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To Achieve Integration, Schools Must Be Accountable for Diversity

The Hechinger Report Feb 27, 2019
This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
Click here for more.
To Achieve Integration, Schools Must Be Accountable for Diversity Giving Compass
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Giving Compass’ Take:

• New York City’s School Diversity Advisory Group released a report on how to address the city’s schools’ integration problem. However, schools must be accountable for diversity before they can measure progress. 

• How can donors help NYC achieve diversity goals in schools? What more can educators do to stay accountable? 

• Here are the four questions you need to ask about New York City’s diversity plans. 


There’s an adage many researchers and policy wonks live by: What gets measured, gets done. The saying suggests that measuring something enhances your ability to achieve it — except, of course, when you’re talking about integrated schools. We’ve quantified, studied and assessed the importance of diversity in schools, but it’s something we haven’t come close to achieving.

While housing segregation strongly influences the composition of the student body, even in diverse cities, low-income black and brown students are increasingly becoming concentrated in certain schools.

This is a result of middle-income, largely white families choosing to cluster (read: segregate) in middle- and upper-income schools and neighborhoods in their pursuit of a good education for their kids. “Income segregation creates districts of concentrated poverty or affluence, but high-income black families may be less likely than high-income white families to live in the affluent districts created by income segregation,” according to 2018 research published by the American Sociological Association.

Herein lies the problem that thwarts efforts to find and create quality schools. Given that students’ test scores rise in conjunction with how much money their parents make, a wealthy school with high test scores is too often automatically deemed good. This assumption is not warranted: Wealthier families are putting more of their discretionary money into educational activities like test prep, which do increase students’ scores but, the wealth inflates what we believe teachers, curriculum and culture from inside the school are adding to students’ academic growth.

Schools are good when teachers bring the best out of their students — regardless of their economic backgrounds — with a rigorous curriculum and engaging arts and sports programs.

 By conflating test scores, and therefore income, with quality, parents are justifying their desire to self-segregate as looking out for the interest of their children. But segregation is clearly not the way to create a good school.

Read the full article about holding schools accountable for diversity by Andre Perry at The Hechinger Report

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Race and Ethnicity is a complex topic, and others found these selections from the Impact Giving archive from Giving Compass to be good resources.

  • This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
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    Armando Castellano Q&A: Listening and Power Sharing as a Donor

    Armando Castellano is a professional musician and teaching artist. He plays the French Horn and founded Quinteto Latino, an ensemble to uplift classical works of cultural significance. Building community while advocating for classical musicians of color is very close to Armando’s heart. He’s also a trustee on his family foundation’s board, along with his two sisters Carmela and Maria. His family came into money when they won the California Lottery in 2001. Donors of Color Network: What’s new Armando? AC: I was practicing right before you called, I have been trying to get this passage just right and I finally got it right before I got on the call with you, yay! In thinking about how I practice, a lot of the music I play I don’t really need to practice, I usually end up just needing to practice the most difficult of passages, like this one. Donors of Color Network: I’m also hearing you say that what you really have to work on is what’s difficult, and taking new actions is always that. This sounds like it could be relevant for practicing philanthropy. Can you elaborate? AC: Music is the ultimate metaphor. You’re trying to get a pitch, a note to represent an emotion or a feeling or a story. It’s very abstract, and it’s the process, a fine art – very refined. We just keep practicing that one note within the context. Playing at a very high level, incremental change is very tiny. So it’s a very refined, slow process of getting better. That’s what philanthropy and social change is like. A very slow incremental step to change philanthropy as a whole. It takes a lot of hard work – weeks on that one note – for the change to happen. It’s yin and yang, music and philanthropy. What’s really on my mind is this initiative I started via my family’s foundation – Blueprint for Change. We did convenings and asked questions of our grantees about what they need. What can make it better for Latinx serving nonprofit organizations? They picked five things – 1) more support for general operations 2) leadership development 3) staff wellness 4) access to philanthropy, and 5) innovation. There’s a big move towards innovation here (Santa Clara/San Jose/San Francisco Bay Area) but foundations won’t fund it. Nonprofits need trust and flexibility and funding to innovate. Read the full interview with Armando Castellano at Donors of Color Network.


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