Episode 11: From Segregation to Desegregation to Resegregation

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Welcome to another episode of K12 Education Untangled. My name is Dr. Kim Fields, former corporate manager turned education researcher and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with with school educators and administrators, as well as the micro discriminations that I faced while raising my two kids who were in the public school system. I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. If you're looking to find out more about current topics in education that could affect you or your children, then you're in the right place. In today's episode, I'll be discussing where we started from a segregation perspective to where we are now through the lens of desegregation in the public school environment. I've always had this burning question in the back of my mind as to whether desegregation has really helped us, as African Americans, improve our educational outcomes. Having attended segregated schools in the early years of my elementary school education, was my perspective of learning and dedication of the teachers something that I viewed from a child's perspective? Or did we hurt ourselves as we fought for desegregation in schools? Let's dive into this issue. In 1954, the Supreme Court made a landmark decision outlawing segregation in American schools and the Brown versus Board of Education case. In the 60 years since that ruling, patterns of residential and school segregation in the United States has changed dramatically. There are different types of segregation now considered in the research, including black, white, Hispanic, white, multiracial, and socioeconomic. The level of aggregation is also important and of interest, including aggregation at the national, metropolitan district or school level. Given these variables, there is no single answer to the question of how segregation has changed. Over the past 60 years. Demographics have changed, especially the rapid growth of the Hispanic population and the change in the composition of school age population. School segregation is typically measured using one of two segregation indices, measures of isolation or exposure and measures of unevenness. Measuring unevenness examines the extent to which a student population is unevenly distributed among schools. In other words, using the Black White Dissimilarity Index, what is measured is the proportion of the black or white population would have to change in order to yield a pattern of school enrollment in which each school has identical racial proportions indices of exposure or isolation, in contrast to measures of unevenness, measured the extent to which students are enrolled in schools with high or lower portions of a given racial group. Black White school segregation trends can be divided roughly into two periods. 1954 through the 1970s and the 1980s to the present. During the period of 1954 through the 1970s, black white segregation declined dramatically, particularly in the south, although most of the decline happened after 1968, immediately following the Brown vs Board of Education decision. In 1954, states and school districts did very little to reduce racial segregation in the South. Many school districts initially put in place so called freedom of choice desegregation plans, which were designed largely to preserve racial segregation by putting the onus on the black family to enroll their children in white schools. And the options were unappealing to most black families, given the animosity many white families had to immigration. It's no surprise then that these plans achieved very little desegregation. The research indicates that 81% of black students in the south and 72% of those in border states still attended majority black Schools as of 1968. The research further demonstrated that in the South, 99% of blacks in 1964 and 86% in 1967 attended majority black schools. Segregation was nearly as high in the rest of the country by most measures. Nationally, 77% of black students attended majority black schools. In 1968, over half black students attended schools where 90% or more of their classmates were black. The average black student was enrolled in the school was only 22% white, despite the fact that the public school student population was 79% white at that time. This conclusively indicates that there were very high levels of segregation in the American school system in 1968. The Supreme Court's 1968 Green vs. County School Board of New Kent county decision required school districts to adopt more effective plans to achieve integration, and by the mid-1970s, hundreds of school districts were subject to court ordered desegregation plans. As a result, school segregation levels declined substantially between 1988 and the mid-1990s period. The evidence on trends in segregation since the late 1980s indicates a gradual trend of resegregation of black students. The proportion of black students attending predominantly minority schools rose from 63% in 1988 to 73% in 2005. During the 2000s, between district racial segregation declined, although it remains high today. Many researchers have documented the high levels of poverty and in majority minority schools and argue that segregation concentrates minority students in high Poverty schools which tend to have fewer resources and lower student achievement. In 2005, the average black or Latino student attended a school in which 60% of students were poor. Average white student attends school in which only one third of the students are poor. It's important to examine economic segregation between schools because many of the mechanisms through which racial segregation is thought to operate are driven by socioeconomic inequalities between schools attended by students of different races. In 1974, the Supreme Court's Milligan vs Bradley decision which basically ruled out court ordered in inter district desegregation plans is one reason that the between district racial segregation is higher than within district segregation. Some evidence suggests that racial desegregation efforts also contribute to increasing between district segregation as a result of so called white flight. The white families that move to districts where fewer blacks reside to avoid racially integrated schools. In addition to white flight, whites also left public school systems as a whole. Because of this, white enrollment in private schools increased, particularly in majority black school districts. White families living in predominantly black school attendance zones are less likely to enroll their children in the neighborhood public schools than are white families living in predominantly white neighborhoods. Similarly, non poor families are less likely to enroll their children in public neighborhood schools when in high poverty neighborhoods than when in low poverty neighborhoods. These patterns tend to increase racial and economic segregation among public neighborhood schools. Several studies have found generally the positive impacts of desegregation on minority minority achievement. Some researchers found that desegregation led to a decline in black dropout rates during the 1970s and that blacks high school graduation rates increased by about 1 percentage point. The studies also indicated that school desegregation was not harmful for whites. In addition to educational attainment for black students, researchers have examined the impacts of desegregation on later life outside outcomes. Several studies indicate that increased exposure to school desegregation improved black adult males earnings, reduced the cost and odds of poverty, and increased the odds of working white collar jobs. If looking at the data from a multi generational view, some researchers found that school desegregation affects not only those exposed to it, but also their children and grandchildren.

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Exposure to school desegregation positively affects the reading and math test scores, education payment equality, college entrance, and racial diversity at colleges of the children and grandchildren of Brown, with parent and grandparent education payment serving as a key mechanism. Some researchers acknowledge that the act of desegregation itself may have helped black students feel more enfranchised, optimistic about their futures, and dedicated to their studies, perhaps also increasing parental involvement, all of which could improve their educational outcomes. Other researchers have suggested that desegregation may have also increased the expectations of parents, teachers, and other adults who interact with black children. Over the last 25 years, and despite claims of resegregation on the one hand and the end of the segregated century on the other, school racial segregation has changed little. There have been significant decreases in the exposure of minorities to whites, but these have been driven primarily by demographic changes. Segregation is predicated upon identifying differences based on race, class, and gender. It's the system of oppression that privileges white domination while marginalizing and disenfranchising the other. Segregated schools may provide students with a platform to learn academic skills. However, the the psychological, emotional, and spiritual damage students experience is tragic and goes on. Unmeasured students of color in segregated settings have low achievement scores, low high school completion rates, inadequately prepared teachers, and very limited resources to support the curriculum. In other words, they have low achievement scores, poorly prepared teachers, and limited resources. Integrating black, Latino, and White students in schools with higher achievement levels, with highly qualified teachers, and with an abundance of resources to support the curriculum benefits all members of the learning community. The south is actually resegregating because the racial composition of America is changing. The segregation of Latino students is increasing, and black and Latino enrollment in suburban schools is increasing along with segregation within suburban communities. The United States is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, and resegregation is exacerbating educational inequity for black and Latino students. In order to be open to one nation, integration in public schools is a necessity, and integrated education is both a basic educational goal and a compelling social interest in the society. Going through the aspiration of transformation, desegregation actually changed the average spending in schools blacks attended, moving them to higher spending. Formerly white schools. The gains of the civil rights era are giving way to resegregation in American schools, a phenomenon that has most recently been linked to the rescission of legal support for desegregation. This resegregation is premised on trends observed in the 1990s. Research has highlighted the worsening segregation of blacks and the re emergence of segregation in the South. The research findings revealed that while the south experienced the largest declines in segregation since the Brown ruling, it also experienced the largest increase in black segregation over the 1990s. In addition, research has also emphasized the worsening segregation of Hispanic and to lesser degrees degree, Asian students in the context of rapid growth in these populations. This has changed the racial profile of student populations in public schools. The continued erosion of desegregation, rapid increase in racial ethnic population, and expansion of school choice options, all phenomena that have been linked together suggest that the past decade may have very well exacerbated the segregation trends of the 1990s. This massive dissolution of desegregation orders may have facilitated further segregation over the past decade. In addition, the past decades have witnessed large scale shifts in the racial ethnic composition of student populations with rapid increases in in the non white students in the schools. These increases in racial ethnic diversity have been particularly pronounced in metropolitan areas where the overwhelming majority of Americans live and attend public school. Between 1993 and 2000, the percentage of white students in schools dropped from 62.9% to 56.5% in metropolitan areas. Another major development in education with considerable implications for equity over the last decade has been the proliferation of school choice options, particularly charter school and open enrollment plans, topics that I'll be discussing in an upcoming episode of this podcast. Troubling segregation documented over 19 seems to be continuing into the 21st century. Research by Strobe and Richards revealed that the intervening decade or the early 2000s witnessed a period of modest racial and ethnic group as well as a growth in the contribution of trends toward integration in non white students that characterized the 1990s. While their data revealed that segregation has declined nationally since 1998, the Black White segregation increased more rapidly in the south than in the United States overall through the 1990s. Additionally, although the black white segregation declined in the south in 1998, these declines have been smaller than those observed in the rest of the United States. Their findings revealed that the racial ethnic resegregation of public schools observed over the 1990s has given way to a period of modest reintegration. Since 1998, multiracial segregation as well as the segregation between whites and all non white groups has declined with the exception of Hispanic white segregation which continued to increase until 2003. As a result of these trends, the typical students living in the metropolitan area is exposed to less segregation today than in 1993. Black white segregation experienced relatively small increases over 1990s and relatively large increases since 1998. Therefore, blacks are still substantially more segregated than whites as compared to any other group. The majority of segregation continues to lie between districts, especially for black white segregation and this highlights the importance of the immigration solution transcending district boundaries. Here are today's takeaways. It seems as though my initial thoughts on segregation and desegregation were from a childlike perspective. The research revealed that there were small gains when schools were desegregated. However, documented outcomes of students who went to segregated schools in the 1960s in the research studies was from the 50 years ago. And when comparing those outcomes to today's outcomes, the measures for which the educational attainment are pitted against each other are quite different from now to when they were in the 1960s. So that comparison may be a little difficult. One to one. I still feel that the education during that time was more intentional. Segregation still exists in schools today. It's just cloaked differently. Research by Jerry Rosiak in the Fidel Tut Kappan Journal, February 2019 indicates that in order to truly desegregate our schools, it's vital that we acknowledge that racism is a persistent social force that adapts to our efforts against it. Racial segregation has incrementally returned to United States schools over the last 30 years. The nation's greatest anti racist education policy, which is school desegregation, has proven no match for the adaptations of institutionalized racism. As a result, 50 years after the Green decision, our schools are more racially segregated by some measures now than they were in 1968. Today, school segregation is indirectly enforced through housing policies, school choice policies, and zoning policies that keep the percentage of whites students in some schools artificially high. The new segregation also combines race and class segregation. Because of persistent patterns of race and class segregation in housing as well as racial disparities in wealth accumulation, students of color and low income students of all races are concentrated in the same schools. Wealthy are households in which white families are overrepresented, can afford to relocate to residential zones with more political clout, and once there, these families invest their political capital in securing advanced curriculum and other educational resources for their schools, but not for others. Racial segregation today in schools is unequivocally a national phenomenon. It is on the rise in the south, the north, the Midwest, and the West. New York City, by the way, for example, currently has the most segregated schools in the United States. The tendency of white citizens to hoard educational resources for themselves has proven more resilient than the civil rights areas where desegregationists anticipated. They have used residential housing patterns and school zoning policy, new rhetoric and new rationales found ways to segregate students at the classroom level through tracked curriculum. What it has not done is go away. Surprisingly, across a variety display disciplines and various resources, the conclusion is clear. Racial resegregation of our schools does not improve academic achievement for white students or any other group of students and it has negative effects on many students outcome. The problem is with all of this information available to district and school administrators as well as policymakers, that this has not motivated substantive changes in educational policy and practice. It looks like we're right back to where early 20th century theorist W.E.B. dubois described in his skepticism that racial integration for black students with white students because of racism caused whites to be resistant to change. We might need to move beyond the hope that we will discover some insight or clever policy that will somehow fix the institutionalized racism in our schools. This is probably a self intelligent delusion that preserves a vision of the future that comforts us while providing justification for shuffling students of color from one form of institutionalized racism to another. If this is the type of subject matter and discussion that resonates with you, please subscribe to my podcast on whatever service you're listening to this Also, I'd love to hear from you. So please leave me a comment or review and share this episode with anyone that you think would find it there valuable. Be sure to tell your friends, family and community about my podcast. Thanks for listening today. I hope you'll come back for more K12 educational discussions with even more exciting topics to untangle. By the way, if you have a burning question about a current issue or a specific topic that you'd like for me to cover and explore, shoot me a quick email@kimliberationthrougheducation.com to let me know what your question is. Be sure to stay tuned because on the next episode of my podcast I'll be reviewing another book from the Banned Book List. Until next time, aim to learn something new every day.

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