What does it take to fulfill the promise of racial integration in America?

Today on the Next Big Idea podcast - Schools all over America struggle with a racial academic achievement gap. Can a small town in Ohio help us figure out how to close it? Listen on Apple or Spotify , and share your thoughts in the comments below.

Labor Day weekend is upon us, which means that kids around the country are headed back to school. (It's about time, right?) With the smell of pencil shavings in the air, we wanted to bring you a story about schooling in America. It’s a story about race, integration, and equity. A story that’s equal parts inspiring and dispiriting. A story with lessons that, if applied properly, could reshape American education … for the better.

Our producer, Caleb Bissinger, hosted this week's episode, and deserves credit for this unusually well-illustrated newsletter. Happy Labor Day weekend to all!

-- Rufus

On May 17th, 1954, the Supreme Court decided a case that would change America: Brown v. Board of Education.

In his decision, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote: “We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Today, we remember Brown v. Board as a watershed moment in the fight for civil rights. But at the time, the high court’s decision was met with ugly resistance in many parts of the country.

In Tennessee, pro-segregationists blew up an elementary school because it admitted one Black student, a six-year-old girl.

In Virginia, legislators decided they’d rather close schools than integrate them. So they shut down an entire school system. For five years.

In New York City, 10,000 white parents took to the streets to protest the plan that would have transferred a small number of students between predominantly Black and Puerto Rican schools and white ones.

And in Boston, where decades of discriminatory housing laws and racist covenants had resulted in highly segregated neighborhoods — and therefore highly segregated neighborhood schools — a judge ordered the city to integrate its schools with busing. More than 40 riots broke out. Enraged white Bostonians attacked little Black kids who were just trying to go to school.

But in Shaker Heights, Ohio, something different happened.

As battles over desegregation blazed across the country, this wealthy, white suburb of Cleveland flipped the script. Residents didn’t resist integration. They embraced it. First in their neighborhoods, and then in their schools.

In 1975, The New York Times ran a front-page story about Shaker Heights with the headline: “AN INTEGRATED SUBURB THRIVES IN OHIO.”

In Shaker, the Times declared, “black and white children ... grow up side by side, from toddlers to teenagers, acquiring friends of both races, in one of the country’s most dramatically successful, long-term ventures in racially integrated housing in the suburbs.”

But how successful was it?

Shaker’s decades-long pursuit to fulfill the promise of racial integration is the subject of a new book by Laura Meckler called Dream Town: Shaker Heights and the Quest for Racial Equity.

As Laura, who grew up in Shaker Heights and is now an education reporter at The Washington Post, dug into her hometown's history, she found that, for decades, Shaker’s schools were balanced in terms of racial representation, but they weren't balanced in terms of academic outcomes. Consider this data point from 2018: 68 percent of white 11th graders were enrolled in at least one Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate course, but just 12 percent of Black students were.

Shaker Heights is not alone. Yawning achievement gaps can be found in schools all across the country. According to research from Stanford , the difference in standardized test scores between white and Black students nationwide is the equivalent of two years of education.?

What does it take to close those gaps? That’s what they’re trying to figure out today in Shaker Heights. School leaders are pursuing bold changes aimed at shrinking the achievement gap — changes that, if successful, could be replicated from coast to coast. Shaker Heights, the small city that defied the odds by embracing integration decades ago is now realizing it didn't go far enough and is trying to redesign its schools as a result. Will it work? That’s the question we dig into with Laura Meckler on this week’s episode.

You can find that episode here , or listen below:

I look forward to discussing with those interested in the comments below!

-- Caleb

Next week on The Next Big Idea…

Let’s face it. Change is hard. But does it have to be? We’ll chat with Brad Stulberg about his new book Master Of Change: How To Excel When Everything Is Changing — Including You.

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