Giving Compass' Take:

• Beth Hawkins discusses the Windsor Terrace Chart School's diverse-by-design admission system and how it could be a model of integration for NYC schools.

• How can charter and public schools work together to provide effective teaching in diverse classrooms?

• Read how school integration helped black students.

In contrast to the diversity of students’ races, ethnicities, incomes, disability statuses and home languages evident in the Windsor Terrace halls, schools in the surrounding district, New York City’s Community School District 15, have been intensely segregated, mirroring the city as a whole. District 15, though, is implementing an integration plan that has disrupted the way students are assigned to schools — and diverse-by-design Windsor Terrace, a public charter school that is inside the district but not part of it, might provide a road map for success.

A large swath of the community in District 15, which is home to both working-class immigrant neighborhoods and wealthy enclaves like Park Slope, was lobbying the city for permission to attempt to integrate its middle schools.

This year, the district’s middle schools did not use test scores or other selective-admissions screens to admit students — a practice that has reinforced segregation — but instead filled their classrooms using a lottery weighted to ensure socioeconomic diversity.

Because the district and the Brooklyn Prospect charter school network use essentially the same system for admitting students, advocates suggest that the New York City Department of Education could ask local district and charter school leaders to pilot the kind of unified enrollment system. District and charter school leaders would have to set aside their mistrust, give students a single application on which to rank their preferences and allow an algorithm to assign them to open seats in both types of schools.

the adults in the small school network spend lots of time thinking about how to make sure groups of children with differing needs and backgrounds can succeed in the same classroom. From the art on the walls to the materials on student desks, every detail is planned through that lens.

Read the full article about integration in NYC school districts by Beth Hawkins at The 74.