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Williams will discuss the chapter she wrote in a new book titled, "The Future of School Integration: Socioeconomic Diversity as an Education Reform Strategy," at the National Press Club on March 7.

Video of National Press Club panel

University of Georgia College of Education professor Sheneka M.Williams was one of three chapter authors featured in a discussion highlighting a new book edited by think tank scholar, Richard D. Kahlenberg, from The Century Foundation in Washington, D.C., at the National Press Club on March 7.

Williams, an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy, spent five weeks during the summer of 2009 working under the tutelage of Kahlenberg, a Senior Fellow at TCF who writes about education, equal opportunity and civil rights.

The new book titled, The Future of School Integration: Socioeconomic Diversity as an Education Reform Strategy, looks at how socioeconomic school integration has been pursued as a strategy to reduce the proportion of high-poverty schools and therefore to improve the performance of students overall. It examines whether students learn more in socioeconomically integrated schools—and pre-K programs—than in high-poverty institutions and explores the costs and benefits of integration programs. The book also investigates whether such integration is logistically and politically feasible, looking at the promises and pitfalls of both intradistrict and interdistrict integration programs. Finally, it examines the relevance of socioeconomic integration strategies being pursued by states and localities to the ongoing policy debates in Washington over efforts to turn around the nation’s lowest-performing schools and to improve the quality of charter schools.

Williams was joined by two other chapter authors Stephanie Aberger of Expeditionary Learning and Marco Basile of Harvard University. Respondents will include Michael Petrilli of Thomas B. Fordham Institute and Derek Black of Howard University Law School. The discussion was moderated by Kahlenberg from noon-2 p.m.

Williams is a 2009 recipient of the Sarah H. Moss Fellowship Award. Her current research focuses on the intersection of policy and politics in the formulation and implementation of student assignment policies. The study includes Wake County Public School System (North Carolina), Champaign Unit Four School District (Illinois), and Jefferson County School District (Kentucky).

Williams, who received her Ed.D. in educational leadership and policy from Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development, joined the UGA faculty in 2007.