Just a few short weeks ago, I felt downcast about the prospects for socio-economic integration of schools ever gaining a serious foothold in this country. Now I’m feeling better.

I’ve long been a proponent of schools with mixed populations of kids, for a simple reason: When done right, it works to boost the fortunes of low-income students without having a negative impact on their more affluent peers. Economically mixed schools also benefit everyone in non-academic ways. But those arguments don’t seem to hold much sway these days.

Last month, voters in Wake County, North Carolina elected a new school board, essentially opting to dismantle the nation’s most successful socio-economic integration program. That, for me, was the nadir. The Raleigh, N.C. program wasn’t perfect, but its implementation demonstrated wisdom and political savvy, and the results were indisputable. Its demise was a tragedy.

Since then, however, I’ve read news stories about an increasing number of districts , including Chicago, looking to economic integration as a workable strategy.

Now, suddenly, Denver looks like it could become a new hotbed. No Denver superintendent in recent memory has seen economically mixed schools as a viable school improvement strategy. But what is happening now does not come from the district. It comes from parents, in two different parts of town. That’s what has me so encouraged.

In the Stapleton neighborhood, members of Stapleton United Neighbors (SUN), in concert with some of the area’s elected officials, are pressuring Denver Public Schools to devise a strategy to create economically mixed schools on Stapleton and in the schools that ring the development.

This would be a step toward fulfilling the original vision for the development’s schools. That vision has been all but ignored by the school district and the developer, Forest City. Whether DPS bows to these demands – and Superintendent Tom Boasberg has made encouraging noises – or disregards them will be something to watch closely in coming months.

Stapleton need only look at one of its homegrown schools – the Denver School of Science and Technology – to see how effective economically mixed schools can be. DSST is the highest-performing school in the city, according to the district’s School Performance Framework. Economic integration is one of the cornerstones of the DSST philosophy.

Meanwhile, in northwest Denver, efforts launched in the early years of this decade to promote economically mixed schools are bearing fruit. Reinvigorating the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program at Lake Middle School, as the district has proposed, would be another sign that this movements has gained traction.

At Brown Elementary, an IB Primary Years Program has taken root since 2005, and a school that in 2003 had a student body that was 86 percent low-income now is trending toward socio-economic – and racial – integration. Last year, Brown’s free and reduced lunch percentage was down to just under 69, and when this year’s numbers are released, the numbers probably will be lower still.

With a fully functioning IB middle school at Lake, northwest Denver could be the first part of town to have an economically mixed feeder pattern, at least through middle school. The biggest challenge thereafter will be to maintain diversity. It would be a sad irony if the  IB programs tipped over and became populated predominantly by affluent students.

To keep that from happening, perhaps the northwest schools could take a page from the Stapleton playbook and ask the district to put in place policies that would reserve a portion of the seats in the IB schools for low-income families.

Many obstacles remain, both in Stapleton and in northwest Denver. But it’s encouraging to see matters trending in the right direction in the too-long neglected world of Denver school integration.

Popularity: 29% [?]