How Mixed Neighborhoods Could Save America’s #Schools

type='html'>The Hechinger Report

Educators have a mission to prove that schools serving poor students can be great. So it's hard for educators to say that the only way this school can be great is if it's economically integrated.

In a former Atlanta slum, low- and middle-income families now live side by side -- and send their children to the same excellent school. Is this surprising model too good to be true?

During the half century that Theresa Cartwright has lived in the East Lake neighborhood of Atlanta, she has twice seen the area's schools undergo a complete transformation. In the 1960s, black families like her own moved to the neighborhood's Craftsman bungalows and a new public housing project, driving out their white, middle-class neighbors. When she was in second grade, her elementary school was all black. By the time she was in sixth grade, the projects were so violent they had earned the name "Little Vietnam" and her mother refused to let her go to the failing local middle school.

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