On June 12, NSBA’s General Counsel Francisco Negron headed to Capitol Hill to discuss with other educators, lawyers, and policy-makers ideas for creating more racially integrated schools. A recent article from Diverse Online provided BoardBuzz with details of this forum sponsored by Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-PA), The Center for Civil Rights at UNC School of Law, the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, The University of Georgia Education Policy and Evaluation Center, and the Forum for Education and Democracy. Gary Orfield of the Civil Rights Project moderated.
About 75 people attended the briefing, entitled “New Initiatives for Integrated Education in the Obama Era: Reversing the Resegration of the Past Two Decades.” Scholars presented five academic papers presenting diverse points of views on the issue, with titles ranging from “School Racial Composition and Young Children’s Cognitive Development: Isolating Family, Neighborhood and School Influences” to “Racially Integrated Education and the Role of the Federal Government. ”
While panelists Chinh Q. Lee, a practitioner in residence with the Center for Social Justice at Seton Hall University School of Law, advocated for more federal efforts to eliminate segregated in our schools, Negron reminded attendees that positive change requires more than sweeping executive action.
“We need to be cognizant of the fact that the way we run our schools is not at the federal level,” Negron said.
He later noted that educational quality is impacted by more than just the school itself. Two papers on the influence on neighborhoods, families, and housing on student success directed the conversation to one about the student’s community and educational quality. “The stable, integrated community is the answer, not housing,” Negron said. Other researchers agreed and shared a study that about how community leaders in Omaha, Nebraska fought for legislation that would create “learning communities.” These communities would unify 11 school districts, allowing them to share resources and reduce the impact of socioeconomic disparities on the school environment.
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