The conversation Worcester isn't having

“I don’t think we have any plan at this point,” was the response Maureen Binienda gave in addressing that ideal two years ago when she was appointed superintendent. 

“It’s not about race, it’s about poverty.”

Wrong.
Clive is being far too generous when he calls this response "partly right." As he points out in the next section:

...we know, as the Center for Social Inclusion argues, that the racial composition of neighborhoods don’t “just happen on their own.”
“Who lives in which neighborhood and whether that neighborhood has decent housing, good schools, and well-paying jobs is determined by multiple institutional policies and practices” that have “often discriminated by race,” the center said.

 There are, of course, lots and lots of places such information can be found. Likewise the racial wealth gap--poverty being tied to race--is well documented.

We know that race is a factor in teacher impact, in student discipline, in high school dropouts, in health, in college access, even in access to things like calculus. And for every one of those links, there are dozens more.
And, remember, this is what the student body in Worcester looks like:

The student body is 70% students of color. 

Thus it is not okay (or about poverty) that the demographics of our elementary schools look like this: 

That's from this Vox article on school segregation, making the case that intradistrict segregation is more of an issue than interdistrict segregation. That's true nationally; due to the size of districts here, it largely is not in Massachusetts. 

But it is in Worcester. 

Yes, race is hard to talk about. Yes, actually dealing with such issues can make one unpopular. 

But our students really can't afford for leadership to pretend it doesn't exist.