Seventy years ago, the Brown v. Board of Education court decision ruled that segregating public schools in the U.S. was unconstitutional. Today, school segregation still exists even though students across the country are more racially diverse than ever before. Neag School assistant professor Alexandra Freidus recently formed a partnership between researchers and two multiracial school districts to address the issue and develop new district integration plans.
“This is an exciting opportunity to develop new strategies to address school segregation,” says Freidus, whose work focuses on racism, social inequality, and educational policy. “Researchers have been studying how districts do this for a while, but it’s been a challenge to find ways to make a real impact.”
The project, titled “Leveraging Community Dialogue for School Integration in a Multiracial Democracy,” is supported by the Spencer Foundation and the American Institutes for Research. The research team includes Freidus; Richard Blissett, associate director of the Center for Democracy and Civic Life at the University of Maryland; Erica Turner, associate professor of educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin; and Adriana Villavicencio, assistant professor of educational leadership and policy studies at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. The four researchers will be partnering with New York City Community School District 13 and Winston-Salem Forsyth County Public Schools in North Carolina for the two-year duration of the project.
Freidus and her team say that current integration plans and policies tend to fail for two reasons: one, they do not take into account political and ideological resistance from families and communities, which leads to them being discontinued, and, two, they have limited input from low-income communities of color which leads to local knowledge and support being left out of the equation.
The partnership’s goal is to help the two target districts develop new, innovative integration plans and re-envision the role families and community members play in the policymaking process. Step one, taking place during the project’s first year, is to engage the two districts and their communities in race-conscious deliberative dialogues, which the researchers say are structured to bring together people with diverse or opposing views to deliberate about and solve public problems.
“Deliberative dialogues are structured so that people share their experiences and listen to their neighbors, who often have very different perspectives,” Freidus says. “Then, the group analyzes data and develops new policies, together.”
The team is aiming to bring together 30-40 people per district, who will meet in racially diverse groups of around 12. These individuals will include students, families, district staff, and other community members who have different perspectives on school integration. A key part of the deliberative dialogues, according to the researchers, is allowing participants to get to know each other on a personal level, which is the beginning of building relationships across differences.
Step two of the project is having the dialogue groups use the shared stories, experiences, and data they have gathered to develop new visions for integrated schools. This process will include the consideration of implementation strategies, specifically how the broader community can contribute to the proposed solutions.
Deliberative dialogues are structured so that people share their experiences and listen to their neighbors, who often have very different perspectives. Then, the group analyzes data and develops new policies, together. — Alexandra Freidus, assistant professor
Overall, Freidus and her team say the deliberative dialogues will create more equitable enrollment plans that reflect local needs, as well as build broader political support for the plans. The researchers will monitor and evaluate the entire policy creation process to see how successful the dialogues are and if school enrollment is affected.
“The work that Dr. Freidus and her colleagues are undertaking can lead to a toolkit that school districts can use to address difficult challenges through meaningful engagement with students, families, school staff, and community members,” says Laura Burton, professor and head of the Department of Educational Leadership. “This work can positively impact students, families, and schools across the U.S. The Neag School is excited to support Dr. Freidus and her colleagues as they engage in this important research project.”
New York City Community School District 13 serves students in central Brooklyn, spanning from affluent, predominantly white Brooklyn Heights to historically Black Bedford-Stuyvesant. Researchers say the district has tried to address segregation between schools in its western and eastern sections for almost a decade, but only with limited success. The number of schoolchildren in the district has recently increased but enrollment in the public district has declined as parents instead opt for the city’s school choice system.
Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools’ current residential zones have not been updated in over 30 years. The district recently received its own funding, separate from Freidus’ project, to support monthslong mapping and assessment work. The hope is to analyze enrollment patterns and the current impact of school choice, zoning, and student assignment policies on school demographics.
“We hope that by partnering with these two districts, which have a lot in common but are also very different from each other, we can develop a toolkit that other districts can use,” Freidus says. “Districts across the country need to make tough decisions about school closures and attendance policies as enrollment declines nationwide. We want to offer them tools to authentically engage families and communities in those processes.”
This research is supported by $375,000 from the Spencer Foundation and the American Institutes for Research.
