Recently the weekly public radio show “This American Life” broadcast a two-part series called “The Problem We All Live With” that has gone viral within education circles. It is a riveting documentary that argues that, as we work to improve educational performance among minority children, we need to consider something that is rarely thought of in the current day: desegregation.
The first part talks about a desegregation project in Missouri, where efforts are made to transport African-American children from failing schools in their own communities to better schools in predominantly white neighborhoods. Residents of the white communities object, feeling that the African-American students are going to bring problems with them and diminish the quality of their schools. In the second part of the series, we see an example of what happens when desegregation is not opposed – and clear examples of the benefits it provides for the children who are on the “sending end.”
In my career in education turnarounds, I’ve seen how complex this issue can be. My first work in public education was in 2003 when the St. Louis Public School Board hired us to assist in turning around city’s school system. With the school population down and many individual schools underutilized, we sought to consolidate by closing 12 failing schools and moving the children of those failing schools into higher performing schools. The effect of this decision would be greater integration, as the worst schools tended to be in low-income minority communities and we were moving those students into better schools in whiter neighborhoods.
The most vocal objections came not from “receiving” communities, but from the very neighborhoods we were seeking to help.
While these schools were clearly failing, they were an anchor for the community, a symbol of stability, a relatively safe and drug-free environment for their children. Closing represented a final nail in the proverbial coffin of community revitalization. While no doubt there are individual parents, as chronicled in the “American Life” series, who seek a better school option through desegregation, in my experience, there is sometimes an overall fear in the community that once these children are sent out of the neighborhood for a better education, the community declines.
As author and leading community developer, Robert Lupton, states in his book “Charity Detox”, education detached from community development becomes an individualistic pursuit, weakening the overall neighborhood.
Certainly, the radio series “The Problem We All Live With” is correct about the positive effects of desegregation, but it doesn’t consider what effect such efforts have on the community being left behind.
The best course of action probably involves two parts:
First, allow for voluntary desegregation by creating networks of district-wide or magnet schools that are open for enrollment to any student in the district. Give parents a say in whether their children should stay at a community school or commute to a school in another neighborhood they consider better.
But also, if we are truly going to create options, we need to save these failing community schools, not by living with the status quo or attempting incremental improvements, but by employing a turnaround approach that can save the school by transforming it rapidly from a failure to a high performer.
That’s why Matchbook Learning is drawn to our mission: failing schools. We seek not to close them and merge them into other schools, but to turn them around. This may be the only way to save the many children who go to failing schools and do not have the option of enrolling in a different school in a different community. It also addresses the desire of so many communities to save the schools they consider to be part of their legacy.
