Education Week - May 14, 2014 - 30

BROWN AT 60: PERSPECTIVES
Integration: New Concepts for a New Era
By Leonard B. Stevens
I
n 2007, in a ruling that would resonate
nationwide, the U.S. Supreme
Court rejected voluntary school desegregation
plans for Louisville, Ky.,
and Seattle. Since then, the conventional
interpretation of the decision
in Parents Involved in Community
Schools v. Seattle School District has
been that the court prohibited school boards
from pursuing integrated schools. I disagree.
Indeed, I think this view is dangerous because
it discourages schools from seeking
integration, something I believe they can do
legally, and should.
For more than 30 years, I have worked full
time in school desegregation, including 10
years as the federal court-appointed monitor
for such efforts in Cleveland. I've worked on
about 40 desegregation cases involving more
than 80 school systems, including Topeka,
Kan., the genesis point of the historic Brown
v. Board of Education decision. Over the decades,
I have written desegregation plans or
modified old plans, assessed compliance with
desegregation orders, and testified in the
courts on integration.
In my view, integrated education has value,
and it ought to be pursued. But how we do it
is more critical than ever.
We need to continue to work toward integrated
schools, but within the current law,
including the Supreme Court's 2007 decision.
We need to be inventive in defining an
integrated school because the demographics
of our schools have changed since Brown
was handed down in 1954 (see charts, Page
31) and because the vast majority of school
districts today are not under court supervision
for desegregation, meaning they are not
legally required to pursue integration, but
may choose to do so.
So, if we look at a school system that is
not under court order, has at least some diversity
in its student population, and values
integrated education, is a traditional definition
of desegregation the best fit? Despite
my lengthy experience with desegregation
and support of it, I don't think so.
The traditional way to define a desegregated
school-and a method I have used
for three decades for districts under court
order-is called a "plus or minus" model. If a
segregated district is 40 percent black (or 40
percent minority), the traditional definition
of a desegregated school means it enrolls
plus or minus, say, 15 points of the districtwide
average for black or minority student
enrollment. In such a district, desegregated
schools would have enrollment of 25 percent
to 55 percent black (or minority) students.
If a school did not fall within those percentages,
it would be in noncompliance with the
district's plan and be told to comply. This is
how desegregation gets done.
One consequence, however, of this desegregation
definition is that the focus inevitably
is on maximums-too many blacks or other
minorities here, too many white students
over there. As a court monitor, this was precisely
my view.
However, for the district that today is not
under court order and that values integration,
a different vision of an integrated school
is in order.
This vision should address factors in addition
to race and ethnicity and look to build
critical masses of distinguishable groups of
students in schools as a means of producing
diverse schools. The additional factors
beyond race and ethnicity might include
parents' levels of education, family income,
disability, or primary language at home
(whichever seem most apt to the district in
question). Real metrics or measures can be
applied to all the factors, including race and
ethnicity, to make the definition work. Since
this model is based on critical masses of students
(or minimums), not maximum percentages
of students, the only operative cap is the
capacity of the school.
Nashville, Tenn., has taken this approach,
and the details are unusual. Full disclosure
here: I worked with Nashville in designing
its plan, and I continue to advise the district
on the plan's initial implementation.
Nashville's integration initiative is styled
as a "diversity management plan." A countywide
school system of 82,863 students,
Nashville has plenty of diversity to manage.
The district enrollment is 45 percent black,
32 percent white, 19 percent Latino, and 4
percent Asian, plus Native Americans and
Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders at levels under 1
percent each. Note that there is no racial or
ethnic majority in the district.
Nashville is also increasingly a system of
"WE NEED TO
CONTINUE TO WORK
toward integrated schools, but
within the current law."
school choice-about one in four students
there chooses the school he or she attends.
Thus, any integration plan for Nashville
had to recognize contemporary law, local student
demographics, and the significant role
of school choice.
Now in its first year of implementation,
the Nashville plan is careful not to assign or
reassign any student or staff member on the
basis of his or her race. Instead, it does the
following:
* Defines a diverse school. In terms of
its student composition, a school is diverse
when it meets any of three measures: when
its enrollment has multiple racial/ethnic
groups, and three of them each makes up at
least 15 percent of the enrollment, or when
the school has two such groups that each
represents at least 30 percent of the student
body, or when the school, like the district as a
whole, is a "plurality" school, meaning its student
body has no majority racial/ethnic group.
In addition, the diverse school has a fair
share of low-income students, English-language
learners, and students with disabilities.
For at least two of the three categories,
the diverse school must have at least twothirds
the district average in these categories
at its grade level. Consequently, diversity
comprises four demographic factors: race/
ethnicity, income, language, and disability.
The definition for each of these four factors
sets minimum levels for diversity, not
maximums. This approach, in turn, inspires
efforts toward building a rich mix of students
in each diverse school, but in varying combinations.
Any of the six racial/ethnic groups in
the system could represent the largest group
in a school, but not an overwhelming majority.
For school staff members, the plan applies
to black and white certified and support employees
because they are the largest racial
30 | EDUCATION WEEK | May 14, 2014 | www.edweek.org/go/commentary
groups in the staff systemwide. A school's
certified staff (which includes teachers and
most administrators) is considered diverse
when it has black and white representation
that is at least two-thirds the district average
for each racial group at the grade level of
the school. For support staff, the minimum is
half the district average.
* Dramatically alters the way the
district reports on the demographics
of its schools. Nashville no longer counts
majority-black, majority-white, and majority-Hispanic
schools. Instead, it now counts
diverse schools, including plurality schools,
which represent the district's paradigm for
integration.
* Reports whole-school achievement
data alongside school-by-school diversity
data. This means that policymakers and
observers can examine a school's diversity
status and its achievement level all at once.
* Requires charter schools to have
comparable diversity plans and to report
comparable demographic data. This
brings charter schools, which are funded with
public dollars, under the diversity tent.
* Creates four staff work groups-
each one interdepartmental-to generate
a continuous flow of ideas on
how best to implement the plan and
priorities. The work groups are focused,
respectively, on school choices for students;
staff matters, including staff development;
funding; and whole-school performance, with
each group looking to support diversity.
* Calls for district administrative decisions
to be made after considering
"foreseeable diversity impact." This provision
has already shaped, to the advantage
of diversity, one high-profile decision on how
to address overcrowding in a popular secondary
school.
Of 134 schools in the district this school
year (by my count), 63 meet the diversity
definition for student enrollment. That's 47
percent of the total. But 58 percent of the district's
students attend these diverse schools
because Nashville's secondary schools, which
are larger than elementary schools, tend to
meet the definition at a somewhat better
rate than its smaller elementary schools.
On staff diversity, the district batting average
is a bit lower: Fifty-four schools meet the
definition. But another 57 meet the definition
for certified staff, although not for support
staff, or vice versa, a pattern that illuminates
where progress, with effort, can be
made over time.
It's not a perfect plan, and it likely will
never produce a perfect result. The district
still has its pockets of racial/ethnic and lowincome
concentrations, and the plan will have
to address them and the students in them.
But Nashville's goal-"to maximize the
number of schools that meet the [district's]
definitions of student and staff diversity"-
is unequivocal. Moreover, the plan seems to
have legs, since it was adopted unanimously
by the elected nine-member district board
on the strong recommendation of the district's
chief executive officer, along with a
resolution that describes diverse schools as
"indispensable to the civic and educational
purpose" of the district.
With implementation equal to the goal,
the Nashville initiative has a promising future
not unrelated to the spirit of Brown v.
Board of Education. n
LEONARD B. STEVENS is a court-recognized
expert on school desegregation and an education
consultant based in Sarasota, Fla. The Nashville
Diversity Management Plan and related school
board resolution can be found at www.mnps.org.
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Education Week - May 14, 2014

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