The Benefits of Culturally and Racially Diverse Classrooms

The expert opinions on the benefits of diverse classrooms are spilt.  Some studies demonstrate student progress in racially isolated classrooms while others demonstrate great benefit to diverse settings.  Our guest this month, Dr. Amy Stuart Wells is the co-author of a report supported by the Century Foundation that supports the latter. Amy Stuart Wells is a Professor of Sociology and Education and the Director of the Center for Understanding Race and Education (CURE) at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is also the co-Director of the Public Good, a non-profit public school support organization for racially and ethnically diverse schools. In February, 2016, Wells and her colleagues published a Century Foundation report on the Educational Benefits of Racially Diverse Schools and Classrooms. Her research and writing has focused broadly on issues of race and education and more specifically on educational policies such as school desegregation, school choice, charter schools, and tracking and how they shape and constrain opportunities for students of color.  Wells’ on-going research project, “Metro Migrations, Racial Segregation and School Boundaries,” examines urban and suburban demographic change and the role that public schools and their boundaries play in who moves where. The final report from the suburban research phase of that project, Divided We Fall: The Story of Separate and Unequal Suburban School Districts 60 years after Brown, was published in Spring 2014; related articles were published in the Washington Post Answer Sheet, The Atlantic CitiLab, and Long Island Newsday. She received her Ph.D. from Teachers College in 1991. She was an Assistant, Associate and Full Professor at UCLA 1991-2001. She has been a professor of Sociology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University since 2001. Please join us for an exciting show on May 11 at 2pm!