Desegregation Policy Research Articles

Who benefits from privileged peers? Evidence from siblings in schools

SummaryBy comparing siblings attending the same school at different points in time, we investigate whether the effect of peer quality on long‐term labor market outcomes varies with parental background. We find that exposure to better peers—who have higher mean parental education—increases lifetime earnings of disadvantaged students, coming from families with low parental education, but penalizes privileged students from better educated families. These results suggest that desegregation policies that allocate disadvantaged students to schools with better peers produce long‐term benefits. We discuss mechanisms and show that human capital accumulation, ordinal rank and network effects contribute to explain our findings.

Exploring the correlation between city size and residential segregation: comparing Chilean cities with spatially unbiased indexes

Urban segregation is a widespread phenomenon with profound social implications, and one that presents difficult measurement challenges. Segregation indexes may be affected by scale or zoning biases of the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP). In this article, we develop a methodology that relies on spatial clustering algorithms to simultaneously cope with both kinds of MAUP biases, and we test it with complete census data for most Chilean cities. We find a robust correlation between segregation and city size, contesting previous claims about the spuriousness of this relationship. We also show that socioeconomic polarization is a widespread phenomenon in Chile and that it is not just a problem of disadvantaged groups’ concentration. Based on these results, we suggest that area-based desegregation policies should be generally reinforced, and complemented in big Chilean cities with housing-mix policies. We argue that using spatially unbiased segregation indexes could improve comparative urban studies.

A LOOK BACK AT US GROUP: AN ANTI-RACIST INITIATIVE IN THE AGE OF DESEGREGATION

ABSTRACT In 1989, after an incident in which a white teacher used a derogatory word against three black students in a high school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the school developed a program called “Understanding and Sharing Diversity” (US Group). Every two months, approximately 60 students participated in all-day forums, where they could speak freely about issues and experiences regarding race, racism, and identity in school. This research examines the origins and development of US Group as representative of a particular historical moment and space: a public high school in a progressive Midwestern town during the period of desegregation. It contributes to the literature on critical geographies of education and race through a historical analysis of desegregation policies and their impacts, while also providing a blueprint for antiracist educational initiatives. Keywords: desegregation, education policy, race, anti-racist initiatives

Intergenerational Mobility and Unequal School Opportunity

Abstract We analyse the impact of unequal school opportunity on intergenerational income mobility and human capital accumulation. Building upon the classical Becker–Tomes–Solon framework, we use a regime-switch model allowing for differences in income transmission across groups. We find that unequal school opportunity raises average human capital because of assortative matching. However, because income dispersion tends to be higher at the top, in most cases unequal school opportunity decreases intergenerational mobility. Calibrating the model to the USA, simulations suggest that school equalisation and desegregation policies have positive effects on mobility at relatively small efficiency costs.

Desegregation policy as cultural routine: a critical examination of the Minnesota Desegregation Rule

ABSTRACT Education policies often result in and/or perpetuate inequitable and marginalizing outcomes. To that point, education policy may be viewed as an act of white supremacy. The purpose of this study was to examine the Minnesota Desegregation Rule (MR 3535.0100-0180) as a cultural artifact of race-related policy in US public education. Critical analyses of these types of policies offer a means to understand and document the status and workings of race and racism within a particular socio-political milieu. Three tenets from Critical Race Theory (the permanence of racism, the critique of liberalism, and law as a structural determinant) provided analytic tools to understand how the discourses related to race and racism act as cultural routines. The examination revealed nuances, contradictions, and patterns of power and privilege that serve as masked but powerful cultural signifiers. While legal and policy remedies are positioned as a means to reduce social and structural inequality, the Rule emphasizes bureaucracy and procedure and de-emphasizes student equity and racially equitable practices. Ultimately, the Rule relies on and perpetuates cultural routines that prescribe technical fixes to address deep structural, systemic, social, and institutionalized forms of racism.

The Twilight of Brown: Empirical Analysis of Re-Segregation and Voluntary Adoption of School Integration Policies Across the United States

Based on the extensive work of Gary Orfield and others, scholars and legal practitioners have long known that across the United States, significant resegregation of public-school districts is occurring rapidly as states debate new modes of student assignment, increase charter school offerings, and the Supreme Court loosens rules for removing the taint of discrimination in public education. However, we lack systematic knowledge of how resegregation is being counteracted and the factors contributing to the choice of school districts to adopt voluntary desegregation plans. This empirical study attempts to fill that void. We found sixty experimental school districts that meet our strict criteria for voluntary adoption of school desegregation policies. Using student enrollment size at the school district level, we selected fifty-nine contiguous control districts that have not adopted voluntary desegregation plans for inclusion in our study. We relied on multiple analytical methods to examine the data, including correlation and logistic regression. Our findings highlight the importance of both institutional and contextual conditions in a school district’s choice of voluntary adoption of desegregation plans. Institutional factors such as the number of schools in the district, the history of court-ordered desegregation, and contextual conditions such as the proportion of students receiving free and reduced-price lunch and the race and ethnicity of students significantly explains whether a school district would adopt voluntary integration policies. We discuss the implications of our findings within the context of a Supreme Court and polity that remain split about the worthiness of school desegregation.

Relational Integration in Schools Through Seating Assignments

Traditional desegregation policies have improved but not fully solved the problems associated with the reproduction of inequalities and interracial prejudice in schools. This is partly because social networks are inherently segregated within integrated schools and the benefits of contact have not fully materialized. Therefore, new kinds of policies are needed to further improve the situation. This paper investigates the consequences and efficiency of seating arrangements on academic outcomes and prejudice using an agent-based model that reflects real-life asymmetries. We model interpersonal dynamics and study behavior in the classroomin the hypothetical case of a single teacher who defines students’ seating arrangements. The model incorporates the mechanisms of peer influence on study behavior, on attitude formation, and homophilous selection in order to depict the interrelated dynamics of networks, behavior, and attitudes. We compare various seating arrangement scenarios and observe how GPA distribution and level of prejudice changes over time. Results highlight the advantages and disadvantages of seating strategies. In general, more heterogeneous deskmate pairs lead to a lower level of inequality and prejudice in the classroom, but this strategy does not favor talent management. Further, we evaluate outcomes compared to the absence of external intervention whereby students choose their own deskmates based on homophilous selection. Our model takes into account the fact that homophilous selection may be distorted due to the ‘Acting White’ phenomenon and pre-existing prejudice. Accounting for these factors implies slower convergence between advantaged and disadvantaged students.

Asian Segregation and Scholastic Achievement: Evidence from Primary Schools in New York City

This paper examines the effects of Asian segregation on students' academic performance in New York City primary schools. We use exogenous variation in the share of Asian students across cohorts and schools stemming from a fertility shock among Asian population in the Chinese year of the Dragon. A one-percentage-point increase in Asian student share reduces non-Asian math and ELA scores by 0.03 and 0.05 standard deviations. The effects are largest among black and Hispanic students. We find little evidence of effects among white students. The findings suggest that desegregation policies may generate net benefits in terms of student achievement.

Three Dimensions of Change in School Segregation: A Grade-Period-Cohort Analysis.

This study uses the first age-period-cohort (APC) analysis of segregation to examine changes in U.S. public school segregation from 1999-2000 to 2013-2014. APC analyses disentangle distinct sources of change in segregation, and they account for grade effects that could distort temporal trends if grade distributions change over time. Findings indicate that grade effects are substantial, drastically reducing segregation at the transition to middle school and further at the transition to high school. These grade effects do not substantially distort the analysis of recent trends, however, because grade distributions were sufficiently stable. Black-white segregation was stagnant overall, while Hispanic-white segregation declined modestly. In both cases, declines across periods were offset by increases across cohorts. Further analyses reveal variation in these trends across metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas, regions, and areas with different histories of desegregation policy.

School Desegregation 2.0: What is Required to Finally Integrate America's Public Schools

More than ten years have passed since the United States Supreme Court last addressed school desegregation. In its abbreviated tenure in the decades following Brown v. Board of Education, school desegregation was successful in many respects. Longstanding policies of state-sponsored educational apartheid eventually ended. A great many school buildings became more diverse. Countless students of color gained access to improved academic opportunities and better life outcomes. A consensus formed around the positive impacts that desegregation could have on both students of color and white students. When courts retreated from upholding desegregation policies, many communities developed their own voluntary plans, some of which even continue today. Yet by any measure, the original goals of Brown remain unfulfilled. Desegregation has nearly disappeared from the lexicon of educational reform, and America’s schools are becoming dramatically more segregated. While the courts are certainly to blame, the design and implementation of desegregation itself contributed to its own downfall. Desegregation has almost exclusively focused on balancing the number of students of different races in public schools, and nothing more. School district plans for addressing segregation often passed constitutional muster by merely moving students of color into previously all-white schools. As a result, schools became desegregated but were never fully integrated. Integration, as compared to desegregation, naturally requires the removal of the structures of segregation, but it also seeks to address more than just diversity in terms of numbers. Actual integration requires going beyond demographics, to include reforming the classroom and curriculum, and diversifying the teaching ranks. It breaks through school district boundaries to forge metropolitan-wide solutions. It requires changes beyond education, connecting housing and education policy. And because of the most recent Supreme Court decision, it requires using other metrics, in addition to race, to promote broad diversity in the public schools. After providing a brief overview of desegregation’s main achievements and its largest setbacks, this article examines successful desegregation programs from around the country and describes what has made these efforts worthwhile and legally sound. It then makes policy recommendations as to how to strengthen desegregation, such as avoiding the legal pitfalls of recent Supreme Court cases through geographic based-solutions, increasing diversity of our teaching ranks, and linking housing and education policy.

A mashup of policy tools and CDA as a framework for educational policy inquiry

ABSTRACTThis article uses an analytic approach that combines a classic educational policy framework with critical discourse analysis (CDA) to problematize power and meaning as expressed through educational legislation in the United States. This examination shows how state-level school desegregation policy documents construct particular understandings of how school districts should rectify contemporary problems of racial and ethnic inequalities that are rooted in historical discriminatory practices. Using an analytic perspective based on policy tools, and a conceptualization of CDA as an element of sociocultural research, I examine statutes designed to address school segregation and promote racial and ethnic integration in the state of Minnesota. In order for policies that shape social equity to succeed, they must address the social contexts in which inequalities have been constructed. Combining CDA approaches with traditional policy analysis frameworks offers one way to make the workings of political ideology visible in educational policy.

Desegregation Policy as Social Justice Leadership?: The Case for Critical Consciousness and Racial Literacy

Policy making can be viewed as a large-scale attempt at social justice leadership intended to address vast inequities that persist and are perpetuated in the U.S. K-12 education system. The study examines the text of the Minnesota Desegregation Rule to discern its underlying discourses as they relate to race, racism, and social justice. The findings highlight discursive practices that undermine social justice progress and antiracist efforts, demonstrating how well-intended social justice efforts can go awry without active engagement of critical lenses. The article argues that critical consciousness and racial literacy are essential in social justice and antiracist policy making and educational leadership.

THE IMPACT OF SCHOOL RACIAL COMPOSITIONS ON NEIGHBORHOOD RACIAL COMPOSITIONS: EVIDENCE FROM SCHOOL REDISTRICTING

I use data surrounding public school redistricting to study how school racial compositions affect neighborhood racial compositions. This redistricting followed from the end of court‐ordered busing for racial desegregation, significantly changing the racial composition of the assigned school for many neighborhoods. Over a 5‐year period, the impact of an increase in the percent black of the assigned elementary school on the percent black of the neighborhood was positive. The effects increased over time, consistent with a simple model of short‐run neighborhood racial dynamics. These results have implications for potential effects of school racial desegregation policy changes on neighborhood racial compositions. (JEL H75, I28, R23)

Effects of School Segregation and School Resources in a Changing Policy Context

Desegregation policies have been rolled back across the country. Some advocates for dismantling desegregation argue that resources allocated to desegregation would pay off better if allocated to improve education in schools with disadvantaged populations. We test this claim by examining student achievement before, during, and after the end of court-ordered desegregation in Nashville, Tennessee. School-by-grade fixed effect models reveal no evidence that increases in a school’s proportion of Black students impeded achievement growth. Increased exposure to students in poverty curtailed achievement growth, but enhanced option schools, which bring extraordinary resources to high-poverty, racially isolated schools, compensated for the effects of concentrated poverty. Schools that became specialized magnet schools, however, did not contribute to achievement gains and in some cases curtailed growth.

Reflections on Brown to Understand Milliken v. Bradley: What If We are Focusing on the Wrong Policy Questions?

Background/ContextPrior research on Milliken v. Bradley focuses on the failure of this case to implement interdistrict busing in the highly segregated Detroit schools. Much of this work focuses explicitly on desegregation, rather than on equity and addressing individual, systemic, institutional, and organizational challenges that may prevent the advancement and actualization of desegregation to benefit Black students, teachers, and communities.Purpose/ObjectiveIn this study, we shed light on the impacts of desegregation on Black students, teachers, and communities. We argue that Brown, Milliken, and associated policies that attempt to address segregation focus mostly on student assignment policies. Our focus instead is on highlighting the underconceptualized microlevel realities of desegregation, which include the losses of cultural and community connections, strong role models, and connections to school.Population/ParticipantsThis study draws from interview data collected from three experts in the field of education whose research focuses on school desegregation. The interview participants have written scholarly articles and/or book chapters about desegregation and related influences on/for Black teachers, Black students, and Black communities spanning the PreK–12 and higher education spectrum.Research DesignThis study employs in-depth qualitative interviewing.Data Collection and AnalysisInterviews were conducted by phone and lasted approximately 45 minutes to an hour. Participants in the study were asked questions about the impact of desegregation and education on Black teachers’ experience, self-concept, dedication, and retention; Black students’ experience of schools and school-related success; experience and connection of Black communities; and “next steps” in educating Black students. An interpretive perspective was used to guide the interview analyses in this study.Findings/ResultsAnalysis of the expert interviews reveals the underexplored microlevel losses and harmful effects of desegregation policies and politics on Black children, families, and communities.Conclusions/RecommendationsEvidence from these researchers who have studied desegregation suggests that for many Black students and educators, desegregation was unsuccessful— even when there were superficial indicators of success. We suggest that both researchers and policy makers should consider drawing from the potential losses associated with desegregation and focusing on equity, regardless of schooling location and population.

Before Black Like Me: Robert Gilbert Wells and Mr. Jones: Passing as Black

Furor erupted in the South in the early 1960s when John Howard Griffin published Black Like Me, his moving account of darkening his skin and hair in order to “pass” as an African-American man in the segregated South. His book detailed the discrimination and hardship he endured as he traveled on buses, hitchhiked, and struggled to find food and shelter as in the Deep South. After his book’s 1961publication,Griffithwashanged in effigy, had a cross burned in front of his house, and eventually temporarily left the country.Ultimately,BlackLikeMebecameabestseller,wentthoughnumerouseditions, and remains in print today. The book forced white America to see inside the AfricanAmerican experience and was certainly a factor in influencing desegregation policies. But long before Black Like Me, Robert Gilbert Wells, an African-American writer, wrote his own story in 1905 of a white man who changes his color, travels as a black man, and is transformed by the experience. The event is pivotal to the book. Wells’ book, Anthropology Applied to the American White Man and Negro ,w as published by Wells’ own printing firm (Wells & Company, Book Concern, 1905 )i n the predominantly African American and racially integrated township of Buxton, Iowa. 1

From “Good Will” to “Anachronism”

This article explores the challenges that have made the pursuit of school integration difficult in the contemporary era. Using court records and newspaper archives, we explore how a New York City school desegregation order came to be seen as “unnecessary,” “unfair,” and “anachronistic,” claims that seem to deny the salience of race in one of the most segregated school systems in the nation. In 1974, Mark Twain Junior High School in Coney Island became the first New York City school to desegregate under federal district court order. Three decades later, Mark Twain was a highly desirable magnet school under a court-mandated desegregation plan that left students across the city competing fiercely for admissions. In 2007, an immigrant parent from India successfully sued New York City, claiming his daughter was passed over in favor of white students who scored lower on the city's selective school screening test but were admitted in the name of maintaining the 1974 court-mandated racial balance. We argue that Mark Twain's story vividly illustrates not only the importance of demographic change in school desegregation policy but also the evolution of racial discourse and the conceptions of the public good in the post–civil rights era.

Closing Ranks: Closure, Status Competition, and School Segregation

The shift away from school desegregation policies toward market-based reforms necessitates a deeper understanding of the social and institutional forces driving contemporary school segregation. The author conceptualizes school segregation as a mode of monopolistic closure amid status competition, where racial/ethnic groups compete for school-based status and resources. He tests the theory by analyzing primary and secondary school segregation throughout the United States from 1993 to 2010. Findings support the hypotheses that segregation increases with the salience of race/ethnicity and the decentralization of school systems, which fuels differentiation and provides incentives and opportunities to monopolize schools. Parallel findings for black-white, Hispanic-white, and black-Hispanic segregation suggest that a core set of processes drives school segregation as a general phenomenon.

Low‐Hanging Fruit: The Impoverished History of Housing and School Desegregation

This article assesses the causes and consequences of weak federal enforcement of school and housing desegregation since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Political actors who acknowledged that state action played a central role in school and residential segregation, and argued that federal, state, and local governments had an obligation to rectify this situation, were uncommon. In examining the efforts of two such individuals—Housing and Urban Development Secretary George Romney and Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff—this article begins to untangle the story of why school desegregation policies rarely reached beyond the most blatant perpetrators of racial separation, and why housing desegregation policies barely got off the ground.

MitigatingMilliken? School District Boundary Lines and Desegregation Policy in Four Southern Metropolitan Areas, 1990–2010

Over the past half century, law and policy have helped cement tremendous inequities into the structure of our cities. District boundary lines separating multiple, unequal school systems within a single metropolitan (metro) area play a central role in structuring racial and economic isolation. Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics, this study explores how patterns of school segregation are linked to desegregation policy and district boundary arrangements in four southern metro areas. Findings indicate that while city-suburban mergers create far more potential for meaningful school desegregation within a school system, simply eliminating district boundaries is not enough. Corresponding and well-designed school desegregation policy is necessary to achieve widespread integration of students. In a society growing more diverse even as its schools remain very separate, lessons from this study provide new insight into strategies that will help return our society to fulfilling the goals of Brown v. Board of Education.