(see also a discussion on the challenges of diversity)
In 2006, when Seattle Public Schools was considering closing Graham Hill School, a member of the closures committee visited the school to explain to parents the rationale behind the group's early recommendations.
One of the parents spoke of how diverse our school is. The committee member looked around the room — "Many schools are diverse. This school is not as diverse as other south-end schools."
Many schools are justifiably proud of their racial and cultural diversity, particularly in the Rainier Valley. Our school is no exception, so it surprised me when she dismissed it. Was I way off base to think the school was diverse? I decided to get a straightforward answer, so I looked up the District's demographic information for all the elementaries of the southeast quadrant.
According to the District's 2005 demographic data, Graham Hill was the most racially diverse elementary school in southeast Seattle. Even though the textures and patterns of human diversity certainly defy statistics, it is possible to measure diversity using the District's (admittedly simple) categories of Asian American, Black, Latino, Native American, and White. I've attached the analysis. The second datasheet spells out how this index works.
I'm grateful that my son spends his days in a place that reflects his neighborhood, with a relatively even racial distribution in an effectively integrated school.
But the graph really doesn't mean much, except that it got the School Board and others to reconsider their assumptions about Graham Hill. It means nothing in comparison to even a short time spent at the school. In a brief visit, you can see for yourself that this school has broad and deep racial representation.
Simpson's Diversity Index is a measure of diversity. It integrates two factors:
"Richness", or in this case the number of racial groups represented within a school. District data shows that all south-end schools have students representing each of five groups. So by this measure, every school exhibits the same richness.
"Evenness", or the measure of the relative abundance of students from each group within the whole. This is where Graham Hill is amazingly different, because it has a relatively even distribution across groups.
This District data is from October 2005.
