-
Integration
The one thing that cut the achievement gap in half between black and white students was integration. -
US Dept Education Data
The US Department of Education put out data in 2014 showing that black and Latino kids in segregated schools have the least qualified teachers, the least experienced teachers. They also get the worst course offerings, the least access to AP and upper level courses, the worst facilities. -
Segregated Black Schools
The other thing about most segregated black schools, Nikole says, is that they have high concentrations of children who grew up in poverty. Those kids have greater educational needs. They're more stressed out. They have a bunch of disadvantages. And when you put a lot of kids like that together in one classroom, studies show, it doesn't go well. -
Impact of Segregation
Nikole thinks segregated schools full of poor kids are probably never going to catch up to other schools. There's a lot of data that shows that black students going through court-ordered integration, it changed their whole lives. They were less likely to be poor. They were less likely to have health problems. They lived longer. And the opposite is true for black kids who remained in segregated schools. -
Integration
So integration works. And yet, we do not discuss it usually as the logical way to fix schools. -
Missouri Case Study
In Missouri the transfer law gives students in unaccredited districts the right to transfer to a nearby accredited one for free. Integration was not the law's intent. But the Normandy kids are almost all black, the Francis Howell kids nearly all white. And that is how Missouri accidentally launched a school integration plan in what was an unfashionably late year for such a thing-- 2013. -
Normandy/Francis Howell School District
So a week after the announcement that Normandy would bus kids to Francis Howell. Mah'Ria finished eighth grade at the mostly white Francis Howell School District. -
Normandy/Bankruptcy
It didn't take long before the transfer law was bankrupting Normandy. By the fall of 2013, the impoverished Normandy District was sending more than a $1 million a month to whiter, wealthier ones. Bankruptcy, it turns out, will be the ultimate integration plan. So instead, the state took over. And its first big move was to give the district a new name. -
Normandy Schools Collaborative
The Normandy Schools Collaborative. But this was more than just re-branding. According to the state, a shiny new name also came with a shiny new accreditation status. -
Impact
Francis Howell is no longer accepting any students from the Normandy because Normandy is now called the Normandy Schools Collaborative. -
What's Working
While Normandy is falling apart, over at Francis Howell, none of the things that parents were worried about came true. No one got stabbed. Test scores did not drop-- at all. And at least so far, the influx of black students hasn't caused white parents to flee. Mah'Ria's thriving. Where the transfer law forced integration, it's working. -
Political Attention
The educational devastation in Normandy has finally gotten the attention of the state's most powerful people, including state legislators and the governor. -
Obstacles
The idea is, try anything they can to keep Normandy students inside the district. This is how far they will go to avoid that one thing, that one thing that already seems to be working-- integration.