Expert stresses need for racially diverse schools

Making the Richmond region more economically vibrant is a goal worth pursuing.

And it can start in the classroom.

Creating healthy, integrated schools can fuel such vibrancy, said john a. powell, who prefers that his name have no capital letters. He is a noted expert on civil liberties and issues related to race and is executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University.

Yesterday, powell was the keynote speaker at the Metropolitan Richmond Community Breakfast sponsored by Hope in the Cities, the Richmond-based network for racial reconciliation.

"Segregation has a broader impact beyond just student outcomes in the classroom," powell told a diverse audience of nearly 600 people at the Richmond Marriott.

Segregated schools fuel sprawl and racial and class flight, he noted. If Richmond "wants a vibrant region, schools must be a part of that."

He lauded the Richmond region for discussions about creating economically and racially diverse schools and noted some of the folks participating in the discussions "have the juice."

Regional cooperation is key, powell said, as most vibrant regions have less disparity between the city and suburbs.

He used the metaphor of a giant ice cube to illustrate how the city and suburbs are linked. Imagine we're all on the ice, melting because of global warming, powell joked. Blacks, Latinos and poor whites are on the edge of the ice, unable to move to the center because of a host of reasons. As the ice melts, these groups fall off first. But those in the center aren't safe because "when the ice melts, there is no center."

Reducing economic segregation in city schools benefits the area, he said.

High-poverty schools in the Richmond area perform poorly, but not as poorly as many similar schools in other regions, powell said. Fewer Richmond schools have student poverty rates exceeding 80 percent, according to powell's statistics. The lower rates of poverty makes it more plausible to find ways to reduce economic segregation.

He pointed to the success of the Wake County, N.C., school district, where the goal is for no school to have more than 40 percent of its students considered low-income. The results were better test scores for everyone.

Another program in Minneapolis showed urban students in magnet and suburban schools they chose outperformed their peers, with reading and math scores 23 and 25 percentage-points higher.

More housing choices for low-income families can also decrease school segregation, powell said.

Imad Damaj, an associate professor in the Virginia Commonwealth University's Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology and a participant on a forum with powell after the breakfast, said powell's remarks were comprehensive.

"Talking about it is the first step toward a solution," Damaj said.

The forum also included Dr. John Moeser, visiting fellow at the University of Richmond's Center for Civic Engagement, and parents representing schools in Richmond and the counties of Henrico and Chesterfield. About 100 people attended.