policymakers who ignore the rapid demographic changes within the K-12 population miss a critical opportunity to lead this increasingly diverse nation toward a more equal and cohesive future. In fact, many voters would welcome more leadership in this area. Opinion poll and interview data suggest a growing number of parents are paying attention to our "demographic destiny" and seeking racially and culturally diverse public schools to prepare their children for a global society. ¹³¹ For instance, recent elections suggest a growing number of voters are looking for elected officials who can lead an increasingly diverse nation instead of denying our demographic destiny, or worse, playing into the sort of racial politics that divides us. ¹³² Despite the policy trends and individual choices that have led to ongoing patterns of segregation in both urban and suburban communities, a substantial proportion of our post-civil rights society strongly values and desires exposure to diverse environments and sees this as an asset- both within our schools and our communities. ¹³³ Indeed, in the midst of increasing immigration and changing demographics, Americans of all racial and ethnic groups are increasingly likely to be accepting of cultural differences and to view diversity in social situations as a positive characteristic. ¹³⁴ And again, this is particularly true for Millennial parents, who are a more racially diverse cohort themselves. Further, attitudes among whites have changed more, simply because they had further to go due to the fact that nonwhite respondents have favored diversity for longer and in larger numbers. ¹³⁵

Although diverse, integrated spaces are becoming more socially desirable, our society is still quite divided along racial lines in terms of perceptions of how far we still have to go to achieve racial equality. While nearly all whites dismiss (at least publicly) ideas that blacks in particular are less intelligent or hardworking, and fewer oppose interracial marriage, they are increasingly less likely to believe that blacks continue to experience racial discrimination as a result of structural inequality and a history of slavery and oppression. ¹³⁶ Black respondents, on the other hand, tend to report that these issues are still very much a problem in spite of shifts in racial politics since the mid-twenty-first century. ¹³⁷ Asian and Latino respondents also cite discrimination due to their race but to a somewhat lesser extent than blacks. ¹³⁸ It seems that among whites in particular, conversations around valuing and pursuing diversity in schools, neighborhoods, and other institutions has focused less and less on this goal as it relates to addressing past injustices. ¹³⁹

These divergent perceptions point to the true educational benefits of diversity, particularly the democratic, deliberative goals of intercultural dialogue and understanding, and they are sorely needed-for students, parents, and community members. These racial divides on issues of past injustices and ongoing structural inequality are best addressed through cross-racial dialogue and understanding. The need to sustain racially and ethnically diverse communities is vital to our future as a diverse democracy.

Attitudes about Diverse Schools: Policies Are Out of Step with a Growing Demand

A hopeful sign related to the last point above is that parallel to these shifts in racial attitudes is the growing desire for diverse schools and classrooms. Despite the many challenges and shortcomings of school desegregation that played out across the United States in the early phases of this policy, in the decades following the implementation of these policies, interracial contact slowly increased and racism among whites declined. ¹⁴⁰ Furthermore, as we noted above, students who attended racially diverse schools are more likely to exhibit progressive attitudes toward members of other racial groups. ¹⁴¹

According to a 2004 Newsweek survey, 71 percent of all respondents felt that increasing diversity and integration in public schools is important to their improvement. This number was higher among African American and Hispanic respondents than among whites, but is much higher among whites than in previous years. ¹⁴⁴ In fact, parents who are choosing schools for their young children are more likely than not to reference their desire for a "diverse" school as a factor in the decision-making process. ¹⁴⁵ While questions on integration have been worded differently over time, making it difficult to compare responses across different decades, the public has been consistently asked whether it believed black and white students should attend the same schools beginning in 1942. The wording of this question, which is the only one that has remained nearly identical, allows for a comparison in responses that would not have been possible otherwise. Overall, the trend is steady, with a significant increase in the percentage of the general public reporting that students of different races should attend the ''same schools" (see Figure 6). ¹⁴⁶
Figure 6.
Again looking at a local context, Louisville, Kentucky provides a good microcosm of changing racial attitudes about diverse schools. In the 1970s, when the school desegregation plan was first proposed, 98 percent of those polled in the Louisville area were opposed to the plan. ¹⁴⁷ But after the U.S Supreme Court ruling in 2007 that sharply curtailed the use of race in the Louisville student assignment plan, the school district actually tried different ways of promoting diversity. ¹⁴⁸ Indeed, by 2011, a survey found that 89 percent of parents in the Jefferson County School District in Louisville said they were in favor of the schools having student assignment guidelines that "ensure that students learn with students from different races and economic backgrounds." More than 90 percent of the parents said that they believed there were powerful educational benefits to diverse schools and classrooms. ¹⁴⁹

Similarly, arecent grassroots movement in Wake County, North Carolina is an example of the strong support that parents, students, and school leaders have for maintaining racially diverse public schools. After a newly-elected school board voted to end the district's class-based school integration policy in favor of returning to neighborhood schools, a large, multiracial group of community members banded together to protest the decision and advocate for maintaining the racially diverse schools that they felt were so important in preparing students for an increasingly diverse society. ¹⁵⁰ Despite the lack of policy attention to matters of racial/ethnic diversity in public schools, many district administrators have still pushed to maintain racial diversity and diversity-based student assignment policies in their schools. For example, after the courts ruled to release the Charlotte Mecklenburg School District in North Carolina from their court-ordered desegregation plan, the district fought against the decision, arguing that they had a compelling interest in maintaining racially integrated schools. They presented evidence for their case on the academic, social, occupational, and civic benefits to racially diverse schools for all students that are "important for living and working in a pluralistic diverse democracy." Teachers from the district also testified that diverse learning environments lead children to become better educated and more tolerant of other racial/ethnic groups. ¹⁵¹

On the other hand, apart from this grassroots support for policies that foster more racially and socioeconomically diverse public schools, even when parents consider diversity to be a benefit, they still tend to choose schools that are homogenous, oftentimes citing measures of "school quality" as the most important factor in making their decisions. ¹⁵² Furthermore, the public school choice process is complicated by increasing inequality, stark segregation, and narrow definitions of "school quality" that align with demographic characteristics of schools. The unfortunate reality is that even for parents who prefer diverse schools, these structural challenges make finding and choosing these schools very difficult. ¹⁵³ One upper-middle- class parent we interviewed in our study of segregation across school district boundaries on Long Island noted that even when you want to place your children in racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse public schools, when your choices of schools are all segregated, you choose segregated schools whether you want it or not. ¹⁵⁴

This parent, and millions like him, know intuitively that educating children in racially segregated schools does not prepare them for living and working in the increasingly diverse society in which they will become adults. As was well-documented in the amicus briefs in the Fisher II case, there is mounting evidence that universities and employers are seeking students and employees who can work with diverse groups of people and who have cross-cultural, group-work skills. Similar to the arguments made in the Fortune 100 brief in the Fisher II case, 318 major employers cited in a survey that one of the most important priorities for employers when they are looking for job candidates is that the potential employee is "comfortable working with colleagues, customers, and/or clients from diverse cultural backgrounds" (96 percent important, including 63 percent very important). ¹⁵⁵

This is in keeping with the statements of several major corporations in the amicus briefs to support affirmative action in higher education and school desegregation in K-12: "businesses competing in the global marketplace are acutely aware that a diverse talent pool, one that includes people with experience working in racially diverse groups, is essential to their continued success. Without qualified people from different racial and cultural backgrounds, and, even more importantly, "cross-cultural competence" among employees and management, U.S. corporations will be ill-equipped to compete in an increasingly diverse world." ¹⁵⁶

One has to wonder why, when so many parents, universities, and employers want to see our children attending less racially isolated public schools, our policy makers are not listening. The lack of attention to this matter on the part of our political leaders is all the more puzzling given the recent backlash against the policies they have recently supported, most notably, standardized tests.

The Backlash against Too Much Emphasis on Standardized Tests

The second major political force that should shift policy makers' attention to addressing ongoing racial/ethnic segregation and the lack of emphasis on the educational benefits of diversity begins with an examination of the standardized-test-driven accountability system, specifically, the extent to which it is driving both racial segregation and a backlash on the part of parents and educators who are saying "too much." We argue that current educational policies and their reliance on narrow measures to judge schools, teachers, and students hold our nation back in terms of efforts to envision racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity as an asset in preparing all children for the twenty-first century. ¹⁵⁷ Further, in an era in which many middle-class and affluent parents and students are stressed out about getting into competitive colleges and universities, ¹⁵⁸ the test-based curriculum so dominant in the K-12 system is not adequately preparing students to succeed in the colleges they most want to attend.

Test scores, more than any other form of information about public education, are now made widely available to the general public and are used to assess the "quality" of each school. The problem is not that schools must administer some standardized form of assessment to ascertain whether students are learning to read or grasping mathematical concepts; rather, it is the enormous amount of weight we place on these narrow measures, making the outcomes-and only them-synonymous with what it mean to be "educated." ¹⁶¹

If all we value about education can be illustrated in a few numbers, then these recent policy developments are acceptable-good even. But if we want more than that, then this trajectory is problematic. Not only does it narrow children's experiences and even the value of their schooling down to a handful of fill-in-the-bubble exams, it also perpetuates and even legitimizes a far-from-colorblind process of racial segregation.

The strong negative correlation between the percentage of black, Latino, and low-income children in a school and its average test scores has been persistent. ¹⁶² There are many cultural and social explanations for this correlation, and they are not an indictment of black and Hispanic students' intelligence. But these understandings are too rarely discussed. ¹⁶³ Meanwhile, if test scores are the only measure of school quality that receive any attention, then only those schools that are predominantly white, or Asian, or both, can be considered "good." ¹⁶⁴

When such values are placed on schools in a manner that strongly correlates to the race and class of the students, then efforts to create more racially/ethnically diverse schools are framed as though white and Asian families are "giving up something" because their schools will not be seen as "excellent." This dampens any enthusiasm white and Asian parents may have for school-level racial "diversity" as a means to prepare children for a global society. ¹⁶⁵

This system also forces educators in "low-achieving" schools serving mostly low-income black and Latino students to fixate on raising test scores via a curriculum focused almost exclusively on the material tested, leaving little room to build upon the knowledge and understandings that students bring to school. Meanwhile, research on learning and pedagogy suggest that the best way to engage students is to build on their existing knowledge and then connect those understandings to more abstract and unfamiliar topics. ¹⁶⁶ Multicultural education and culturally relevant pedagogy have much to offer our efforts to engage students in racially diverse schools and universities-if only these forms of engagement and cross-cultural understanding were a priority. An approach to accountability that relies almost exclusively on standardized tests often has a negative impact on the educational experiences of all children, but particularly those of low-income black and Latino students. It also works directly against political incentives to create more racially and ethnically diverse schools. When the entire educational system is not only separate and unequal along racial/ethnic lines, but also measured, evaluated, and then "valued" almost exclusively according to test scores, the correlation between race and schools deemed to be "bad" based only on these narrow measures is high, exacerbating the race-based inequalities that already exist. Such a system is anything but colorblind, and can only be addressed via a race-conscious and progressive agenda. ¹⁶⁷

Part of that agenda could potentially include several elements found in the newly implemented Common Core Standards reform. In fact, many progressive educators celebrate the fact that the Common Core, if taught in a manner that does not put standardized tests at the center, provides students with the opportunity to engage in close critical readings of complex texts and to question and interrogate what they read. In theory, the Common Core provides teachers with more freedom for planning meaningful literacy experiences for students. The Common Core guidelines even recommend some texts that reflect a departure from the traditional canon that has marginalized students from non-white and low-income backgrounds for many years. ¹⁶⁸

While the mandated tests and teacher evaluation systems designed to measure students' Common Core learning have pushed this reform in the wrong direction, the Common Core actually has far more potential-" progressive potential" even-than is currently being realized. ¹⁶⁹ A small but growing band of educators at the grassroots level are attempting to use the Common Core framework, with its emphasis on "complexity, range, and quality," to engage students in anti-bias texts and in deeper, richer dialogues in which their assumptions are challenged. Such pedagogy is best used in culturally and racially diverse schools and classrooms. Historic civil rights organizations, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, are embracing this progressive potential of the Common Core. Such efforts can and should be shared and expanded. According to teachers working with the Center on these issues, " We see the Common Core as a powerful opportunity to build diversity into instruction and encourage powerful dialogue." ¹⁷⁰

In racially and ethnically diverse schools, such experiences could easily tap into, strengthen, and augment the educational benefits of diversity in a manner similar to what the universities and some schools districts (for example, Lynn, Massachusetts) are arguing for in the courts. Such "educational benefits" include, but are not limited to, fostering livelier and better-informed class discussions that challenge all students to examine their own assumptions, and preparing students to succeed in an increasingly diverse society by garnering greater cross-racial understanding and breaking down stereotypes.

Unfortunately, the mandated tests and teacher evaluation systems that have come to dominate how we measure students' Common Core learning have pushed this reform in the wrong direction, toward a narrow curriculum that undermines its far more progressive potential. When good ideas that could help support racially and ethnically diverse schools and prepare all students for a more dynamic and diverse global economy are being thwarted by a testing regime, it is time to reevaluate the importance we have placed on narrow measures of student achievement. Building on a groundswell of resistance to such approaches across the country, ¹⁷¹ a more race-conscious and progressive policy agenda can unfold. The success of this approach will depend on using the knowledge researchers have gained over the past several decades in both the higher education literature and K-12 literature as discussed in previous sections. The 2015 reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act, now known as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), gives us hope. This legislation not only grants more decision-making power to the states, but it also requires assessments to involve multiple measures of student achievement, including measures that assess higher-order thinking skills and understanding. In other words, student growth may be assessed in the form of portfolios, projects or extended performance tasks. ¹⁷²

Still, the the recent history of "neo-Plessyism" in K-12 education suggests that elementary and secondary policy makers have much to learn from the higher education leaders about how to frame "good" educational practices in relation to racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity in public schools. At the same time, higher education scholars and educators have much to learn from K-12 researchers and teachers about how to connect the sociocultural issues of diverse schools to teaching and learning. All this can lead to a more thoughtful educational policy and practice from kindergarten through graduate school.

As we have noted, despite the policy setbacks against racially diverse public schools, leaders, parents, and advocates at the local level have fought back in support of racial and ethnic diversity in public education. There are still school districts that continue to pursue racial integration in schools and exemplify the benefits integration has for all students regardless of the limits that federal courts have placed on such local decision making. One such example is the interdistrict magnet schools described in greater Hartford which were created by a Connecticut State Supreme Court ruling in 1996 holding that the racial and class segregation in the region's twenty-two school districts denied students the equal educational opportunity put forth in the state's constitution. This led to a concerted effort to reduce racial segregation in and around the Hartford area. The result was a lottery-based magnet school system designed with the goal of achieving racial, ethnic, and economic integration.

By the 2013-14 school year, there were over forty interdistrict magnet schools with different curricular themes and teaching methods in the greater Hartford area serving over sixteen thousand students from multiple suburban communities in and around Hartford. For these schools to maintain their magnet status, they must meet integration standards, which dictate that 25 percent of students must be white and half of the students must be from the suburbs. However, it is important to note that no student is admitted on the basis of their race or ethnicity to meet these requirements. Instead, the schools market to a wide variety of families to enter the lottery. Over the years, the demand among both suburban and urban parents has grown so much that the schools no longer have enough seats for all the families who want to enroll their children. Additionally, there are no admissions requirements like standardized test scores or interviews, so students enter the schools with a wide variety of academic abilities.

The lack of admissions requirements is particularly important when the academic achievement of students outlined in previous sections is reviewed. Over the past several years, students in the interdistrict magnet schools have consistently outperformed their peers in both nonmagnet urban schools and nonmagnet suburban schools. A 2009 study compared academic results between students who had applied to interdistrict magnets in the state and were not selected through the blind lottery and students who were selected for and attended a magnet school. The magnet school students who lived in urban areas, who were mostly black and Latino, made greater gains and did significantly better in math and reading in high school and on reading tests in middle school than students who were not selected. Similarly, the suburban students who attended magnets also outperformed their peers at traditional suburban schools, which were generally more affluent and had a larger percentage of white students. Also, students of color in magnet schools were significantly more likely to say they felt close to white students and had white friends than did students of color who did not attend magnets. Mirroring these results, white students in magnets were significantly more likely than students in nonmagnet schools to say they were close to students of color and had students of color as friends. This suggests that the interdistrict magnet schools in the Hartford region are designed to promote the educational benefits of diversity.

Results like these from Hartford, coupled with other similar efforts in metro areas and small towns across the country, despite support from federal or many state leaders, suggest that where there is a will, there is a way to achieve the educational benefits of diverse schools and classrooms in a manner that will benefit all students.

Conclusion and Policy Recommendations

Educational Policies for the Twenty-First Century

We are at a critical crossroads in American history-a breaking point at which efforts to ignore racial and ethnic inequality will clash with the cultural complexity of our day-to-day lives. At the same time, increased awareness of racialized police tactics and growing income inequality in the United States and its relationship to race has fostered additional frustration with a so-called "colorblind meritocracy." ¹⁷³ Although the old, race-conscious educational policies of yesteryear, especially court-ordered mandatory "bussing" of students for school desegregation, are clearly a thing of the past, there are ample ways that twenty-first century policies can support the creation and sustainability of racially/ethnically diverse public schools to meet growing parental demand and move our increasingly culturally complicated nation forward. This support, however, must go beyond creating schools with diverse enrollments to curricular and accountability approaches that allow educators to tap into the multiple educational benefits of diversity.

In the last decade, federal courts have ruled that the "educational benefits" of diverse universities, schools, and classrooms constitute an important, compelling governmental interest. Such diverse learning environments better prepare students for a global society by reducing racial stereotypes and fostering cross-racial understanding. These rulings were predicated in part on a growing body of research across several fields, including mathematics and science, that show people working in racially and ethnically diverse groups come up with better solutions to problems. Thousands of American universities and corporations have been inspired by this research to provide their students and employees with curriculum and/or trainings on problem solving and diversity-strategies most of our K-12 schools are not teaching. Furthermore, we lack the leadership in public education to make studying, documenting, and promoting those educational practices a priority.

If our demographic destiny, solid research evidence, employers' demands, and the U.S. Supreme Court do not provide policy makers with enough incentive to promote racial and ethnic diversity in our K-12 educational system, then changing racial attitudes should. Opinion polls and interviews show that a growing number of white Americans, especially young adults, harbor less racial prejudice than whites of a prior generation. And again, the percentage of Americans who support students of different racial and ethnic backgrounds attending the same schools has increased dramatically-at least in terms of what people say since the 1950s. Young adults, who are more likely to have attended diverse schools and have children in public schools today, express the most support for racially integrated schools and classrooms.

The current heavy emphasis on standardized tests is detrimental to good teaching that engages students in creative ways. For students who live and will work in a racially diverse and culturally complex society, this strong emphasis on discrete bits of standardized knowledge and information is even more problematic. The current policy focus on standardized testing as the almost exclusive measure of high-achieving students and good schools and teachers does an educational disservice to students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds.

Such understandings work against racially diverse schools in ways that are unfair and erroneous and often lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy via a downward spiral of diverse schools as students with more resources and higher test scores leave. Nearly twenty years ago, scholars predicted this downward spiral of more diverse schools measured by narrow, non-diverse measures. As state testing regimes were first being implemented, they noted that because prior student academic achievement and students' social class are still the strongest predictors of how well a given school will do on academic achievement measures, " focusing state policy on student performance might simply concentrate high-achieving students in a few schools, thereby aggravating current disparities in the racial and socioeconomic composition of schools." ¹⁷⁴

Research on racially diverse high schools from the 1970s revealed that many of these schools had "good" reputations before the more recent accountability measures were implemented. Historical case studies of these schools, however, have also shown that school reputations are incredibly fragile and need to be bolstered-and not undercut-by federal and state policies intended to hold schools accountable. Given everything that racially diverse schools have working against them in a racially segregated and unequal society, such policies should support these schools and not contribute to their demise. ¹⁷⁵

Ironically, yearbooks of these high schools circa late 1970s present smiling, hopeful photos of a mix of students that resembles what we see on many college campuses today. Meanwhile, only two of the six high schools profiled in that study are still diverse today following decades of "colorblind" educational policies that have placed far more emphasis on test scores than diversity. Who and what are preparing our adolescents for the racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse colleges and workplaces they will soon enter? How might educational researchers-those who study higher education and those who study K-12-help provide a good answer to that question; how might their voices be heard?

Policy Recommendations for Fostering the Educational Benefits of Diversity in K-12 Public Schools

Student Assignment and Enrollment Policies.Federal and state policies should provide incentives to districts and schools that attract and stabilize racial and socioeconomically diverse public schools through redrawing attendance boundaries to encompass sections of two racially or ethnically distinct neighborhoods.¹⁷⁶ Similarly, school choice and voluntary transfer plans could be created or amended to keep diverse racial or ethnic school enrollments as a goal. After the 2007 Supreme Court ruling in the Louisville and Seattle cases, there are still race-conscious measures that school districts can use to accomplish this goal, including selective recruitment of students and strategic siting of schools.

Redefining "Good" Schools for the Twenty-first Century. As part of the new ESSA framework, federal and state policies should include indicators of diversity and measures of intergroup relations and intercultural understanding in measuring and judging "good" schools. We have to wonder, given the vast body of research evidence cited above strongly indicating that students educated in racially segregated schools are ill-prepared for higher education or work in our increasingly diverse society or the global economy, why school evaluations do not include measures of racial isolation that count against schools and their school districts as signs of a lack of accountability. On every district and school report card, there should be a measure of the success of all districts and public schools in preparing students for higher education and the workforce through diverse schools and classrooms that incorporate the educational benefits of diversity. No racially segregated school-be it all-black, all-Hispanic, all-Asian or all-white-should be considered "excellent" in our current context.

Teacher Education Programs. There should be a focus on preparing future teachers to foster the educational benefits of diversity by allowing students of different backgrounds to learn from each other in the context of equal status, common goals, and mutual respect. There are a few schools of education in which this is becoming a more central theme in their teacher education programs, but this work needs to be more widely spread moving forward.

Policy Changes from the Bottom Up.Parents and local leaders should engage in efforts to support and stabilize racially and ethnically diverse public schools in both gentrifying urban communities and diversifying suburban communities. Leaders should work with educators in these schools to promote the implementation of student assignment policies and curriculum and teaching strategies that help all students come to more intercultural understanding. These movements are taking place in several local contexts, including Louisville and Wake County, but such efforts are exhausting absent more support from higher levels of government.

If reams of social science evidence is correct in arguing that diversity makes us smarter, and if higher education researchers are correct about their findings related to college students, our elementary and secondary education students have much to learn and gain from public schools that are diverse and in which professional educators know how to build on that diversity to help all students learn deeper, better, and more creatively about themselves and others. In sync with this research, this report argues that the twenty-first century increasingly vocal majority of parents, higher education officials, and employers are right about the educational benefits of diversity, and it is time for our federal and state policy makers to listen.

Amy Stuart Wells is professor of sociology and education and director of the Center for Understanding Race and Education (CURE) at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is also co-director of the Public Good, a nonprofit public school support organization for racially and ethnically diverse schools. Her ongoing research project, "Metro Migrations, Racial Segregation, and School Boundaries," examines urban and suburban demographic change and the role that public schools and their boundaries play in who moves where.

Lauren Fox is an advanced doctoral student in sociology and education at Teachers College and a research associate at CURE. She has previously worked as a consultant to the Department of Justice and the Ford Foundation. Her research focuses on school choice, racial attitudes, and school desegregation.

Diana Cordova-Cobo is a doctoral student in sociology and education at Teachers College and a research assistant for CURE and for the Public Good. Her recent projects have explored race/ethnicity curriculum in higher education, sustaining racially diverse schools, and the impact of gentrification on New York City public schools. She is also a qualitative research assistant for the High School Choice in NYC study based out of The Research Alliance for New York City Schools.

Notes
Creating a New Racial Order: How Immigration, Multiracialism, Genomics, and the Young Can Remake Race in America http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9688.html
2. A. Ehrenhalt, The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 2012), http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/45461/the-great-inversion-and-the-future-of-the-american-city-by-alan-ehrenhalt/9780307474377/; A. S. Wells, D. Ready, A. L. Fox, M. Warner, A. Roda, T. Spence, E. Williams, and A. Wright, "Divided We Fall: The Story of Separate and Unequal Schools 60 Years After Brown v. Board of Education,"The Center for Understanding Race and Education (CURE), Teachers College, Columbia University, May 2, 2014, https://www.academia.edu/6937670/Divided_We_Fall_The_Story_of_Separate_and_Unequal_Suburban_Schools_60_Years_after_Brown_v._Board_of_Education.

3. A. S. Wells et al., "Divided We Fall"; A. S. Wells, L. Fox, D. Ready, M. Warner, A. Wright, and A. Roda, (under review) "The Process of Racial Re-Segregation in Public Education: Implicit Bias and the Housing-School Nexus."

4. Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, 133 S.Ct. 2411 (2013).

7. P. Carter et al., Closing the Opportunity Gap; A. S. Wells, "Seeing Past the 'Colorblind' Myth of Education Policy: Why Policymakers Should Address Racial/Ethnic Inequality and Support Culturally Diverse Schools," policy brief, National Education Policy Center, Boulder, CO, 2014, http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/pb-colorblind_0.pdf.

8. Milliken v. Bradley, 418 S.Ct. 717 (1974).

9. J. E. Fiel, "Decomposing School Resegregation: Social Closure, Racial Imbalance, and Racial Isolation," American Sociological Review 78, no. 5 (October 2013): 828-848, http://asr.sagepub.com/content/78/5/828.full.pdf+html; G. Orfield, E. Frankenberg, J. Ee, and J. Kuscera, "Brown at 60: Great Progress, a Long Retreat and an Uncertain Future," The Civil Rights Project, UCLA, May 15, 2014, http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/brown-at-60-great-progress-a-long-retreat-and-an-uncertain-future/Brown-at-60-051814.pdf.

10. Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 S.Ct. 265 (1978).

11. P. Gurin, E. L. Dey, S. Hurtado, and G. Gurin, "Diversity and Higher Education: Theory and Impact on Educational Outcomes," Harvard Educational Review 72, no. 3 (September 2002): 330-66, http://www.hepgjournals.org/doi/abs/10.17763/haer.72.3.01151786u134n051.

12. M. Chang, "Post-Fisher: The Unfinished Research Agenda on Student Diversity in Higher Education," Educational Researcher, no. 42 (April 2013): 172-73, http://edr.sagepub.com/content/42/3/172.extract.

13. J. D. Anderson, "Race-conscious Educational Policies versus a 'Color-blind Constitution': A Historical Perspective," Educational Researcher 36, no. 5 (June 2007): 249-57, http://edr.sagepub.com/content/36/5/249.short; J. Boger et al., School Resegregation: Must the South Turn Back?

14. A. B. Gordon, "When the Classroom Speaks: A Public University's First Amendment Right to a Race-Conscious Admissions Policy," Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice 6, no. 1 (April 2000): 57, http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1087&context=crsj.

15. See ex. such as: L. C. Bollinger, "On the Importance of Diversity in University Admissions," Association of American Universities (April 14, 1997), http://www.aau.edu/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=1652; L.C. Bollinger, "A Long, Slow Drift from Racial Justice," New York Times, June 24, 2013, A27, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/opinion/a-long-slow-drift-from-racial-justice.html; L. C. Bollinger, "The Need for Diversity in Higher Education," Academic Medicine 78, no. 5 (May 2003): 431-436, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12742776; W. G. Bowen and D. Bok, The Shape of the River: Long-term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6374.html; M. J. Chang, "Preservation or Transformation: Where's the Real Educational Discourse on Diversity?" The Review of Higher Education 25, no. 2 (Winter 2002): 125-40, http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/review_of_higher_education/v025/25.2chang.html; P. Gurin,, E.L. Dey, S. Hurtado, and G. Gurin, "Diversity and Higher Education: Theory and Impact on Educational Outcomes," Harvard Educational Review 72, no. 3 (September 2002): 330-66, http://hepgjournals.org/doi/abs/10.17763/haer.72.3.01151786u134n051; S. Hurtado and L. DeAngelo, "Linking Diversity and Civic-Minded Practices With Student Outcomes: New Evidence from National Surveys," Liberal Education 98, no. 2 (Spring 2012), http://aacu.org/publications-research/periodicals/linking-diversity-and-civic-minded-practices-student-outcomes-new; S. Hurtado, A. R. Alvarado, and C. Guillermo-Wann, "Thinking about Race: The Salience of Racial Identity at Two-and Four-year Colleges and the Climate for Diversity," The Journal of Higher Education 86, no. 1 (January/February 2015): 127-55, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3zr0972z; J.F. Milem, "The Educational Benefits of Diversity: Evidence From Multiple Sectors," in Compelling Interest: Examining the Evidence on Racial Dynamics in Higher Education, ed.M. Chang, D. Witt, J. Jones, and K. Hakuta (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=1274.

16. See examples such as: L. C. Bollinger, "On the Importance of Diversity in University Admissions"; Bollinger, "A Long, Slow Drift from Racial Justice"; L. C. Bollinger, "The Need for Diversity in Higher Education": 431-436; W. G. Bowen et al., The Shape of the River; M. J. Chang, "Preservation or Transformation": 125-40; P. Gurin et al., "Diversity and Higher Education: 330-66; S. Hurtado et al., "Linking Diversity and Civic-Minded Practices With Student Outcomes"; S. Hurtado et al., "Thinking About Race": 127-55; J. F. Milem, "The Educational Benefits of Diversity."

17. N. F. P. Gilfoyle, "Brief of amici curiae: The American Psychological Association in Support of Respondents in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin," November 2, 2015, http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/14-981bsacAmericanPsychologicalAssociation.pdf; "Brief of The American Educational Research Association, et.al. as amici curiae in Support of Respondents in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin," October, 30, 2015, http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/14-981bsacAmericanEducationalResearchAssociationEtAl.pdf.

18. M. J. Chang, "Does Racial Diversity Matter?: The Educational Impact of a Racially Diverse Undergraduate Population," Journal of College Student Development 40,no. 4(July 1999): 377-95, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232547545_Does_Racial_Diversity_Matter_The_Educational_Impact_of_a_Racially_Diverse_Undergraduate_Population; "Brief of Amicus Curiae: The American Psychological Association in Support of Respondents in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin."

19. "Brief of the American Educational Research Association et.al. as amici curiae in Support of Respondents in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin"; A. L. Antonio, M. J. Chang, K. Hakuta, D. A. Kenny, S. Levin, and J. F. Milem, "Effects of Racial Diversity on Complex Thinking in College Students," Psychological Science 15, no. 8 (August 2004): 507-510, http://pss.sagepub.com/content/15/8/507.short.

20. "Brief of the American Educational Research Association et.al. as amici curiae in Support of Respondents in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin"; M. E. Deo, "The Promise of Grutter: Diverse Interactions at the University of Michigan Law School," Michigan Journal of Race & Law 17, no. 1 (2011): 63, http://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1020&context=mjrl.

21. "Brief of amici curiae: The American Psychological Association in Support of Respondents in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin"; J. A. Richeson, S. Trawalter, and J. N. Shelton, "African Americans' Implicit Racial Attitudes and the Depletion of Executive Function After Interracial Interactions," Social Cognition 23, no. 4 (2005): 336-52, http://groups.psych.northwestern.edu/spcl/documents/blk_stroop.pdf.

22. "Brief of amici curiae: The American Psychological Association in Support of Respondents in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin"; J. A. Richeson, A. A. Baird, H. L. Gordon, T. F. Heatherton, C. L. Wyland, S. Trawalter, and J. N. Shelton, "An fMRI Investigation of the Impact of Interracial Contact on Executive Function," Nature Neuroscience 6, no. 12 (November 2003): 1323-328, http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v6/n12/abs/nn1156.html.

23. "Brief of amici curiae: The American Psychological Association in Support of Respondents in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin."

24. "Brief of amici curiae: The American Psychological Association in Support of Respondents in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin"; A. L. Antonio et al., "Effects of Racial Diversity on Complex Thinking in College Students"; S. R. Sommers, L. S. Warp, and C. C. Mahoney, "Cognitive Effects of Racial Diversity: White Individuals' Information Processing in Heterogeneous Groups," Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44, no. 4 (July 2008): 1129-136, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103108000036; R. N. Pitt and J. Packard, "Activating Diversity: The Impact of Student Race on Contributions to Course Discussions," The Sociological Quarterly 53, no. 2 (Spring 2012): 295-320, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1533-8525.2012.01235.x/abstract.

25. "Brief of the American Educational Research Association et.al. as amici curiae in Support of Respondents in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin."

26. "Brief of Brown University, University of Chicago, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Stanford University, Vanderbilt University and Yale University in Support of Respondents in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin," November 2, 2015, https://www.utexas.edu/vp/irla/Documents/ACR%20Brown%20University%20et%20al.pdf.

27. "Brief of the American Educational Research Association et.al. as amici curiae in Support of Respondents in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin"; T.F. Pettigrew and L. R. Tropp, "A Meta-analytic Test of Intergroup Contact Theory," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90, no. 5 (2006): 751, http://www.iaccp.org/sites/default/files/pettigrew_tropp_2006_contact_theory_0.pdf; T. F. Pettigrew and L. R. Tropp, "How Does Intergroup Contact Reduce Prejudice? Meta‐analytic Tests of Three Mediators," European Journal of Social Psychology 38, no.6 (2008): 922-934, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229779236_How_Does_Intergroup_Contact_Reduce_Prejudice_Meta-Analytic_Tests_of_Three_Mediators; K. Davies, L. R. Tropp, A. Aron, T. F. Pettigrew, and S. C. Wright, "Cross-Group Friendships and Intergroup Attitudes: A Meta-Analytic Review," Personality and Social Psychology Review 15, no. 4(2011): 332-51, http://psr.sagepub.com/content/15/4/332.abstract.

28. "Brief of the American Educational Research Association et.al. as amici curiae in Support of Respondents in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin"; "Brief of amici curiae: The American Psychological Association in Support of Respondents in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin."

29. "Brief of Brown University et al. in Support of Respondents in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. "

31. "Brief of amici curiae: The American Psychological Association in Support of Respondents in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin"; N. A. Bowman, "How Much Diversity is Enough? The Curvilinear Relationship Between College Diversity Interactions and First-year Student Outcomes," Research in Higher Education 54, no.8 (December 2013): 874-894, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257658414_How_Much_Diversity_is_Enough_The_Curvilinear_Relationship_Between_College_Diversity_Interactions_and_First-Year_Student_Outcomes.

32. "Brief of amici curiae: The American Psychological Association in Support of Respondents in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin"; M. J. Chang, M. K. Eagan, M. H. Lin, and S. Hurtado, "Considering the Impact of Racial Stigmas and Science Identity: Persistence Among Biomedical and Behavioral Science Aspirants," The Journal of Higher Education 82, no. 5 (September/October 2011): 564, http://www.trincoll.edu/Academics/centers/teaching/Documents/Week%203%20-%20Considering%20the%20Impact%20of%20Racial%20Stigmas%20and%20Science%20Identity.pdf; "Dual Pathways to a Better America: Preventing Discrimination and Promoting Diversity, " final report, American Psychological Association (2012): 70-72, http://www.apa.org/pubs/info/reports/dual-pathways-report.pdf.

33. "Brief of Brown University et al. in Support of Respondents in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin"; "Brief of the American Educational Research Association et.al. as amici curiae in Support of Respondents in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin."

34. M. J. Chang, "Reconsidering the Diversity Rationale," Liberal Education 91, no. 1 (Winter 2005), https://www.aacu.org/publications-research/periodicals/reconsidering-diversity-rationale.

35. K. Phillips, "How Diversity Makes Us Smarter," Scientific American 311, no. 4 (October 2014), http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-smarter/; M. Lagace, "Racial Diversity Pays Off," Harvard Business School Working Knowledge (June 2004), http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/racial-diversity-pays-off; see also, S. E. Page, The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8757.html.

36. M. J. Chang, "Post-Fisher: The Unfinished Research Agenda on Student Diversity in Higher Education," Educational Researcher 42, no. 3 (April 2013): 172-73, http://edr.sagepub.com/content/42/3/172.extract.

37. M. J. Chang, "Reconsidering the Diversity Rationale."

38. M. J. Chang, "Post-Fisher."

39. S. Hurtado and L. Deangelo, "Linking Diversity and Civic-Minded Practices With Student Outcomes," Liberal Education 98, no. 2 (Spring 2012), https://www.aacu.org/publications-research/periodicals/linking-diversity-and-civic-minded-practices-student-outcomes-new.

41. R. A. Mickelson, "Twenty-first Century Social Science Research on School Diversity and Educational Outcomes"; G. D. Borman and N. M. Dowling, "Schools and Inequality: A Multilevel Analysis of Coleman's Equality of Educational Opportunity Data," Teachers College Record 112, (2010): 1201-246, http://www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?Contentid=15664; A. S. Wells, J. J. Holme, A. J. Revilla, and A. K. Atanda, Both Sides Now: The Story of School Desegregation's Graduates (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009), http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520256781; G. Orfield and E. Frankenberg, "Brown at 60: Great Progress, a Long Retreat, and an Uncertain Future," The Civil Rights Project, May 2014, http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/brown-at-60-great-progress-a-long-retreat-and-an-uncertain-future/Brown-at-60-051814.pdf.

43. G. Orfield, "Schools More Separate: Consequences of a Decade of Resegregation," The Civil Rights Project,Harvard University, July 2001, http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/schools-more-separate-consequences-of-a-decade-of-resegregation/orfield-schools-more-separate-2001.pdf.

44. Sarah S. Ellsworth, "CREC Student Achievement Overview 2013," Capitol Region Education Council, Office of Data Analysis, Research and Technology, Hartford, CT, 2013, http://sheffmovement.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/CREC-Student-Achievement-Overview-2013.pdf.

45. Christine Rossell and David J. Armor, "The Effectiveness of School Desegregation Remedies, 1968-1991," American Politics Quarterly 24, (1996): 267-302, https://www.bu.edu/polisci/files/people/faculty/rossell/papers/EffectivenessSchoolDeseg.pdf; David J. Armor, "Desegregation and Achievement," in School Desegregation in the 21st Century, ed. C.H. Rossell, D.J. Armor, and H. Walberg (New York: Praeger, 2002).

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62. Ibid.

63. Ibid., 107-10.

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83. M. Chang, "Post-Fisher"; S. Hurtado, "Linking Diversity with the Educational and Civic Missions of Higher Education," The Review of Higher Education 30, no. 2 (Winter 2007): 185-96, https://www.usc.edu/dept/education/ASHE/docs/ASHE_Presidential_Hurtado.pdf.

84. J. B. Banks and C. A. M. Banks, ed., Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education (New York: Macmillan, 1995): 9, https://web.stanford.edu/~apadilla/PadillaQuantMultiCultural04.pdf.

86. T. S. Weisner, R. Gallimore, and C. Jordan, "Unpacking Cultural Effects on Classroom Learning: Native Hawaiian Peer Assistance and Child-Generated Activity," Anthropology and Education Quarterly 19, (1988): 327-51, http://tweisner.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/Weisner_Gallimore_Jordan_19937_Unpacking_classroom_learning_F18.231165856.pdf.

87. R. G. Tharp, "Research Knowledge and Policy Issues in Cultural Diversity and Education," Language and Learning: Educating Linguistically Diverse Students, (1994): 129-67, https://www.academia.edu/4015971/Research_knowledge_and_policy_issues_in_cultural_diversity_and_education.

88. C. A. Grant and C. E. Sleeter, Doing Multicultural Education for Achievement and Equity (New York, NY: Taylor and Francis, 2007), http://christinesleeter.org/doing-multicultural-education/.

89. C. E. Sleeter, "Preparing Teachers for Multiracial and Historically Underserved Schools," in Lessons in Integration: Realizing the Promise of Racial Diversity in America's Schools, ed. G. Orfield and E. Frankenburg (The Civil Rights Project, University of Virginia Press, 2007): 171-98, http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/lessons-in-integration-realizing-the-promise-of-racial-diversity-in-american-schools.

91. D. Hess, Controversy in the Classroom.

92. Ibid.

93. P. Carter et al., Closing the Opportunity Gap.

94. S. Brown-Jeffy and J. E. Cooper, "Toward a Conceptual Framework of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: An Overview of the Conceptual and Theoretical Literature," Teacher Education Quarterly 38, no. 1 (March 2012): 65-84, https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/J_Cooper_Toward_2012.pdf.

95. G. Gay, Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research and Practice (New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 2000), https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=rYspC7C-zowC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=Culturally+Responsive+Teaching:+Theory,+Research+and+Practice&ots=ElagiB96BI&sig=M2p52Y9MuVDd8J-S14WjELjvU0M#v=onepage&q=Culturally%20Responsive%20Teaching%3A%20Theory%2C%20Research%20and%20Practice&f=false; G. Ladson Billings, "Culturally Relevant Teaching: The Key to Making Multicultural Education Work," in Research and Multicultural Education, ed. C.A. Grant (London, UK: Falmer Press, 1992); G. Ladson Billings and W. F. Tate, "Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education," Teachers College Record 97, no. 1 (1995): 47-68, http://www.unco.edu/cebs/diversity/pdfs/towardacrteduca.pdf; S. Nieto, Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education, 4th ed. (New York: Allyn & Bacon, 2002).

96. G. Gay, Culturally Responsive Teaching; A. L. Goodwin, ed., Assessment for Equity and Inclusion: Embracing All Our Children (New York, NY: Routledge, 1997), https://www.routledge.com/products/9780415914734; V. O. Pang, Multicultural Education: A Caring-centered, Reflective Approach, 2nd ed. (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2005), http://www.mhhe.com/catalogs/0072985526.mhtml.

97. A. L. Goodwin, "Curriculum as Colonizer: (Asian) American Education in the Current Context," Teachers College Record 112, no. 12 (2010): 3102-138, http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ913414.

98. A. L. Goodwin, "Curriculum as Colonizer," 3120.

99. S. Brown-Jeffy and J. E. Cooper, "Toward a Conceptual Framework of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy"; T. K. Chapman, "Desegregation and Multicultural Education: Teachers Embracing and Manipulating Reforms," The Urban Review 40, no. 1 (March 2008): 42-63, http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ786818; T. C. Howard, Why Race and Culture Matters in Schools (New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 2010), https://books.google.com/books/about/Why_Race_and_Culture_Matter_in_Schools.html?id=y9olQwAACAAJ; G. Ladson Billings and W. F. Tate, "Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education"; M. Lynn, "Inserting the 'Race': into Critical Pedagogy: An Analysis of 'Race-Based Epistemologies'," Educational Philosophy and Theory 36, no. 2 (March 2004): 153-65, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-5812.2004.00058.x/abstract; H. R. Milner, "Critical Race Theory and Interest Convergence as Analytic Tools in Teacher Education Policies and Practices," Journal of Teacher Education 59, no. 4 (September/October 2008): 332-46, http://jte.sagepub.com/content/59/4/332.

100. G. Gay, Culturally Responsive Teaching.

101. A. Darder, Culture and Power: A Critical Foundation for Bicultural Education (Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 1991), https://books.google.com/books?id=DHV5aXJayN4C; J. Duncan-Andrade and E. Morrell, The Art of Critical Pedagogy: Possibilities for Moving From Theory to Practice in Urban Schools (New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2008), http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?event=cmp.ccc.seitenstruktur.detailseiten&seitentyp=produkt&pk=46068; M. Fisher, Writing in Rhythm: Spoken Word Poetry in Urban Classrooms (New York: Teachers College Press, 2007), https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/7108658; D. Stovall, "We Can Relate: Hip-hop Culture, Critical Pedagogy, and the Secondary Classroom," Urban Education 41, no. 6 (November 2006): 585-602, http://uex.sagepub.com/content/41/6/585.abstract.

102. C. Emdin, "Reality Pedagogy and Urban Science Education: Towards a Comprehensive Understanding of the Urban Science Classroom," in Second International Handbook of Science Education, ed. B. Fraser, K. Tobin, and C. J. McRobbie (Springer Netherlands, 2012): 63, https://www.springer.com/us/book/9781402090400 wt_mc=ThirdParty.SpringerLink.3.EPR653.About_eBook.

103. Educational Researcher 41, no. 3 (2012): 93-97, https://www.stanford.edu/class/linguist159/restricted/readings/Paris2012.pdf.

104. G. Ladson-Billings, "Culturally Relevant Pedagogy 2.0: Aka the Remix," Harvard Educational Review 84, no. 1 (April 2014): 74-84, http://hepgjournals.org/doi/abs/10.17763/haer.84.1.p2rj131485484751?journalCode=haer.

105. C. C. Burris, On the Same Track: How Schools Can Join the Twenty-first-century Struggle Against Resegregation (Boston: Beacon Press, 2014); J. Oakes, Keeping Track (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985); J. Oakes, "Can tracking research inform practice? Technical, normative, and political considerations," Educational Researcher 21, no. 4 (May, 1992): 12-21; J. Oakes, Multiplying Inequalities: The Effects of Race, Social Class, and Tracking on Opportunities to Learn Mathematics and Science (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 1990), http://www.rand.org/pubs/reports/R3928.html; D. Hess, Controversy in the Classroom.

106. National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, https://nces.ed.gov/.

107. D. S. Massey and N. A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674018211.

108. J. Harrigan and R. Vogel, Political Change in the Metropolis (New York, NY: Longman, 1993), http://www.abebooks.com/9780321202284/Political-Change-Metropolis-Vogel-Ronald-0321202287/plp.

109. J. Harrigan and R. Vogel, Political Change in the Metropolis.

111. W. H. Frey, "Melting Pot Cities and Suburbs: Racial and Ethnic Change in Metro America in the 2000s," Brookings Institution, Metropolitan Policy Program, (May 2011), http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2011/5/04%20census%20ethnicity%20frey/0504_census_ethnicity_frey.pdf.

112. W. H. Lucy and D. L. Phillips, "Suburbs: Patterns of Growth and Decline," in Redefining Urban & Suburban America: Evidence from Census 2000 (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2003): 117, http://www.brookings.edu/research/books/2006/redefiningurbanandsuburbanamerica3.

113. "Metropolitan Racial and Ethnic Change-Census 2000," Lewis Mumford Center, University of Albany, SUNY, 2000, http://mumford.albany.edu/census/.

114. C. Leinberger, "The Next Slum?" The Atlantic, March, 2008, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/03/the-next-slum/306653/.

115. W. H. Frey, "Melting Pot Cities and Suburbs."

116. W. H. Frey, "Melting Pot Cities and Suburbs"; L. Lees, T. Slatter, and E. Wyly, Gentrification (New York, NY: Routledge. 2008); C. Leinberger, "The Next Slum?"; A. Ehrenhalt, The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City.

117. S. Sassen, Cities in a World Economy (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2000), https://books.google.com/books/about/Cities_in_a_world_economy.html?id=JNUPAQAAMAAJ.

118. C. Leinberger, "The Next Slum?"

119. A. Ehrenhalt, The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City.

120. L. Gallagher, The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving (New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2013), https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15811507-the-end-of-the-suburbs.

121. A. Ehrenhalt, The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City.

122. L. Freeman, There Goes the Hood: Views of Gentrification from the Ground Up (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2006), https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/342317.There_Goes_the_Hood.

123. M. Orfield and T. Luce, "America's Racially Diverse Suburbs: Opportunities and Challenges," Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity, University of Minnesota Law School, (July 2012), https://www1.law.umn.edu/uploads/e0/65/e065d82a1c1da0bfef7d86172ec5391e/Diverse_Suburbs_FINAL.pdf.

124.&nbsp; E. Kneebone and A. Berube, Confronting Suburban Poverty In America (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 2012). http://confrontingsuburbanpoverty.org/resources/the-book/.

125. A. Ehrenhalt, The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City.

126. M. B. Cucchiara, M.B. E. M. Horvat, "Perils and Promises: Middle-Class Parental Involvement in Urban Schools," American Education Research Journal 46, no. 4 (2009): 974-1004, http://aer.sagepub.com/content/46/4/974.short; M. Cucchiara, Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities: Who Wins and Who Loses When Schools Become Urban Amenities (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2013), http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo15112913.html; L. E. Posey-Maddox, When Middle-Class Parents Choose Urban Schools: Class, Race, and the Challenge of Equity in Public Education (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014), http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo17508026.html; A. Roda and A. S. Wells, "School Choice Policies and Racial Segregation: Where White Parents' Good Intentions, Anxiety, and Privilege Collide," American Journal of Education 119 , no. 2 (February 2013): 261-93, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/668753?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents.

127. E. Frankenberg and G. Orfield, ed., The Resegregation of Suburban Schools: A Hidden Crisis in American Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2012), http://hepg.org/hep-home/books/the-resegregation-of-suburban-schools_168; A. S. Wells et al., "Divided We Fall."

128. A. S. Wells et al., "Divided We Fall."

129. P. Carter and Kevin Welner, ed., Closing the Opportunity Gap; A. S. Wells and J. J. Holme, "No Accountability for Diversity."

130. J. J. Holme and A. S. Wells, "School Choice Beyond District Borders: Lessons for the Reauthorization of NCLB from Interdistrict Desegregation and Open Enrollment Plans," in Improving on No Child Left Behind, ed. Richard Kahlenberg (New York, NY: The Century Foundation, 2008): 139-216, http://www.tcf.org/bookstore/detail/improving-on-no-child-left-behind; A. S. Wells and J. J. Holme, "No Accountability for Diversity."

131. J. H. Enten, "Bill de Blasio's Diverse Coalition Could Clinch Contest for New York Mayor," The Guardian, September 10, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/10/bill-deblasio-new-york-mayor; A. S. Wells et al., Both Sides Now.

132. J. H. Enten, "Bill de Blasio's Diverse Coalition Could Clinch Contest for New York Mayor."

133. S. Adair, "Challenging Public School Resegregation: The Use of Small-Scale Social Movements to Preserve the Promise of Brown," dissertation, Pennsylvania State University, 2005, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/35454070_Challenging_public_school_resegregation_electronic_resource_the_use_of_small-scale_social_movements_to_preserve_the_promise_of_Brown; N. Lacireno-Paquet and C. Brantley, "Who Chooses Schools, and Why?" in Exploring the School Choice Universe: Evidence and Recommendations, ed. G. Miron, K. Welner, P. Hinchey, and W. Mathis (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 2013), http://www.infoagepub.com/products/Exploring-the-School-Choice-Universe; G. Orfield, "Schools More Separate"; J. Powell, "An "Integrated" Theory of Integrated Education," paper presented at the conference on Resegregation of Southern Schools, Chapel Hill, N.C., 2002; J. Stillman, "Tipping In: School Integration in Gentrifying Neighborhoods," doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 2011, http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac%3A132299; A. S. Wells et al., Both Sides Now.

134. R. Alba and V. Nee, Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674018136; M. Krysan and N. Faison, "Racial Attitudes in America: A Brief Summary of the Updated Data," Institute of Government and Public Affairs, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2011, https://igpa.uillinois.edu/programs/racial-attitudes/brief.

135. R. Alba and V. Nee, Remaking the American Mainstream; M. Krysan and N. Faison, "Racial Attitudes in America"; J. Louie, "We Don't Feel Welcome Here: African Americans and Hispanics in Metro Boston," The Civil Rights Project, Harvard University, April 2005, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/78x669h0#page-1.

136. M. Krysan and N. Faison, "Racial Attitudes in America."

137. M. Krysan and N. Faison, "Racial Attitudes in America"; J. Louie, "We Don't Feel Welcome Here."

138. R. Alba and V. Nee, Remaking the American Mainstream.

139. P. Kasinitz, J. Mollenkopf, and M. Waters, Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age (New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation Publications, 2010), https://www.russellsage.org/publications/inheriting-city.

140. C. Clotfelter, "Are Whites Still Fleeing? Racial Patterns and Enrollment Shifts in Urban Public Schools 1987-1996," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 20, no. 2 (2001): 199-221, https://duke.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/are-whites-still-fleeing-racial-patterns-and-enrollment-shifts-in.

141. M. T. Hallinan, "Diversity Effects on Student Outcomes"; T.F. Pettigrew and L. R. Tropp, "A Meta-analytic Test of Intergroup Contact Theory"; M. Kurlaender, "The Benefits of Racial/Ethnic Diversity in Elementary and Secondary Education," in The Benefits of Racial and Ethnic Diversity and Elementary and Secondary Schools (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 2006), 79-84, http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/112806diversity.pdf; W. Hawley, "Diversity and Educational Quality," unpublished manuscript, University of Maryland, College Park, 2002; M. R. Jackman and M. Crane, "Some of My Best Friends are Black...: Interracial Friendship and Whites' Racial Attitudes," Public Opinion Quarterly 50, no. 4 (1986): 459-86, http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/content/50/4/459.short; A. S. Wells et al., Both Sides Now.

142. G. Orfield, "Public Opinion and School Desegregation,"
Teachers College Record 96, no. 4 (1995): 654-70.=

143. Metropolitan Center for Urban Education. With All Deliberate
Speed: Achievement, Citizenship and Diversity in American Education (New York: Steinhardt School of Education, New York University, 2005), http://www.swannfellowship.org/Research/Files07/WithAllDeliberate.pdf.

144. E. Cose, "Beyond Brown v. Board: The Final Battle for Excellence in American Education," Rockefeller Foundation, 2004, survey published in Newsweek Magazine.

145. J. Stillman, "Tipping In"; N. Lacireno-Paquet and C. Brantley, "Who Chooses Schools, and Why?"

146. E. Frankenberg and R. Jacobsen, "The Polls-Trends School Integration Polls," Public Opinion Quarterly 75, no. 4 (Winter 2011): 788-811, http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/content/75/4/788.

147. G. Orfield and E. Frankenberg, "Experiencing Integration in Louisville: How Parents and Students See the Gains and Challenges," The Civil Rights Project, UCLA, January 2011, http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/experiencing-integration-in-louisville-how-parents-and-students-see-the-gains-and-challenges/LOUISVILLE_finalV3_12711.pdf.

148. A. Semuels, "The City That Believed in Desegregation," The Atlantic, March 27, 2015, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/the-city-that-believed-in-desegregation/388532/.

149. G. Orfield and E. Frankenberg, "Experiencing Integration in Louisville."

150. M. Baker, "North Carolina School Board Debate Over Potential Resegregation Sparks Fiery Protests," Huffington Post, July 21, 2010, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/21/north-carolina-school-boa_n_653935.html.

151. U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, "Table of Authorities," http://www.justice.gov/crt/table-authorities-5.

152. N. Lacireno-Paquet and C. Brantley, "Who Chooses Schools, and Why?"; A. Roda and A. S. Wells, "School Choice Policies and Racial Segregation."

153. N. Lacireno-Paquet and C. Brantley, "Who Chooses Schools, and Why?"; A. S. Wells et al., Both Sides Now.

154. A. S. Wells et al.,"Divided We Fall."

155. "It Takes More Than a Major: Employer Priorities for College Learning and Student Success," An Online Survey Among Employers Conducted on Behalf of The Association of American Colleges and Universities, Hart Research Associates, April, 10, 2013, https://www.aacu.org/sites/default/files/files/LEAP/2013_EmployerSurvey.pdf.

156. See briefs in Grutter v. Bollinger et al., 539 S.Ct. 306 (2003), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-241.ZO.html; "It Takes More Than a Major."

157. P. Carter and K. Welner, Closing the Opportunity Gap; S. Wells and J. J. Holme, "No Accountability for Diversity"; A. S. Wells, "Seeing Past the "Colorblind" Myth of Education Policy: Addressing Racial and Ethnic Inequality and Supporting Culturally Diverse Schools," (Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center, 2014), http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/pb-colorblind_0.pdf.

158. L. Weiss, Class Warfare: Class, Race and College Admissions in Top-Tier Secondary Schools (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2013): 1-28, http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo18009024.html.

159. C. T. Cross, Political Education: National Policy Comes of Age (New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 2010), http://store.tcpress.com/0807751510.shtml; R. L. Linn, "Reporting School Quality in Standards-based Accountability Systems: CRESST Policy Brief no. 3," National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing, Spring 2001, http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED455251; D. Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2011), https://books.google.com/books?id=O23Q4Coh7Y0C.

160. Implementing the Common Core State Standards (Washington DC: Common Core State Standards Initiative, September 2013), http://www.corestandards.org/standards-in-your-state/; R. L. Linn, "Reporting School Quality in Standards-based Accountability Systems."

161. L. Darling-Hammond, The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future (New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 2010), http://store.tcpress.com/0807749621.shtml; J. Horn and D. Wilburn, The Mismeasure of Education (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Press, 2013), http://www.infoagepub.com/products/the-mismeasure-of-education; C. H. Tienken and Y. Zhao, "How Common Standards and Standardized Testing Widen the Opportunity Gap," in Closing the Opportunity Gap.

162. R. Rothstein, "Why Children from Lower Socioeconomics Classes, on Average, Have Lower Academic Achievement Than Middle-class Children," in Closing the Opportunity Gap: 61-76.

164. R. Rothstein, "Why Children from Lower Socioeconomics Classes, on Average, Have Lower Academic Achievement Than Middle-class Children," in Closing the Opportunity Gap: 61-76.

165. A. S. Wells et al., Both Sides Now.

166. L. Bartolome, "Beyond the Methods Fetish: Toward a Humanizing Pedagogy," Harvard Educational Review 64, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 173-94, http://hepg.org/her-home/issues/harvard-educational-review-volume-64,-issue-2/herarticle/toward-a-humanizing-pedagogy_349; T. C. Howard, Why Race and Culture Matters in Schools.

167. A. S. Wells, "Seeing Past the "Colorblind" Myth of Education Policy."

168. "Perspectives for a Diverse America," from Teaching Tolerance 43, Southern Poverty Law Center (Spring 2013), http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-43-spring-2013/perspectives.

169. V. Strauss and C. Burris, "How Come Officials Could Predict New Test Score Results?" from w ashingtonpost.com (August 12, 2013), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2013/08/12/how-come-officials-could-predict-results-on-new-test-scores/.

170. "Perspectives for a Diverse America," from Teaching Tolerance, http://perspectives.tolerance.org/.

171. S. Simon, "Parents Protest Surge in Standardized Testing" Reuters, U.S. edition (June 12, 2012), http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-education-testing-idUSBRE85B0EO20120612.

172. National Conference of State Legislatures, Summary of Every Student Succeeds Act, Legislation Reauthorizing The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, National Conference of State Legislatures, 2010, http://www.ncsl.org/documents/capitolforum/2015/onlineresources/summary_12_10.pdf.

173. I. H. Lopez, Dog Whistle Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); P. Krugman, "Losing Our Country," New York Times, June 10, 2005, A2.

174. R. Elmore and S. Fuhrman, "Opportunity-to-learn standards and the state role in education," Teachers College Record 96, no. 3 (1995): 432-57,
http://www.ncela.us/files/rcd/BE022357/Opportunity_to_Learn.pdf.

175. A. S. Wells and J. J. Holme, "No Accountability for Diversity."

176. See Halley Potter and Kimberly Quick, with Elizabeth Davies, "A New Wave of School Integration Districts and Charters Pursuing Socioeconomic Diversity," The Century Foundation, February 9, 2016, https://tcfdotorg.atavist.com/a-new-wave-of-school-integration.

Tags: education, race, socioeconomic integration, diversity, k-12 education

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How Racially Diverse Schools and Classrooms Can Benefit All Students

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After decades in the political wilderness, school integration seems poised to make a serious comeback as an education reform strategy. Sixty-two years ago, Brown v. Board of Education held that separate schools for black and white students are inherently unequal.

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Diversity is more than enrolling students of different races in a school. The school atmosphere should demonstrate celebration and acknowledgement of students from all races through arranging activities that encourages students to communicate and collaborate.

Diverse ideas or knowledge of the content: A heterogeneous team breeds heterogeneous thoughts. It is always an adventure when students sit together and brainstorm. Student's thoughts expressed verbally, graphically or in writing reveal a wealth of information on students thinking. The video " Innovation through diversity" http://youtu.be/FjrjiSecZv0 clearly indicates that innovation occurs when diverse mind collaborate. The Center for American Progress demonstrates the same notion of diversity powering innovation in the resources found in their website: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/view/

Diverse skills: In teamwork, student'sdiverse skills are harnessed to contribute and add value to the team efforts. For instance, in a jigsaw activity team members take different roles and become experts on their subject. A jigsaw activity enables students to participate in real world experience of teams, departments and so on. The experts jobs ranges from presenter, researcher, designer, and author. Also in a 21 st century classroom where diverse technology present diverse challenges, an instructor fair well with the help of the skillful students who are ready to troubleshoot.

Diverse motivation to participate: When student work in a team, team members have an influence on each other, which contribute to the team dynamic. Uninterested students will participate in an activity if their peers are engaged.

Diverse reaction or interpretation of situations: Diverse personality faces challenges differently. In a diverse team there is sufficient mind power and problem solving skills. Discouraged team members are motivated when other members handle a situation positively.

Lastly, the diverse qualities in students interlock to produce a rigid body essential for building a healthy learning atmosphere.

In a diverse learning environment, all students are encouraged to become...

Instructors can use flexible technology to meet the needs of diverse learners:
http://www.wested.org/cs/we/print/docs/we/home.htm http://www.udlcenter.org/implementation/examples
Instructors can teach to a diversity of abilities:
http://www.edutopia.org/video http://www.diversityweb.org/DiversityDemocracy/vol13no2/goodman.cfm

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5 benefits of diversity in a 21st century classroom

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Diversity is more than enrolling students of different races in a school. The school atmosphere should demonstrate celebration and acknowledgement of students from all races through arranging activities that encourages students to communicate and collaborate. Diverse ideas or knowledge of the content: A heterogeneous team breeds heterogeneous thoughts.

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In my previous post, " Student in a Strange Land," I mentioned briefly that our school, the International Community School (I.C.S.), works with a very diverse population of students and families. I.C.S. represents over 40 different countries and 50 languages. One of the communities we serve is Clarkston, Ga., which is home to about 26,000 refugees. It is often said that Clarkston is one of the most diverse square miles in the United States. A community as diverse as this presents a complex challenge: In a place with so many different values and belief systems, what role should an educator play?

It is important for me as an educator to have a cultural awareness of the students' lives and backgrounds. Without this awareness, my sensitivity and compassion for each child would not be able to develop. My studies in anthropology have helped me view life through a cultural lens. But what is culture?

I often think of culture in terms of the " iceberg concept " commonly used in educational studies, with its small visible tip and huge mass below the surface. Most people tend to view only the surface aspects of culture - observable behavior - sometimes known as the five F's: food, fashion, festivals, folklore, and flags. But of course culture goes deeper than that. It is the other 95 percent below the surface of which we need to be aware.

Deep culture (below the surface) includes elements such as child-raising beliefs, concepts of self, beauty and personal space, religious rituals and perspectives, eating habits, facial expressions, eye contact, work ethic, approaches to problem solving and interpersonal relationships, moral values, cosmology, world views and personal discipline - to name (more than) a few.

The children that come into my classroom each year have such a variety of life paths. Looking at their cultural backgrounds with the "iceberg concept" in mind has helped to keep me aware of the aspects of their lives that are not in plain view. And the more I work with the students at I.C.S., the more my awareness of these subtle realms increase.

Developing cultural competence is a process of inner growth. In order for me to be as effective as possible with the students I work with, I must continuously engage in a process of self-reflection. To be able to know others, especially diverse others, one must know the self. So the growth of a culturally competent educator starts there. We must look within for a deeper understanding of who we are before we can adequately address the needs of our students.

This investigation should include our core beliefs, hidden biases and our religious perspectives. Developing cultural competence is also a process that comes with experience and engagement, and with sometimes painful lessons that highlight our limitations and prejudices. To learn about the backgrounds of the students in my class takes time and effort; it involves reading about their countries of origin, visiting their homes and meeting family members, connecting with parents, developing relationships with community members and organizations, and going to cultural and religious festivals. By learning about my students' lives outside the classroom, I am more prepared to work with them in the classroom.

Schools don't exist in vacuums; they are situated within communities. Community involvement helps me understand the socio-cultural backgrounds of my students' lives and build bridges between the home and school. This exposure helps challenge my own perspectives and biases.

An example that comes up quite frequently is the issue of religion. Children at I.C.S. come from a myriad of religious traditions, including Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism, and the Baha'i faith. Children are usually very open to discussing their beliefs, prayers, places of worship, dances and values with their friends. They excitedly exclaim that "God lives in the sky" or "God lives in us" or "Allah lives on a cloud near the moon." Their discussions about their religious beliefs are usually cheerful, lighthearted and innocent.

But sometimes these kindergarteners get into heated debates. I usually remain in the background and allow them to express their opinions in a safe place. One day, during one of these debates, I was caught off guard. I was moving around the classroom checking students' writing when a question popped up out of nowhere. One of my American students, David, called out, "Ms. Shunnarah, can an elephant be a god?"

I froze. This was one of those moments when the cultural iceberg was tapped, challenging my Judeo-Christian upbringing. I remembered from my studies of Hinduism in college that there is a religious entity known as Ganesh, who takes the form of an elephant. Ganesh is one of the most worshipped deities in the Hindu pantheon. His image is found throughout India. He is widely known as the "remover of obstacles" and "lord of beginnings" and is associated with creativity, the arts and sciences, intellect and wisdom.

This information about Ganesh came to me quickly and I am glad that it did, because I could have carelessly dismissed David's comment as silly. Instead, I told him yes, and described Ganesh and his place in the Hindu religion. After I said this, I noticed that one of my students from India, Abhra, pulled out his own drawings of Ganesh from his backpack. He had been discussing his beliefs with David, when David had called out the question. This small bit of knowledge I had retained turned out to be important. After my response, Abhra smiled; his religious beliefs and identity were acknowledged. This is just a small example of the kind of cross-cultural interaction that goes on every day in our class.

Later Abhra's mother came to me and said that I had made her son happy because I knew about Ganesh. What would have been the unintended consequence if I were not aware of Ganesh? What if I had responded from my own personal biases and religious perspective? What would have been the outcome for my student Abhra? Would he have been ashamed? Would he have kept his pictures hidden, damaging his sense of self?

This journey of establishing a multicultural learning community in my classroom with a foundation of respect for all cultures is ever changing and evolving. Children bring to the classroom rich cultural life experiences, so why not tap into it? This involves a continuous process of research about the lives of the children in my classroom, as well as of my own interpretations and perspectives. The varied nuances of culture are complex and continually changing, but it makes our classroom a natural place to learn.

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In my previous post, " Student in a Strange Land," I mentioned briefly that our school, the International Community School (I.C.S.), works with a very diverse population of students and families. I.C.S. represents over 40 different countries and 50 languages. One of the communities we serve is Clarkston, Ga., which is home to about 26,000 refugees.