[…]
“That’s the theory of change of the bill, that there are a lot of places that would like to do something, but they need this incentive to push it to the forefront,” said Philip Tegeler, who heads the Poverty & Race Research Action Council, a civil rights organization that has advocated for the legislation.
Though the program would mean funding integration efforts in just a few dozen places, advocates say the bill could create important test cases and amass more evidence about the impact of integrated schools. They say the bill also signals that it’s possible for school districts to address racial segregation using tactics like redrawing attendance boundary zones, instead of blaming underlying housing patterns.
