Creating and maintaining student diversity: strategies and challenges for school leaders

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to explore how school leaders can create and maintain student diversity in charter schools. Based on a case study of two racially balanced schools in New York City, this study identifies three strategies that the schools’ leaders took to create more student diversity: (1) develop curriculum-centred missions, (2) implement targeted student recruitment and (3) more inclusively interpret state charter enrolment guidelines. This paper also documents the challenges they faced in maintaining diversity over time. As exceptions to the racial segregation so prevalent in many urban charter schools, these schools highlight successful leadership approaches for creating more diverse student compositions in other schools.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Charter schools are defined as a publicly funded school that is typically governed by a group or organization under a legislative contract (or charter) with the state or jurisdiction. The charter exempts the school from certain state or local rules and regulations. In return for flexibility and autonomy, the charter school must meet the accountability standards stated in its charter (US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2014).

2. The term intense segregation refers to a student composition in which 90–100% of its students are of the same race and/or ethnicity (Orfield & Lee, 2007).

3. In this paper, diversity primarily focuses on racial and ethnic diversity, but also extends to the inclusion of special education students and students of different socioeconomic backgrounds.

4. In this paper, I am grouping these racial and ethnic categories together because the charter schools that target minority populations specifically target these two groups of students. Thus, schools that are considered to be intentionally homogenous actually serve both of these groups.

5. Social capital is defined as resources embedded in one’s social networks, resources that can be accessed or mobilized through ties in the networks (Lin, 2001, Chapter 2).

6. Pseudonyms have been used.

7. To preserve school anonymity, I have not reproduced the schools’ full mission statements here.

8. In the collaborative teaching team, a general educator and a special educator provide special education services in a general education classroom.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adriana Villavicencio

Adriana Villavicencio is a senior research associate at the Research Alliance for New York City Schools at New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA. Email: [email protected]. She leads the Research Alliance’s evaluation of the Expanded Success Initiative, which aims to improve college readiness among NYC’s Black and Latino young men. She has conducted several studies documenting practices in successful schools, including ‘turnaround’ middle schools and the City’s small high schools of choice. She is the author of numerous publications on choice, race and equity in schools including ‘It’s our best choice right now’: Examining the choice options of charter school parents school context and charter school achievement: A framework for understanding the performance ‘Black Box.’