The Color of Mind: Why the Origins of the Achievement Gap Matter for Justice by Derrick Darby & John L. Rury

Author:Derrick Darby & John L. Rury
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Education, General, Educational Policy & Reform, Social Science, Ethnic Studies, African American Studies, History, Philosophy; Theory & Social Aspects
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2018-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

An (Idealistic) Integrationist Revival

School desegregation became politically unpopular in the 1970s, especially following busing controversies, and eventually came to be viewed skeptically by the courts as more conservative judges were appointed to the federal bench. By the 1990s, a number of key decisions had brought litigation to combat segregation in education to a virtual halt. Even so, activists and scholars committed to racial justice continued to document the ill effects of racial segregation, in schools and in many other facets of American life. The Civil Rights Project, led by Gary Orfield at Harvard (and later UCLA), was a major contributor to these efforts, and legal scholars continued to examine the issue as well. Segregation remained an important issue in sociology, especially following publication of Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton’s American Apartheid in 1993.39

This body of work made it impossible to argue that racial segregation had ceased to be a critically important facet of American life, despite the unwillingness of politicians and the courts to acknowledge its continuing significance. Most recently, educational researcher Sean Reardon has argued that segregation linked to concentrated poverty is a powerful driver of racial achievement gaps, concluding that “reducing school segregation—in particular, reducing racial disparities in exposure to poor classmates—may therefore be an effective means of improving the equality of students’ access to high-quality educational opportunities.”40 Other researchers and policy analysts concur, and political momentum has returned to the idea of school integration as an answer to the achievement gap.41

The integrationist revival has recently found expression within social and political philosophy as well. Philosopher Elizabeth Anderson has contributed to this line of analysis by arguing that racial integration is an imperative of justice.42 Like Massey and Denton, her writing has focused on residential segregation, though her arguments can be extended to schools as well. We pursue this topic in chapter 9, where we complete our case for why school sorting practices are unjust. As a prospective solution for the achievement gap, however, school integration has proved to be insufficient. Recent research, which we take up in the next chapter, suggests that a sizable portion of the racial achievement gap today occurs within schools, which complicates integrationist views about the positive effects of integration. A 2015 report from the National Center for Educational Statistics estimated that nearly 52 percent of the racial achievement gap nationally in mathematics was attributable to within-school differences in achievement. This suggests that integrated schools can function to preserve or even aggravate racial differences in academic outcomes, especially in secondary schools where tracking—the practice of placing students into separate groups with different curricula and instruction—is most likely to occur. Such findings are important, as these institutions are a focal point of transition to adulthood for young people. As mediators of social status, they help direct individuals to pathways that often shape their futures.43

The integrationist recommendation calls for the liberal egalitarian state to pursue racial integration, by endeavoring to bring students from different groups together. But is full integration, which involves formal social integration,

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