Vicki's Critical Conversation Response

While I do think that integration is important in educational institutions, I do not think that it should be a priority in order to ensure educational equity. First off to begin with, equity, in education, is formed on the ethics of fairness, and while used interchangeably with equality, equity acknowledges the playing field and attempts to even it out. With this being said, I thought I would have a better argument for the side that was pro-integration rather than the opposing side, but I soon realized that I had a change of heart. Initially, it was a difficult topic to first address because I’ve just never thought of something like this before through the lens of educational equity, but eventually I began to look at the bigger picture and realized that there’s a much bigger system stacked against students attending public schools, and adding a few students to make it more diverse wouldn’t assure educational equity. Because many of these schools are in environments that hold them back from attaining educational equity, I believe that first, funding and increasing resources would enable institutions under the practices of educational equity which would then lead to successful integration. Creating this equal opportunity for students would come through funding and resources which would lead to a more efficient administration, effective teachers, and other advancements that would assure educational equity. While diversity is important for many different reasons, one being that students can develop the ability to understand others with different perspectives through a multicultural lens therefore bettering their social and emotional learning in the classroom and out, I don’t believe that putting students in a school from different backgrounds from the majority would actually solve anything because many can easily resist to integrate, or actually internalize it so much that integration would actually be harmful. Through funding and shortening the gap of achievement for so many students across the city, schools would naturally and successfully integrate therefore enabling educational equity.Once we move forward with the needs to create schools under the application of educational equity, I believe that we can then move forward with integration that wouldn't be so forced which would therefore enable racial and socioeconomic diversity.