Does Student Integration Matter in Schools in Order to Ensure Educational Equity?

Living in the Post-Civil Rights era, it is often said that, finally, all americans are free to live equally. However tempting this outlook is, it is far too generalized and does not take into account the fact that though laws segregating races and ethnic groups are no longer in place, the socio-economic barriers that those laws constructed still remain. The bottom line is that if you are born into a minority in a poor neighborhood, you will not have the same standard of life as a white person in a wealthy neighborhood. To some extent, that is a symptom of capitalism, and that is fair, but the place where this should stop is our schools. Our country was one of the first to institute mandatory public education and our city was the birthplace of progressive education but the innovation seems to stop there, and unfortunately this is causing public schools located in the inner city to fall way behind to the point where they are grossly underserved, understaffed and underperforming. Not surprisingly If we look at the way these schools are populated, they consistently have a majority of students of color, while private schools and elite public schools are almost completely White or Asian. This raises the question: Is the answer to this problem integration? My opinion is that it is not. We should be focusing our efforts and our dollars on changing the way students are evaluated and taught, making sure kids are not left in the dust and allowed to fall through the cracks. We need to reform our schools and nurse them to health. Then, and only then, can we focus on policies of integration creating more diversity in our schools and allowing friendships to flourish and tolerance to grow between the racial groups that form the patchwork of our nation. Integration is the outcome of, not the key to, educational reform.