Giving Compass' Take:

• New York City's School Diversity Advisory Group provides specific recommendations for school districts in the city to achieve real integration. 

• Do these recommendations for integration hold outside of New York City? What integration efforts are underway in your community? 

• Learn more about the importance of integration in schools. 

We recommend that DOE be more ambitious and more realistic. This means, in the short-term, setting racial and socio-economic diversity goals by considering neighborhood opportunities, in the medium-term looking at borough averages, and in the long-term looking at the city as a whole.

  • Short-term and Medium-term: Elementary and middle schools should be measured against their district’s racial, economic, Multilingual Learner (MLL), and Students with Disabilities (SWD) percentages. Upon hitting these targets, individual schools should work towards reaching their borough percentages in the mid-term.
  • Long-term: DOE should aim for all schools to look more like the city. This will encourage the DOE to challenge the neighborhood segregation that exists and support schools in further diversifying their populations.
  • Racial representation should consider all races.
  • Socioeconomic integration should incorporate research-backed goals.
  • MLL and SWD targets should also be narrowed.
  • Adjust goals for schools located in areas with concentrated vulnerability.
  • Track and publish a single set of metrics.
  • Create a Chief Integration Officer position.
  • Create mechanisms for students to hold the system accountable.
  • Add metrics to School Quality Report related to Diversity and Integration.
  • Consider incentives to secure charter school commitments to diversity and integration.

The School Diversity Advisory Group supports a more equitable set of admissions processes that will help ensure quality learning environments for our children by supporting more schools and classrooms that reflect the city’s diversity.

  • Require all nine districts with sufficient demographic diversity of population to develop diversity and integration plans (Districts 1, 2, 3, 13, 15, 22, 27, 28, 31).
  • Require that districts analyze controlled choice, screens, gifted and talented and other admissions policies and programs in terms of improving or perpetuating racially schools that are isolated based on race or other factors.

Accessibility and integration of students with disabilities

  • All admissions fairs and events should be held in fully accessible buildings.
  • School staff should be trained to welcome and accommodate students and family members with disabilities as well as immigrant families, and students and families who need interpreters on tours and school visits, as well as at school fairs.
  • All Family Welcome Center staff should be trained to support students with disabilities and should be prepared to help students consider all school options within their community.
  • As the City moves more of its admissions processes online, all applications should utilize the Universal Design for Learning Framework for presenting information and increasing accessibility.