In an increasingly diverse nation, calls for education that is culturally relevant have become salient, and student perceptions of school-based ethnic-racial socialization (ERS) provide insight toward how cultural messages are being interpreted by students. The current study sought to investigate how a sample of racially diverse middle school…

While research on education and conflict has explored how schooling exacerbates or facilitates intergroup relations, fewer studies have examined the role of interpersonal relationships in schools in mitigating larger societal conflicts. This research explores friendship patterns within diverse schools through the case of Federal Unity Colleges…

Poverty & Race Research Action Council's (PRRAC's) March 2021 policy brief, "Mixed income neighborhoods and integrated schools: Linking HUD's Choice Neighborhoods Initiative with the Department of Education's Magnet Schools Assistance Program" (ED611507), highlighted an important opportunity for interagency collaboration, encouraging…

Research shows that socioeconomically, racially, and ethnically integrated schools can have important benefits for student learning. While much research has focused on the benefits of integrated K-12 settings, emerging evidence indicates that the benefit of school- and classroom-level diversity may also be significant in early childhood education…

Nearly 70 years after one of the most important U.S. Supreme Court rulings was handed down in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) declaring segregated schools unconstitutional, the promise of desegregation has remained unfulfilled. However, there are still actions that can be taken to address the extant disparities in schools that exist in large…

Polling data routinely indicate broad support for the concept of diverse schools, but integration initiatives--both racial and socioeconomic--regularly encounter significant opposition. We leverage a nationally representative survey experiment to provide novel evidence on public support for integration initiatives. Specifically, we present…

The purpose of this Equity Brief is to examine the ongoing need for Local Education Agencies to work in conjunction with community stakeholders to develop comprehensive strategies to increase racial and socioeconomic diversity in schools. Research indicates that all students benefit from learning within racially and socioeconomically diverse…

Students in racially and socioeconomically integrated schools experience academic, cognitive, and social benefits that are not available to students in racially isolated, high-poverty environments. As Americans consider the consequences of an education system that increasingly sorts students by race and class, it is also important to recognize the…

A rich interdisciplinary literature exists exploring the determinants of state higher education funding policies. However, that work has collectively ignored an important finding from political economy literature: namely, that citizens' preferences regarding public spending are strongly influenced by the state's ethnic and racial context. Drawing…

Student assignment policies (SAPs) in K-12 schools can either reproduce or help ameliorate existing inequality. Some districts are trying to maintain voluntarily adopted integration policies despite the Supreme Court's recent 2007 decision in "Parents Involved," which prohibited most race-conscious school choice policies that were…

The authors, Kahlenberg and Potter, investigate the changed role of charter schools and how state boards can assist in the return to the original vision. When jumpstarted in the late 1980s, the charter movement vision was for teachers to experiment with innovative approaches to educating students. The charters would be educational laboratories…

Despite existing research that demonstrates the benefits of racial diversity in education, the Court has become increasingly disinclined to allow the use of race or ethnicity in education policy targeted to increase race/ethnic diversity, absent a compelling state interest. The debate over the merits of educational diversity has almost exclusively…

More than ever before, social science research identifies an array of academic and social benefits for students stemming from learning in integrated educational settings, which is even more beneficial for younger students. While some state and local education agencies may raise concerns over shifting legal principles and political apprehension in…

Despite violent resistance to school desegregation and 98 percent of white suburban parents of the time opposing integration, Louisville's history is unique, in that it is one of the only districts that has maintained a staunch commitment to integration over the last fifty years. Even in 2007, when the Supreme Court declared it was…

This article reports the findings of a multiyear investigation of school district central office directors of diversity and equity in Minnesota, who play an important role in school desegregation/integration policy implementation. Ethnographic and survey data were collected to examine a range of leadership activities and perspectives in…