IN MY Complexities of Urban Schooling class at Clark University, I have spent the last five years teaching future educators about the challenges and opportunities of US public schools, past and present.  

The course is at the intersection of education, history, geography, political science, and sociology, using a mix of primary source historical documents, research studies, policy briefs, documentaries, and even TED Talks to frame our discussions and the student-led solutions to some of the most pressing challenges. 

A favorite TED Talk of mine in this class is one by Kandice Sumner, a fellow Massachusetts educator. Sumner grew up in Boston and was enrolled in METCO, a voluntary school integration program that sends Boston and Springfield students to suburban schools. In the TED Talk, Sumner discusses how her own METCO experience informed her approach as a teacher in Boston schools, and how, even with that integration program, many of her students faced the same segregated classrooms that she escaped. 

“Teaching my kids about desegregation, the Little Rock Nine, the Civil Rights Movement,” she says in the TED Talk, ”is a real awkward moment in my classroom, when I have to hear the voice of a child ask, ‘If schools were desegregated in 1954, how come there are no white kids here?’’” 

I can always count on an audible reaction from my Clark students to that moment in her talk. And that jaw-dropping line sums up so much about where we stand today—71 years to the week after the Supreme Court famously declared, in Brown vs. Board of Education, that “in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.”  

While talk of school segregation from that period often conjures images of the American South, we know too well from Boston’s ignoble history that the stain of school segregation was present in communities throughout the country.  

The bad news is that 71 years after Brown — and 50 years after the beginning of Boston busing — Massachusetts schools remain deeply segregated by race and class. The good news is that together, we can transform our schools and classrooms into the dynamic, diverse, and well-resourced learning spaces that our kids and communities deserve. 

I began my own teaching career about 20 years ago at the Edwards Middle School in Charlestown, the school that Boston’s former acting mayor, Kim Janey, was bused to in the 1970s.  

That chapter of our story is only part of the unique and storied history of the fight in Massachusetts for excellent and equitable schools for all kids. While it has been 71 years since Brown, we actually mark 170 years in Massachusetts this year since the legal abolition of segregated schools, in 1855, the result of lawsuits and public protest led by Black families in Boston. 

In an 1848 letter from the first secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, Horace Mann lays out the most lofty and aspirational goals for our then fledgling school system. “Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin,” he wrote, “is the great equalizer of the conditions of men — the balance-wheel of the social machinery.” 

Today we continue to strive toward Mann’s vision and Brown’s promise, schools that are the bedrock of community, opportunity, and the future we want for our children. The imperative is not only a matter of economic and racial equity, but of our shared democratic future. As the Supreme Court majority asserted of this integrated and equitable education in the Brown decision, “It is the very foundation of good citizenship.” Indeed, studies suggest that integrated schools prepare students to engage in democratic processes and increase civic participation. 

Despite that critical need, more than 225,000 students attend racially segregated non-white schools in the state, and Massachusetts public schools are among the most racially and economically segregated in the country.  

According to data from The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University, Massachusetts public schools are the sixth most segregated by income in the country, and only New Jersey has higher levels of economic segregation between school districts.  

Students of color are disproportionately hurt by these trends: the average Black or Hispanic student’s school serves almost 30 percentage points more students experiencing poverty than the average white student’s school. The consequences are real, and visible in graduation rates, student disengagement, and college matriculation. 

We know it doesn’t need to be this way. In fact, we know that most of us here in Massachusetts don’t want it to be this way.  

Two years ago, Brown’s Promise, a national nonprofit, was launched to combat school segregation in the US. This week, the first state chapter of Brown’s Promise is opening here in Massachusetts – a place with a rich history, both for better and worse, in the fight to ensure quality education for all. Our mission is to turn the vision of integrated, fully funded schools into a reality for all students, regardless of background.  

My colleagues at Brown’s Promise have already been talking to many people in community gatherings across the state, and the results are clear. Families, educators, students, and advocates across Massachusetts agree that every child deserves the same opportunity to thrive regardless of race, income, or zip code.  

In recent Springfield, Holyoke, and Lynn community engagement sessions, participants consistently expressed interest in understanding and addressing how segregation, district lines, and funding policies undermine educational quality. 

We will continue those community conversations and work with partners to analyze policy options to figure out what changes make the most sense in Massachusetts. We know that every community is different and will require different approaches. To help guide this work, Brown’s Promise has outlined five policy solutions already: 

I am excited to work with policy leaders, students, and educators to make these things concrete in Massachusetts, and am learning already from the conversations that have already happened in communities across the Commonwealth. For example, families and students in early conversations have been particularly interested in the creation of a series of regional, themed magnet schools that enroll students across district lines without any admissions tests, with free transportation, and with a lottery that ensures socioeconomic diversity.  

Massachusetts ranked No. 1 on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, leading the nation in public education outcomes, but those of us on the ground in our communities know that this does not tell the whole story.  

I saw firsthand as a youth worker years ago in Boston, Lowell, Holyoke, and Worcester the ways in which that top-ranked education is out of reach for many of our students of color and/or low-income students. 

We know that together we can build schools for every child to thrive. Together, we can add our own chapter to the storied history of Massachusetts’ educational leadership for all.  

Today, as a parent of a Worcester Public School student and a longtime educator, I am excited to continue these conversations in cities and towns across the Commonwealth to build a shared vision of equitable and excellent schools for all of our kids. Together, we can deliver on Brown’s promise, and ensure that our kids get the integrated and equitable schools that every kid deserves.  

Cara Berg Powers is Massachusetts state director for Brown’s Promise, a nonprofit organization advocating for integrated, well-resourced public schools. She is a visiting lecturer at Clark University in Worcester.