Make school integration easy
When a video went viral of an Upper West Side mom bemoaning a plan that would integrate New York schools by swapping out a quarter of the current students, the reaction was outrage and dismay, most aimed at privileged white public school parents.
But the outrage obscures a far bigger point: There are other ways to achieve widespread school integration that parents will not only opt into, but walk barefoot over broken glass to enroll in. There are three strategies in particular we know work — expansion, replication and modeling. We know because we’ve seen them succeed in Los Angeles. Here are the three strategies: 1. Modeling. In 2004, a group of parents in Los Angeles were fed up with the lack of diverse, high-performing public schools. So over 100 of us banded together and started Larchmont Charter School, with the core values of progressive education, community engagement and intentional diversity.
We modeled the school on existing diverse, high-performing schools. To do this, we visited schools across the state to find aspects we would emulate.
Draw a 60-mile-square box over any suburban-urban area and you are bound to find some amazing schools that can serve as models, many of which are not in the news or on the receiving end of billionaires’ donations. But you can find them by following the enthusiastic teachers who want to work there and the families who want to send their kids there.
These schools have worked out the kinks and are happy to share — because education at its best isn’t capitalistic, it’s collaborative. Great educators want every child to have access to a great educationand make their practices known.
2. Replicate. When we married a great public school with a diverse student body, demand exploded. We regularly had over 3,000 applicants for 60 kindergarten spots. At one point we could have opened 30 Larchmonts and filled them in one day.
This unmet demand sparked a group of entrepreneurial parents to approach us to start a second Larchmont. And then more parents, more teachers and more leaders jumped in — opening magical, diverse schools across 700-plus square miles of Los Angeles communities.
The schools ran the gamut — there were elementary, middle and high schools; artsfocused, green-focused, dual language immersion; uniforms and no uniforms. Each school reflected the passion of the community. And at all of the schools, there was a complete or near-complete closing of the achievement gap — the holy grail for education advocates across the political spectrum.
When we opened a second Larchmont, teachers at the first site became master teachers at the second, migrating the curriculum, core values and, most importantly, the school culture. School culture is hard to measure; but you know it when you see it. It’s when teachers bring their A game. Students smile and sing. Learning is happening and the campus is full of joy.
3. Expand instead of constrict — in other words, no losers. Many of New York City’s desegregation plans seem destined to create winners and losers, which is the reason for the pushback on the Upper West Side. No child should be a loser when it comes to accessing a great education.
When you expand access, everybody wins. We did this at Larchmont when our demographic diversity stats fell short of our goals. Dismayed, we had a communitywide conversation and decided to expand the grade size from two to three classes (40 to 60 students).
That meant taking on another site and spreading the grades across multiple campuses, but it was worth the expense and inconvenience.
Through this process, we found best practices that are now employed by schools across Los Angeles. We achieved socioeconomic diversity through a priority in the lottery for students who qualified for free and reduced-priced lunch. We achieved racial and ethnic diversity through partnerships with local organizations and, most importantly, parent-to-parent recruitment.
The energy around diversity taught us an essential lesson: Families and teachers deeply value diversity — just not at the expense of a good education.
It can’t be said enough: Raising kids in a diverse setting is something the vast majority of parents want to do. But parents with choices — people with the means for a private school or to move to the suburbs — will not send their children to a dysfunctional public school. Nor should they.