Advocacy Briefing⎟Supporting Real Integration

Briefing Summary

This advocacy briefing represents a synthesis of several decades of research showing that better-resourced schools alone will not benefit disadvantaged students: their well-being, including self-esteem, engagement and participation, and a feeling of belonging, is crucial to their achievement. Protecting their well-being involves the understanding and commitment of the entire school community, which means that achieving Real Integration requires schools that are willing to work toward sociocultural and organizational change.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

In 2016 New York City high-school students participating in IntegrateNYC4me crafted a new definition of school integration for the 21st century with the essential “Rs” for meaningful - or Real - integration: In addition to intentional student assignment policies (Race and enrollment) and equitable distribution of Resources, the students also called for schools that foster Relationships among students across group identities, practice Restorative Justice, and employ educators Representative of the students they serve.

New York Appleseed was persuaded. With the permission of the students, we incorporated this definition of integration into our organizational mission statement. But having committed to these priorities, we wanted to learn more about what achieving Real Integration meant in the day-to-day experiences of a school community. We were privileged to work with principals and school leaders who were innovating around these imperatives every day even if they didn’t always have the resources and support to put their insights into practice. Thanks to them, we knew a lot already. But we also wanted to know what social-science research had to say.

Not surprisingly, most of what we uncovered corroborated the insights we are getting from school leaders about the challenges they face every day, and the strategies they are using to meet them - often without adequate support.

We hope that these groundbreaking school leaders find validation for their efforts in these pages. We also hope that this summary may help these leaders ground their work in a scholarly framework and make the case for the urgency of their efforts to the Department of Education.

For principals and other educators new to these issues, we hope this summary will provide an introduction to a larger world of thinking about what public education can and must be in a diverse nation.

David Tipson,

Executive Director

Download the Full Briefing Here