What do you think of SchoolSparrow? Part 2

In part 1 of this post, I looked at SchoolSparrow.com, an equity-oriented school ratings site that is positioned as an alternative to GreatSchools.org. In the lead up to its national launch, I had an email conversation with the founder, Tom Brown, where I outlined some mixed feelings about the site. As I say in part…

Hate incidents in “good” schools

Things aren’t looking good in Massachusetts’ suburban schools these days. Last month, the Boston Globe released a series of articles on a culture of racism and homophobia on the Danvers High School hockey team. On “hard R Fridays,” students on the all-white team shouted the n-word in team huddles. When one player refused, others welted…

Erika Wilson on Monopolizing Whiteness

What if the equal protection clause wasn’t the primary basis for school integration lawsuits? This week’s guest author – Erika Wilson, a Law Professor at the University of North Carolina – looks at perhaps unintended consequences of our long reliance on equal protection arguments. In a forthcoming paper, she presents an alternative that speaks to…

Suburban Segregation: A tale of two rezonings

I’m excited to feature a post from Dian Mawene, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who recently published new research about a school rezoning effort in a diversifying Wisconsin suburb. Coauthored with Aydin Bal, the piece explores overlapping forms of segregation at the neighborhood, school district and school levels, all of which is…

SD Research Roundup: Secession, voluntary integration and school spending, part 1

In just the past few months, there’s been a number of new studies looking at various aspects of contemporary school segregation. Before I dive into the articles featured in this post, here’s just a few examples of segregation-related research from September and October:   The Urban Institute found that segregation in early childhood education is worse…

SD News Roundup: The lines that divide, part 2

Part 1 of the roundup, published yesterday, looked at recent school integration debates in Austin, TX and Wake County, NC. This post summarizes similar activity in Sausalito, Oakland, nearby Baltimore, Charleston, SC and Richmond, VA.   As I note in the first post, these stories give disproportionate space to pushback from angry opposition, often from white…