Title: Making School Integration Work
Author(s): Paul Tractenberg, Allison Roda, Ryan Coughlan, Deirdre Dougherty
Publisher: Teachers College Press, New York
ISBN: 9780807763629 Pages: 224 Year: 2020
In Making School Integration Work: Lessons from Morris, scholars Paul Tractenberg, Allison Roda, Ryan Coughlan, and Deirdre Dougherty make a forceful argument that school integration can—and does—improve educational opportunities for students of color. It is an important claim because it has been difficult for scholars to prove that racial mixing remediates educational inequality. For instance, we know that test scores and graduation rates of Black students improved following desegregation in the South, but it is less clear why. Was it a result of more funding, higher expectations, and better resources in racially mixed schools, or improvements in technology, curriculum, and pedagogy unrelated to school desegregation? This complicated causal relationship between school integration and improved educational equality makes it difficult for supporters to persuade districts, legislators, and the general public that school integration—which almost always requires busing students away from their neighborhood school—is worth it.
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