Desegregation Policy Research Articles

Reforming School Choice Systems to Reduce Segregation in Schools: A Comparative Political Economy Study of Education Reform in Belgium, Chile, and the Netherlands

ABSTRACT This study offers a comparative examination of desegregation policy reforms in Belgium, Chile, and the Netherlands, addressing equity reforms to universal school choice systems. Through an analysis of the reform trajectories, we explore the evolution of policies, the causal mechanisms of change, efforts to institutionalize policies, and the sources of resistance to reform. We then undertake a cross-national comparison to discern trends and confirm or disconfirm theorized causes. Policy strategies from each context included nondiscrimination policies, fiscal incentives, and eventually reform of admissions procedures. Causal mechanisms facilitating equity reforms included shifts in political context, grassroots mobilization, generated focusing events through scholarly work and reports of civil society and transnational actors, and effective framing. Oppositional forces from non-state school networks and middle-class/white parents emerged in each context, affecting reform design and the path to institutionalization, but were unable to block reforms. The resulting reforms in each context were the products of compromise that retreated from deeper structural changes, likely mitigating the effects of reforms on school-based segregation.

Simulating desegregation through affordable housing development: An environmental health impact assessment of Connecticut zoning law

Residential segregation drives exposure and health inequities. We projected the mortality impacts among low-income residents of leveraging an existing 10% affordable housing target as a case study of desegregation policy. We simulated movement into newly allocated housing, quantified changes in six ambient environmental exposures, and used exposure-response functions to estimate deaths averted. Across 1000 simulations, in one year, we found on average 169 (95% CI: 84, 255) deaths averted from changes in greenness, 71 (49, 94) deaths averted from NO2, 9 (4, 14) deaths averted from noise, 1 (1, 2) excess death from O3, and 2 (1, 2) excess deaths from PM2.5, with rates of deaths averted highest among non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic White residents. Strengthening desegregation policy may advance environmental health equity.

Does desegregation matter? A comparative study of school‐based social capital for university‐bound minority students in segregated and desegregated school contexts of Hong Kong

AbstractDespite national policies, de facto school segregation for racial/ethnic minority students in the West and East has continued to deepen. In Hong Kong, the segregated school system was abolished in 2013, while from 2004 reformed School Places Allocation Systems encouraged minority students to choose mainstream primary and secondary schools. However, de facto ethnicity‐based school segregation continues to prevail. Most minority students in the mainstream system are stuck in low‐status schools where they face discrimination and institutional exclusion. This has led many of them to retreat to a limited number of schools that have traditionally catered for minority communities. Such segregation calls forth scholarly attention to the paradoxical correlation between the physical mixing of diverse students and equality of educational opportunity, especially equal access to post‐secondary education (PSE)—a key for minority youth to function in the competitive labour market. This study employed the theory of school‐based social capital (SBSC) and compared the ways in which PSE‐relevant institutional resources and support were rationalised and enacted by staff in de facto segregated and desegregated school contexts. Case studies of two secondary schools lead us to argue that desegregation is only effective when institutional structure, culture and agents empower minority students through access to instrumental resources and support for the pursuit of PSE. The findings confound the desegregation policy and call for structural/institutional interventions to ensure instrumental SBSC is accessible to PSE‐bound minority students in all schools, and thus increase the effectiveness of school desegregation.

Interest Convergence and Market-Based School Reform: The Promise and Limits of Using Controlled Choice to Desegregate Schools.

This articleuses interest convergence and market-based theories to examine a recently-adopted controlled choice school admissions model intended to desegregate a diverse, urban school district. Drawing on longitudinal, qualitative interviews with advantaged parents who articulated support for controlled choice, we find that these parents' positive viewof the measure was based on a belief that the desegregation policy benefited their own children as well as poor children of color. Yet for many, support for the reform was contingent on their child's school assignment, pointing to the limits of utilizing a market-basedmodel for achieving educational equity.

EARLY-LIFE EDUCATION AND COGNITIVE AGING: DOES CONTENT, LOCATION, AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT MATTER?

Abstract Life course and cognitive aging theories about the sources of subgroup and individual differences in susceptibility to cognitive impairment frequently highlight the significance of early-life education, defined in research by total years of school and highest degree. A more nuanced approach could shed light on why and for whom education matters for brain aging processes. For example, one year of school in the 1930s may not be the same as one year in the 1960s, or in different school types and states in this historical period. In addition, post- high school training and degrees differ in content. Each paper in this symposium uses early-life education history and late-life cognitive data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Speakers discuss what guided their selection of specific education content, location, contexts and analytic strategy. Williams-Farrelly asks how individuals characterized by privileged high school educational experiences in the period from 1930 to the 1960s benefited in terms of social mobility and later-life cognitive functioning. Nkwata, in contrast, focuses on early-life education experiences that potentially limit the skills acquired together with exposure to family adversity and stress. Yu utilizes sequence analysis to identify and examine the association between late-life cognition and variations in patterns of K-12 education defined by duration and order of racial/ethnic composition. Walsemann and colleagues ask if state-level differences in the timing and implementation of school desegregation policies explain Black-White disparities in the transition to cognitive impairment in the US South. The session concludes with an integrative discussion by Zahodne.

Rejecting Competence – Essentialist Constructs Reproduce Ableism and White Supremacy in Linguistic Theory: A Commentary on “Undoing Competence: Coloniality, Homogeneity, and the Overrepresentation of Whiteness in Applied Linguistics”

Rejecting Competence – Essentialist Constructs Reproduce Ableism and White Supremacy in Linguistic Theory: A Commentary on “Undoing Competence: Coloniality, Homogeneity, and the Overrepresentation of Whiteness in Applied Linguistics”

Do ethnic integration policies also improve socio-economic integration? A study of residential segregation in Singapore

Concerns over the negative impact of residential segregation have motivated desegregation policies around the world. Singapore’s Ethnic Integration Policy (EIP) is a desegregation policy perceived to be effective in reducing ethnic segregation. However, there is little clarity about how the Ethnic Integration Policy might affect socio-economic segregation, another important dimension of segregation. This study explores Singapore’s socio-economic and ethnic residential segregation patterns from 1990 until 2020, focussing on three scales of analysis: national, city district-level (subzone) and building-level. Ethnic and socio-economic segregation, which were generally low, fluctuated in opposite directions over the years. While public housing flats were exposed to less ethnic and socio-economic segregation than private housing, findings suggest a negative relationship between ethnic and socio-economic segregation for majority public housing subzones. This inverse relationship between socio-economic and ethnic segregation might be due to the Ethnic Integration Policy's distortionary effect on flat resale prices. These findings highlight the need for greater attentiveness to residential integration policies’ impact on both socio-economic and ethnic integration, and not to assume that policies aimed at improving one would be sufficient to address the other.

Economic and Racial Integration Through School Choice in New York City

New York City’s school system is among the most diverse and segregated in the United States. Using difference-in-differences and placebo tests, we evaluate two desegregation policies in two geographic districts in New York City, District 3 and District 15. Both districts attempted to lower economic segregation within their district while maintaining school choice, prioritizing economically disadvantaged students for middle school seats in advance of the 2019–2020 school year. District 15, however, set more ambitious prioritization targets and also chose to eliminate academic screens from all middle schools. We find that District 15’s policy lowered economic segregation in sixth grade by 55% and racial segregation by 38%, while District 3’s policy led to no significant change in segregation.

The Catholic Way: The Catholic Diocese of Dallas and Desegregation, 1945–1971

Abstract Neglected in the many studies of Dallas, Bishop Thomas K. Gorman and Catholic religious orders that staffed schools and churches in the Diocese of Dallas led the way in desegregation and achieved peaceful change ahead of secular institutions. Gorman and religious orders formulated, supported, and implemented desegregation policies without fanfare or publicity that might divide Catholics and arouse segregationist opposition from within and/or outside the Church's ranks. Black Catholics were far from quiescent and made important contributions to secular desegregation. In September 1955, two African American Catholics enrolled in Jesuit High, a boys’ school, making it the only desegregated school in Dallas. George Allen, the father of one of the boys, subsequently worked behind the scenes to negotiate desegregation of the city's buses and other public accommodations. Another African American lay Catholic, Clarence A. Laws, organized and led civil rights protests in the city as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Southwest regional director. White sisters also contributed to racial change. Even before the US Supreme Court ruled public school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education in May 1954, the Sisters of St. Mary of Namur, without publicity, admitted African Americans to a white girls’ school, Our Lady of Victory, in Fort Worth, making it the first desegregated school in the city. However, residential segregation and white flight limited integration of Catholic schools and churches, and Catholic school desegregation largely involved the closure of black schools.

Occupational Segregation And Hypertension Inequity: The Implication Of The Inverse Hazard Law Among Healthcare Workers

In the United States (US), Black—particularly Black female—healthcare workers are more likely to hold occupations with high job demand, low job control with limited support from supervisors or coworkers and are more vulnerable to job loss than their white counterparts. These work-related factors increase the risk of hypertension. This study examines the extent to which occupational segregation explains the persistent racial inequity in hypertension in the healthcare workforce and the potential health impact of workforce desegregation policies. We simulated a US healthcare workforce with four occupational classes: health diagnosing professionals (i.e., highest status), health treating professionals, healthcare technicians, and healthcare aides (i.e., lowest status). We simulated occupational segregation by allocating 25-year-old workers to occupational classes with the race- and gender-specific probabilities estimated from the American Community Survey data. Our model used occupational class attributes and workers’ health behaviors to predict hypertension over a 40-year career. We tracked the hypertension prevalence and the Black–white prevalence gap among the simulated workers under the staus quo condition (occupational segregation) and the experimental conditions in which occupational segregation was eliminated. We found that the Black–white hypertension prevalence gap became approximately one percentage point smaller in the experimental than in the status quo conditions. These findings suggest that policies designed to desegregate the healthcare workforce may reduce racial health inequities in this population. Our microsimulation may be used in future research to compare various desegregation policies as they may affect workers’ health differently.

‘More of the diversity aspect and less of the desegregation aspect’: Asian Americans and desegregation in metropolitan Hartford

ABSTRACT Little research examines the experiences and perspectives of Asian American parents who participate in K–12 desegregation efforts, such as magnet schools. Conceptually framed by research on Asian American racialization, this qualitative case study investigates 10 Asian American parents in metropolitan Hartford, Connecticut; and the motivations underpinning their decisions to choose magnet schools for their children. I find that most parents emphasized ‘diversity’ over ‘desegregation’ when explaining their decision to choose magnet schools. This pattern demonstrates parents’ limited engagement with racialized power structures and with how Asian Americans are situated within the American racial order. Findings reflect research on the invisibility and racial ambiguity of Asian Americans in policy and political discourses. Thus, findings point to the need for desegregation and other educational policies to center Asian American’ nuanced backgrounds and experiences.

School desegregation, school re-zoning, and growth management in two Maryland counties

This article examines how school and non-school policies interact to reinforce or disrupt school segregation in the context of suburban communities and how these systems are maintained by structural and institutional mechanisms. Methodologically, we use a case study approach to delve deeply into the interpretation and implementation of school attendance zone redesign and non-school policies, specifically land use policies and tools. We draw on neo-institutionalist theory and Ray’s (2019) framework of racialized organizations to make sense of school districts, planning agencies, and their policies. We find that school district rezoning policies provide a weak regulatory framework for desegregating schools because school zoning decisions are not made in a vacuum but rather are shaped by policies and actions taken by other actors in a multi-level governance structure. School zoning policies themselves prioritized capacity over desegregation, and regulations and norms governing the public engagement processes privilege opposition to desegregation. Our study points to the importance of greater coordination across governmental levels and policy arenas, and underscores how desegregation policy is part of a political and relational process between advocates, elected leaders, families, and youth across policy sectors.

Exogenous Policy, Racial Avoidance, and the Qualified Relevance of Macroeconomic Change to Metropolitan Inequality

Context: The rich contextualization of educational processes brought about in the pioneering work of Jean Anyon pushed scientists to acknowledge that the education being provided to the least advantaged was shaped by factors with origins beyond school and family environments. Political economic work in education has subsequently argued that an unforgiving economy has lessened the educational fortunes of urban residents. Focus of Study: In response to claims that macroeconomic change created the confinement of educational disadvantage, this article reveals that political economic arguments predicated on macroeconomic change have yet to explain a period of decline on several dimensions of educational inequality from 1970 to 1990. Research Design: Through a juxtaposition of historical population trends and research with the ideas of Anyon and her contemporaries, this analysis considers racial forces emanating from desegregation policy as key to understanding test-score trends and metropolitan restructuring. Descriptive analyses of test-score trends and neighborhood indices of dissimilarities from 1970 to the mid-1990s form the basis of analysis. Conclusions: The analysis demonstrates that not only does desegregation policy align with anomalous educational trends, but that its impact reverberated to other spatial strata through its encouragement of Whites’ school selection decisions intent on racial avoidance. Racial avoidance should therefore be considered as an architect of the racial and economic landscape of the modern metropolis.

Access versus integration: the benevolent undermining of an Indian desegregation policy

ABSTRACT Efforts to desegregate schools have consistently been undermined by privileged parents finding ways to avoid undesirable schools. In some contexts, a more complex picture is emerging, where ‘progressive’ privileged parents choose ‘diverse’ schools but still reproduce segregation. We demonstrate how the desegregation aims of an Indian education policy are similarly undermined by seemingly well-intentioned privileged actors. India’s Right to Education Act of 2009 requires private schools to educate disadvantaged children for free. The architects of this policy imagined that it would not only provide access to quality education for disadvantaged children, but also desegregate schools. Beneficiaries of the policy share the policymakers’ vision of desegregation. However, various elite and middle-class actors prioritise access over integration, and assert that segregated classrooms may be in the best interests of underprivileged children. This highlights how desegregation policies can fail not just as a result of direct opposition but also through discourses of benevolence.

Using Opinion Polling Data to Replicate Non-Experimental Quantitative Results Across Time and Space: An Exploration of Attitudes Surrounding School Desegregation and Resegregation Policies

A renewed call for replications has emerged in social science research. An important form of replication involves exploring the extent to which findings from a given study hold in other contexts. This study draws on opinion polling data to replicate key findings across time and space based on an original study in one location analyzing attitudes toward public school assignment policies. The replication finds that many of the original findings hold, though one important exception reflects the changing context. We note that the increasing availability of relatively inexpensive methods of quantitative data production facilitates replication and comment on how the temporal interval between the original study and the replication may influence the extent to which findings replicate. We argue that largely successful replications help to clarify the conditions under which findings replicate, and that sociologists are in the early stages of determining which strategies work best for replicating which findings.

Policy reform instead of policy transformation? Experiences of participatory action research (PAR) on desegregation policy in Szeged, Hungary

To move towards more just and ecologically sustainable societies, we must structurally transform our current socio-economic system at a deep level. Participatory Action Research makes much of this term ‘transformation’, yet on closer examination, the concept is not only conceptually but also practically vague. What exactly is required for socio-environmental spatial policies to be ‘transformational’? Our aims in this paper are twofold. First, we want to suggest that there are different definitions of ‘transformation’. We work through three sets of concepts: autonomy, empowerment, and solidarity, showing that there are hegemonic and counterhegemonic versions of each. Secondly, we use these different framings to reflect on a case study exploring the desegregation of a Roma community in Szeged, Hungary. We explore the ways in which the empowerment of Roma community leaders within a PAR project worked both to challenge and to reinforce existing power asymmetries: while Roma representatives were increasingly accepted and influential, they were unable to shift the powerful city council away from an underlying commitment both to desegregation, and to a logic of “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. Ultimately, this led to a situation where the neoliberal hegemonic logic of the policy went unchallenged, with the practical consequence that, while some community members benefitted from desegregation, the poorest were rendered more precarious and vulnerable. This points to a need for further reflection on the intractability of oppressive structures, and honesty about the potential limitations in achieving short-term structural transformation using PAR.

Academic achievement and wellbeing of dual language learners: Evidence from a busing program

We exploit exogenous variation from a school desegregation policy to investigate the determinants of academic achievement and wellbeing of dual language learners. The policy buses some school starters with low host-country language proficiency from schools with many dual language learners, higher total budget for dual language learning and higher per-pupil spending to schools with fewer dual language learners but lower total budget for dual language learning and per-pupil spending. Assignment to busing is exogenous conditional on three observed individual characteristics, hence we compare bused and non-bused pupils conditional on these characteristics. We find that assignment to forced busing has a negative effect on the academic performance and wellbeing of dual language learners, which is at odds with findings for school desegregation in the US.

La ségrégation scolaire au-delà de la « fuite des Blancs » : exemple d’un comté rural en Caroline du Nord (1967-1989)

In Robeson County, North Carolina, five school districts operated separately before 1989. This article examines the local process of drawing school district lines between 1967 and 1980, and argues that it was used to redesign racial segregation. Studying such local policies in rural contexts allows historians to go beyond the narrative of “white flight” as the explanation of failed desegregation policies, which attributes the persistence of racial segregation to the migration of white middle-class families to suburban developments in the postwar period.

The transition from a deregulated market to a centralised school admission system in Chile: mapping middle-class responses to new school choice rules

ABSTRACT Despite increasing consensus around strengthening school choice regulations to reduce its segregating effects, policy changes and research in this direction are scarce. In that context, this article tackles the recent equity-oriented reform introduced in the highly marketised Chilean school system. Based on in-depth interviews, we explore the responses of middle-class parents to the implementation of a new centralised admission system that modified the school choice rules. Our findings differentiate five types of responses. Alongside uncovering a significant opposition from parents for whom the reform is experienced as a threat to their middle-classness, we found a variety of stances consistent with heterogeneity within the broader middle class, and we reveal a high ambivalence in their policy interpretations. From these findings, we discuss the sociocultural complexities of reforms aimed at balancing choice and equity, and we contribute to prior literature by unravelling the nuances in the middle-class attitudes towards desegregation policies.

The Ambivalence of School Segregation and the Inefficacy of Desegregation Policies

The Ambivalence of School Segregation and the Inefficacy of Desegregation Policies