I read an exchange on Twitter yesterday between Maggie Severns, an education reporter at Politico, and CJ Libassi, a researcher at the Education Policy Initiative, an organization committed to "applied, policy-relevant research for improved educational outcomes." They were discussing my recent piece about Obama's record on school integration. I was struck in particular by this part:
@clibassi Agree and agree!!
- Maggie Severns (@MaggieSeverns) September 2, 2015
I found it surprising, and worrying, that a prominent education journalist and an education policy researcher would both say that they have looked around and cannot find "any actual evidence" on the value of school integration.
School desegregation conversations are complex and difficult, which is all the more reason we should strive to make our discussions as informed as they can be. I have no idea what Severns' and Libassi's attempts to find evidence looked like, but given that perhaps there are other mainstream journalists and researchers who have faced similar issues, I decided it would make sense to quickly post some starting points:
1. The Spivack Archive is an accessible social-science database that explores the impacts of ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic integration. Its stated purpose is to "provide scholars, education rights attorneys, policy makers, and the general public with accessible state-of-the-art knowledge." The archive has been an on-going project led by sociologist Roslyn Mickelson since 2005. It's received funding from the American Sociological Association, the National Science Foundation, and the Poverty and Race Research Action Council.
2. The National Coalition on School Diversity, which formed in 2009, has published a series of short policy briefs on the benefits of school integration. The briefs explore impacts on academic achievement, on college attendance, on poverty reduction, on non-minority student impacts, and other areas. NCSD is a coalition of educators, policy advocates, and civil rights leaders.
3. The Civil Rights Project/ Proyecto Derechos Civiles has commissioned hundreds of studies on issues related to desegregation, racial diversity, racial disparities in school discipline and other related areas. CRP is a research and policy think tank that was founded at Harvard in 1996, and has been run out of UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Information Studies since 2007.
This list is by no means comprehensive, but it's a decent place to start if you're looking to familiarize yourself with some of the quality research. I hope more people do, especially those writing and thinking about education.
