Schools that teach in two languages foster integration — so how come so many families can’t find programs?

Conor Williams and the Center for American Progress' Catherine E. Brown wrote in the Hechinger Report that dual immersion programs are great for equity, excellence, and integration.

Not since the 1970s and ‘80s — when many school districts put desegregation busing in place in order to realize the promise of the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision — has school integration been in the news as much as it has lately.

U.S. Education Secretary John King has proclaimed school integration a key priority. Policymakers have focused on attaining diversity because of the benefits for all students, regardless of their background.

School integration has been a critical priority for many waves of education reformers: students in diverse, integrated schools grow up better prepared to flourish in a plural democratic society and economy.

Yet efforts to convert this promise into practice have repeatedly crashed and broken against various intractable interests: familial anxieties, real estate patterns, and scarcely concealed racism or bigotry. Anxious, privileged, predominantly white families have too frequently responded to integration efforts by leaving diverse neighborhoods or cities for wealthier communities beyond the borders of local desegregation efforts.