In New Mexico, demographic shifts have helped job growth

In the mid-60’s, Anne Forsyth, an heiress, noticed that despite Brown V. Board of education, white prep schools in the South were not being integrated. She wanted to change that. She also thought that by exposing white students to Black students it would make them less bigoted. So, she created the Stouffer foundation, which recruited Black students and placed them in white prep schools. In its first year, 20 black teenagers were placed in 7 white prep schools. Decades later, one student says it made him less racist.

Starting in the late 80s, Hartford school officials implemented programs to reverse the de facto segregation present in the district. Chief among these programs was developing 42 magnet schools, many of which provided specialized education in topics popular with students and relevant to the workplace. Currently, around half of Hartford’s students attend integrated schools.

The Morris district in Northern New Jersey has long championed diversity, even as its student body has changed and nearby schools remain deeply segregated. Each elementary school in the district draws from multiple neighborhoods, with a constant open zone at the center (where the poorest families live) where students are assigned to schools in order to maintain racial and economic diversity.

The Migrant Education Program, which offers educational and social services to migrant worker families in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, is growing in popularity among the valley’s migrant worker population, and has recently begun to focus on getting migrant students geared up for college .

A school in Brooklyn uses a lottery-based acceptance system to ensure a diverse class. And instead of sorting the struggling kids from the gifted, they embedded an honors program which kids can opt into without changing classrooms.

A nonprofit organization, the Internationals Network for Public Schools, delivers a first-class education to the children of illegal immigrants, helping to break the cycle of poverty and provide them a path to advance in life.

Undocumented parents face unique challenges to pandemic learning. Some don’t speak English or might not have access to Wi-Fi. To help, an activist in Michigan created an in-person learning hub for students of undocumented families in grades K thru 12. The hub was hosted in a church and provided 24 students with computers from the district, and support from teachers and tutors. The hub was funded through donations from the community.

A very special 15-person book club in Battle Creek, Michigan is using the book club format to discuss hard topics like race. The conversations steer profound, intimate, and personal, and many members testify to how much it has changed them. In addition to having read 68 books, the group also performs social justice work such as donating to the Equal Justice Initiative, rolling bandages for doctors in the DRC, and donating food and goods to local pantries.

In stark contrast with their Slovakia homeland, England has opened its arms to Roma immigrants with a set of accommodations aimed at helping them succeed in their new country. Victims of racism in both places, but particularly among Slovaks, the Roma newly arrived in England receive health counseling and educational aid that have inclusion at their core. Britain's school-attendance policies, for example, have increased Roma children's attendance by 30 percentage points, and few are shunted into special schools.

You can’t force people to make friends across ethnic lines, but you can invite them to at least meet each other. In the split town of Rotherham, the National Citizen Service program brings together 16- and 17-year-olds, some white and some with Pakistani heritage, to meet and discuss their differences openly. Participants say it’s a powerful experience.