Reducing Racial Isolation Online Through The Classes Without Walls Program

DOI: 10.5176/2251-1814_EeL17.56

Authors: Randall Glading , Charles Britton, Kristin Rainville, Karen Waters, Eric Freedman

Abstract:

On the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board, Jonathan Kozol (2005) observed that “schools that were already deeply segregated twenty-five or thirty years ago are no less segregated now.” He concluded that the nation’s schools were “still separate, still unequal— America's educational apartheid” (p. 41). This paper reports on a program called Classes Without Walls (CWW) that uses videoconferencing and other online tools to reduce racial, ethnic, and economic isolation among elementary school students in the State of Connecticut..