Should equalizing New York City schools’ ethnic and racial compositions really be a top priority?
Nikole Hannah-Jones’ recent essay revisiting her daughter’s disappointing education in Brooklyn and her pointed questioning of Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels about the lack of a citywide integration plan have reignited New York City’s longstanding debate over school segregation. But before the City considers another politically fraught campaign to redraw school boundaries and change admission policies, we should answer a more fundamental question: What education outcomes are we trying to achieve and which policies offer the best chance of achieving them?
There is ample evidence that students benefit from learning alongside classmates from different backgrounds. But diversity, racial balance and school quality are not interchangeable concepts, and pursuing “integration” without clarity around the precise goals and the trade-offs involved would do a great disservice to the city’s students and families.
The answers were straightforward in the era of Jim Crow and Brown v. Board of Education: integration meant that Black students would gain the right to attend the well-resourced white schools from which they’d been systematically excluded under the racist “separate but equal” regime.
