SEGREGATION, DESEGREGATION, RE-SEGREGATION:
LESSONS LEARNED ABOUT EQUITY IN OUR SCHOOLS
What are the lessons learned from our past attempts to address racial, ethnic and gender issues within our public schools? What are the strengths and weaknesses of our past strategies for attending to the needs of students with disabilities, cultural differences, or poor economic means? Are there some emerging ideas for addressing current equity issues in our public system that could benefit from a more public discourse or conversation? How can the legacies of segregation and desegregation help us understand the current trend that some are calling the re-segregation of the public schools?
These and related questions will be discussed at a symposium co-sponsored by a coalition of university, community, and professional organizations. There will be three separate but connected dialogues held on September 21 and 28, and October 5, 1999 to examine how past experiences with issues of educational equity within the Commonwealth can inform contemporary educational policy discussions. A focus of the discussion will directed toward identifying strategies and programs that can effectively address such current equity concerns, as student discipline, curriculum content and performance standards, and public school choice.
Helping to lead and inform the symposium dialogues will be educational historians, current practitioners and policy makers, student and the general public. The expected outcomes include 1) increased public understanding of the need to address equity issues in public education, and 2) documentation and dissemination of symposium results to key stakeholders and decision makers.
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Posted: September 24, 1999
By The
Educational Policy Institute of Virginia Tech
sjanosik@vt.edu