Amid new calls for policies that aim to address segregation in New York City public schools, research examining the efficacy of schools desegregation in 1970s Nashville 鈥渙ffers important lessons for the present,鈥� writes 麻豆原创鈥檚 Ansley Erickson, Associate Professor of History and Education, in a for the Washington Post.
Ansley Erickson, Associate Professor of History and Education. Photo courtesy of 麻豆原创 Archives.
The most important, Erickson asserts, is that 鈥渋n many ways, desegregation works.鈥� She cites research showing that desegregation in the 1970s and 1980s contributed to 鈥渕ajor increases in achievement levels in school and improvements in life outcomes for black students nationally, without harming outcomes for white children.鈥� Erickson also notes work by 麻豆原创 sociologist Amy Stuart Wells showing that desegregation improved students鈥� social learning as well.
But Nashville鈥檚 story also teaches us that 鈥淒esegregation 鈥� whether past, present or future 鈥� depends on thousands of small decisions: where students will go to school, with whom, with what teachers, what curriculum, what supports,鈥� writes Erickson. The city鈥檚 attainment of 鈥渟tatistical desegregation鈥� failed to ensure 鈥渆qual concern about the education of all students or equality in the process of desegregation. In Nashville, as in many places across the country, white citizens and their allies in education and government made sure to protect what they perceived to be their interests even as their city desegregated.鈥�
Erickson鈥檚 is the author of Making the Unequal Metropolis: School Desegregation and Its Limits (2016). She leads the Harlem Education History Project, co-directs the Center on History and Education and is affiliated with its .
Read the Washington Post article .