Historical segregation
Jim Crow laws formalized school segregation in the United States, 1877-1954.
The formal segregation of blacks and whites in the United States began long before the passage of Jim Crow laws following the end of the Reconstruction Era in 1877. The United States Supreme Court's Dred Scott
decision upheld the denial of citizenship to African Americans and
found that descendants of slaves are "so far inferior that they had no
rights which the white man was bound to respect."
Following the American Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation,
the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing "equal protection under the
law" was ratified in 1868 and citizenship was extended to African
Americans. Congress also passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875 banning
racial discrimination in public accommodations. But the Supreme Court
struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875 in 1883 finding that
discrimination by individuals or private businesses is constitutional.
The Reconstruction Era
saw efforts at integration in the South, but Jim Crow laws followed and
were also passed by state legislatures in the Southwest and Midwest,
segregating blacks and whites in all aspects of public life, including
attendance of public schools.
While African Americans faced legal segregation in civil society,
Mexican Americans who lived in southwestern states often dealt with de facto segregation even where no laws explicitly barred their access to schools or other public facilities.
The proponents of Mexican-American segregation were often officials who
worked at the state and local school level and often defended the
creation and sustaining of separate "Mexican schools". In other cases, the NAACP
challenged segregation policies in institutions where exclusion was
targeted only at African-American students and where there was an
already established Mexican-American presence.
The constitutionality of Jim Crow laws was upheld in the Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson
(1896), which ruled that separate facilities for blacks and whites were
permissible provided that the facilities were of equal quality.
The fact that separate facilities for blacks and other minorities were
chronically underfunded and of lesser quality was not successfully
challenged in court for decades. This decision was subsequently
overturned in 1954, when the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education ended de jure segregation in the United States. In the decade following Brown, the South resisted enforcement of the Court's decision.
States and school districts did little to reduce segregation, and
schools remained almost completely segregated until 1968, after
Congressional passage of civil rights legislation.
Desegregation efforts reached their peak in the late 1960s and early
1970s, a period in which the South transitioned from complete
segregation to being the nation's most integrated region.
Parents of both African-American and Mexican-American students
challenged school segregation in coordination with civil rights
organizations such as the NAACP, ACLU, and LULAC.
Both groups challenged discriminatory policies through litigation in
courts, with varying success, at times challenging policies. They often
had small successes.
For instance, the NAACP initially challenged graduate and professional
school segregation because they believed that desegregation at this
level would result in the least backlash and opposition by whites.
Various means to desegregate schools have been tried including busing students.
Catholic Schools
Catholic
schools in the South generally followed the pattern of segregation of
public schools, sometimes forced to do so by law. Most Catholic
dioceses began moving ahead of public schools to desegregate. In St.
Louis, Catholic schools were desegregated in 1947. In Washington, DC, the Catholic schools were desegregated in 1948. Catholic schools in Tennessee were desegregated in 1954, Atlanta in 1962, Mississippi in 1965, all ahead of the public school systems.
More recent segregation
From 1968-1980, segregation between blacks and whites in schools declined.
School integration peaked in the 1980s and then gradually declined over
the course of the 1990s, as income differences increased.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, minority students attended schools with a
declining proportion of white students, so that the rate of segregation
as measured as isolation resembled that of the 1960s.
There is some disagreement about what to make of trends since the
1980s; while some researchers have presented trends as evidence of
"resegregation," others argue that changing demographics in school
districts, including class and income, are responsible for most of the
changes in the racial composition of schools.
A 2013 study by Jeremy Fiel found that, "for the most part,
compositional changes are to blame for the declining presence of whites
in minorities' schools," and that racial balance increased from 1993 to
2010.
The study found that minority students became more isolated and less
exposed to whites, but that all students became more evenly distributed
across schools. Another 2013 study found that segregation measured as
exposure increased over the previous 25 years due to changing
demographics.
The study did not, however, find an increase in racial balance; rather,
racial unevenness remained stable over that time period. Researcher
Kori Stroub found that the "racial/ethnic resegregation of public
schools observed over the 1990s has given way to a period of modest
reintegration," but that segregation between school districts has
increased even though within-district segregation is low. Fiel believes that increasing interdistrict segregation will exacerbate racial isolation.
Sources of contemporary segregation
Residential segregation
A principal source of school segregation is the persistence of residential segregation
in American society; residence and school assignment are closely linked
due to the widespread tradition of locally controlled schools. Residential segregation is related to growing income inequality in the United States.
A study conducted by Sean Reardon
and John Yun found that from 1990-2000, residential black/white and
Hispanic/white segregation declined by a modest amount in the United
States, while public school segregation increased slightly during the
same time period. Because the two variables moved in opposite
directions, changes in residential patterns are not responsible for
changes in school segregation trends. Rather, the study determined that
in 1990, schools showed less segregation than neighborhoods, indicating
that local policies were helping to ameliorate the effects of
residential segregation on school composition. By 2000, however, racial
composition of schools had become more closely correlated to
neighborhood composition, indicating that public policies no longer
redistributed students as evenly as before.
A 2013 study corroborated these findings, showing that the
relationship between residential and school segregation became stronger
over the decade 2000-2010. In 2000, segregation of blacks in schools was
lower than in their neighborhoods; by 2010, the two patterns of
segregation were "nearly identical."
Supreme Court rulings
Although the US Supreme Court's in Brown v. Board of Education
set desegregation efforts in motion, subsequent rulings have created
serious obstacles to continued integration. The court's 1970 ruling in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education furthered desegregation efforts by upholding busing
as a constitutional means to achieve integration within a school
district, but the ruling had no effect on the increasing level of
segregation between school districts. The court's ruling in Milliken v. Bradley in 1974 prohibited interdistrict desegregation by busing.
The 1990 decision in Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell
declared that once schools districts had made a practicable, "good
faith" effort to desegregate, they could be declared to have achieved
"unitary" status, releasing them from court oversight. The decision allowed schools to end previous desegregation efforts even in cases where a return to segregation was likely. The court's ruling in Freeman v. Pitts
went further, ruling that districts could be released from oversight in
"incremental stages," meaning that courts would continue to supervise
only those aspects of integration that had not yet been achieved.
A 2012 study determined that "half of all districts ever under
court-ordered desegregation [had] been released from court oversight,
with most of the releases occurring in the last 20 years." The study
found that segregation levels in school districts did not rise sharply
following court dismissal, but rather increased gradually for the next
10 to 12 years. As compared to districts that had never been placed
under court supervision, districts that had achieved unitary status and
were released from court-ordered desegregation had a subsequent change
in segregation patterns that was 10 times as great. The study concludes
that "court-ordered desegregation plans are effective in reducing racial
school segregation, but…their effects fade over time in the absence of
continued court oversight."
In a pair of rulings in 2007 (Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education),
the court's decision limited schools' ability to use race as a
consideration in school assignment plans. In both cases, the Court
struck down school assignment plans designed to ensure that the racial
composition of schools roughly reflected the composition of the district
as a whole, saying that the plans were not "narrowly tailored" to
achieve the stated goal and that race-neutral alternatives had not been
given adequate consideration.
School choice
While greater school choice
could potentially increase integration by drawing students from larger
and more geographically diverse areas (as opposed to segregated
neighborhoods), expanded choice often has the opposite effect.
Studies conducted on the relationship between expanded school choice
and school segregation show that when studies compare the racial/ethnic
composition of charter schools
to local public schools, researchers generally find that charter
schools preserve or intensify existing racial and economic segregation,
and/or facilitate white flight from public schools.
Furthermore, studies that compare individual students' demographic
characteristics to the schools they are leaving (public schools) and the
schools they are switching to (charter schools) generally demonstrate
that students "leave more diverse public schools and enroll in less
diverse charter schools."
Private schools constitute a second important type of school
choice. A 2002 study found that private schools continued to contribute
to the persistence of school segregation in the South over the course of
the 1990s. Enrollment of whites in private schools increased sharply in
the 1970s, remained unchanged in the 1980s, and increased again over
the course of the 1990s. Because the changes over the latter two decades
was not substantial, however, researcher Sean Reardon
concludes that changes in private school enrollment is not a likely
contributor to any changes in schools segregation patterns during that
time.
In contrast to charter and private schools, magnet schools generally foster racial integration rather than hinder it.
Such schools were initially presented as an alternative to unpopular
busing policies, and included explicit desegregation goals along with
provisions for recruiting and providing transportation for diverse
populations.
Although today's magnet schools are no longer as explicitly oriented
towards integration efforts, they continue to be less racially isolated
than other forms of school choice.
Implications of segregation
Educational outcomes
The
level of racial segregation in schools has important implications for
the educational outcomes of minority students. Desegregation efforts of
the 1970s and 1980s led to substantial academic gains for black
students; as integration increased, blacks' educational attainment increased while that of whites remained largely unchanged.
Historically, greater access to schools with higher enrollments of
white students helped "reduce blacks' high school dropout rate, reduce
the black-white test score gap, and improve outcomes for black in areas such as earnings, health, and incarceration."
Nationwide, minority students continue to be concentrated in
high-poverty, low-achieving schools, while white students are more
likely to attend high-achieving, more affluent schools. Resources such as funds and high-quality teachers attach unequally to schools according to racial and socioeconomic composition.
Schools with high proportions of minority enrollment are often
characterized by "less experienced and less qualified teachers, high
levels of teacher turnover, less successful peer groups and inadequate
facilities and learning materials." These schools also tend to have less challenging curricula and fewer offerings of Advanced Placement courses.
Access to resources is not the only factor determining education
outcomes; the very racial composition of schools can have an effect
independent of the level of other resources. A 2009 study determined
that attending school with a high proportion of black students
negatively affected black academic achievement, even after controlling
for school quality, differences in ability, and family background. The
effect of racial composition on white achievement was insignificant.
Short-term versus long-term outcomes
The
research that has been conducted on the effects of school segregation
can be divided into studies that observe short-term and long-term
outcomes of segregated schooling; these outcomes can be either academic
or non-academic in nature. Studies of short-term outcomes observe the
relationship between school segregation and outcomes such as academic
achievement (test scores), racial prejudice/fear, and cross-cultural
friendships. Long-term outcomes may refer to educational attainment,
occupational attainment, adults' intergroup relations, crime and
violence, and civic engagement.
The mixed findings of research on the effects of integration on
black students has resulted in ambiguous conclusions as to the influence
of desegregation plans.
Generally, integration has a small but beneficial impact on short-term
outcomes for blacks (i.e. education achievement), and a clearly
beneficial impact on longer-term outcomes, such as school attainment
(i.e. level of education attained) and earnings.
Integrated education is positively related to short-term outcomes such
as K–12 school performance, cross-racial friendships, acceptance of
cultural differences, and declines in racial fears and prejudice. In the
long run, integration is associated with higher educational and
occupational attainment across all ethnic groups, better intergroup
relations, greater likelihood of living and working in an integrated
environment, lower likelihood of involvement with the criminal justice
system, espousal of democratic values, and greater civic engagement.
A 1994 study found support for the theory that interracial
contact in elementary or secondary school positively affects long-term
outcomes in a way that can help blacks overcome perpetual segregation.
The study reviewed previous research and determined that, as compared
to segregated blacks, desegregated blacks are more likely to set higher
occupational aspirations, attend desegregated colleges, have
desegregated social and professional networks as adults, gain
desegregated employment, and work in white-collar and professional jobs
in the private sector.
Short-term and long-term benefits of integration are found for
minority and majority students alike. Students who attend integrated
schools are more likely to live in diverse neighborhoods as adults than
those students who attended more segregated schools. Integrated schools
also reduce the maintenance of stereotypes and prevent the formation of
prejudices in both majority and minority students.
Proposed policies
Although the Supreme Court's ruling in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1
limited school districts' ability to take race into account during the
school assignment process, the ruling did not prohibit racial
considerations altogether. According to the UCLA Civil Rights Project, a
school district may consider race when using any of the following
strategies: "site selection of new schools; drawing attendance zones
with general recognition of the racial demographics of neighborhoods;
allocating resources for special programs; recruiting students and
faculty in a targeted manner; [and] tracking enrollments, performance,
and other statistics by race."
Districts may use income-based school assignment policies to try to
indirectly achieve racial integration, but in practice such policies are
not guaranteed to produce even a modest degree of racial integration.
Other researchers argue that, given restrictive court rulings and
the increasingly strong relationship between neighborhood and school
segregation, integration efforts should instead focus on reducing racial
segregation in neighborhoods. This could be achieved, in part, by greater enforcement of the Fair Housing Act and/or removal of low-density zoning laws.
Policy could also set aside low-income housing in new community
developments that have a strong school district based on income.
In the school choice realm, policy can ensure that greater choice
facilitates integration by, for instance, adopting "civil rights
policies" for charter schools.
Such policies could require charter schools to recruit diverse faculty
and students, provide transportation to ensure access for poor students,
and/or have a racial composition that does not differ greatly from that
of the public school population.
Expanding the availability of magnet schools—which were initially
created with school desegregation efforts and civil rights policies in
mind—could also lead to increased integration, especially in those
instances when magnet schools can draw students from separate (and
segregated) attendance zones and school districts.
Alternatively, states could move towards county- or region-level school
districting, allowing students to be drawn from larger and more diverse
geographic areas.
According to some scholars, school assignment policies should
primarily focus on socioeconomic integration rather than racial
integration. As Richard D. Kahlenberg writes, "Racial integration is a
very important aim, but if one's goal is boosting academic achievement,
what really matters is economic integration."
Kahlenberg refers to a body of research showing that the low overall
socioeconomic status of a school is clearly linked to less learning for
students, even after controlling for age, race, and family socioeconomic
status. In particular, the socioeconomic composition of a school may
lead to lower student achievement through its effect on "school
processes," such as academic climate and teachers' expectations of
students' ability to learn.
If reforms could equalize these school processes across schools,
socioeconomic and racial integration policies might not be necessary to
close achievement gaps.
Sociologist Amy Stuart Wells, however, argues that the original intent
of school desegregation was to improve blacks' access to important
social institutions and opportunities, thereby improving their long-run
life outcomes.
Discussions about ending racial integration policies, though, largely
focus on the relationship between integration and short-run outcomes
such as test scores. In Stuart's view, long-term outcomes should be emphasized in order to appreciate the true social importance of integration.
