In education, few topics are more fraught with tension than school integration. A new plan being promoted in Brooklyn that does away with admissions screening processes for middle schools is being watched closely by experts and parents alike.

For it to succeed, teachers will need to simultaneously teach students of different levels of academic proficiency in the same classroom. Akane Zusho, a professor of educational psychology in Fordham’s Graduate School of Education, says when students are properly motivated, it can be done.