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School Segregation
Redux School desegregation—an invaluable
accomplishment of the long struggle against Jim Crow and its vestiges—is
linked to important educational and social gains for minority and white students.
Despite public support for desegregated schools, recent federal court decisions
and educational reform legislation have lead to both the resegregation of
students and erection of barriers that limit the racial diversity of the
teaching profession. Dismantling Desegregation
While public schools were continuously
desegregated from the 1950s to the 1980s, the past 12 years has seen a rapid
retreat from these efforts as federal courts terminated major and successful
desegregation orders. In the 1990s, US Supreme Court rulings in cases such
as Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell and Freeman v. Pitts made
it easier for school districts to be declared "unified" or desegregated.
In the last seven years, in the wake of these decisions, nearly 50 districts
across the country have had their court-ordered desegregation plans abolished.
A recent Harvard study concludes that desegregation has receded to levels
not seen in three decades; although the South remains the nation’s most
integrated region, it is also the region that is most rapidly moving backwards
as courts terminate successful desegregation orders. The study released by the Harvard
Civil Rights Project in January, illustrates how federal court rulings have
contributed to the resegregation of public schools across the nation. “A
Multiracial Society with Segregated Schools: Are We Losing the Dream?” examines
research on the impact of desegregation and describes patterns of racial
enrollment and segregation in US public schools at the national, regional,
state, and district levels based on the latest data from the US Department
of Education’s National Center for Educational Statistics. (The report is
available online at: www.civilrightsproject.havard.edu) Common myths about school desegregation—such
as it was a good idea that didn’t work, that it increased “white flight,”
or didn’t solve education educational problems—are not supported by the
enormous amount of research on the effects of desegregation. The report’s
authors—Erica Frankenberg, Chungmei Lee, and Gary Orfield— summarize the
research on desegregation into three general findings:
In addition, the author’s point to more recent research
that shows educational and civic benefits of desegregation for all racial
groups. For example, in Louisville-Jefferson County, Kentucky—the largest
urban area in what the report claims is the nation’s most integrated state—both
black and white students report very positive results on a range of questions
on educational and social outcomes. Ninety-three of white juniors and 95
percent of black African Americans said they are comfortable working with
students of other races on group projects. Even higher percentages of white
and black students said they were comfortable in classes learning about each
other’s cultures. Despite the educational and social successes of
desegregation, federal court rulings combined with the failure of the federal
government fund desegregation assistance programs for over two decades have
created conditions for, indeed encouraged, the resegregation of public schools. The Civil Rights Project report
highlights the rapid racial transformation of US schools. Since 1968, black
student enrollment has increased nearly 30% and Latino
student enrollment up 283%. In contrast, public school enrollment of whites
in down 17 percent. In every region of the country the school population
has become less white and schools in the South and West have the highest
concentrations of black and Latino students (and these regions are approaching
student populations where whites are in the minority). There are now six
states where white studies are a minority of the enrolled school population:
California, Hawai’i, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico,
and Texas. Schools in the Northeast and Midwest still have large white majorities.
The Harvard study reports that,
on average, white, black, and Latino students all attend schools in which
the majority of the student body is composed of students of their own race.
Whites are now the most segregated group in public schools—attending schools
that on average are 80% white. In contrast, the average Asian student attends
the most integrated schools (although Asian students still attend schools
that are on average 22% Asian). Native American students attend schools,
on average, in which half the student body is white and slightly less than
one-third of students are their race. Native American students have the lowest
exposure to black students among all racial groups. White students are attending majority
white schools at time when minority students make up nearly one-half of
the public school enrollment. During the 1990s, the proportion of black
students in majority white schools decreased by 13%—a level lower than any
year since 1968. There are only two states that have
not shown an increase in black segregation in recent years and these states—Michigan
and New Jersey—are highly segregated and showed virtually no change. States
with large increases in segregation (such as Florida, Missouri and North
Carolina) are home to school districts that had long-running desegregation
orders terminated in the 1990s. Over the past two decades in Kentucky,
there has been nearly a 10% decrease in the percentage of white students
in schools attended by blacks. Despite this decrease in integration, the
Harvard report notes Kentucky has had the highest level of black-white exposure
in schools since 1980. This is largely the result of consolidation of city
and county school systems in metro Louisville, which remain under a desegregation
plan. The Harvard study also identifies
the importance of the relationship between racial segregation and poverty.
High poverty schools have been shown to increase educational inequality
for students because of a lack of resources and qualified teachers as well
as low parental involvement and high teacher turnover rates. (There are
nearly 200,000 noncertified teachers now, mostly in schools serving poor,
minority, and immigrant children.) Almost half of the students in schools
attended by the average black or Latino student are poor or very poor, while
less than 20% of students in schools attended by the average white student
is classified as poor. A substantial number of public schools that are virtually
all non-white, what the study's authors label "apartheid" schools, have emerged
in recent years. These schools educate a quarter of the students in the Midwest
and Northeast and are often schools plagued by substantial poverty, social,
and health problems. The Teaching Profession: For Whites Only?
In addition to the racial segregation
of students, there is a serious race gap between teachers (86% of whom are
white) and the nearly 50% of students who are minorities. Courts are largely responsible for
the resegregation of students, but state and federal legislation has become
a serious barrier to increasing diversity of the teachers in public schools,
compounding the deleterious effects of resegregated schools. This legislation,
in particular the No Child Left Behind Act, relies on standardized tests
to improve education and teacher quality. There is overwhelming evidence that
standardized tests are primarily measures of race and class, rather than
educational achievement of public school students. These findings are consistent
with what we know about college-admissions and teacher licensure tests, which
contribute to educational inequality by denying education, scholarships,
and access to the teaching profession to minority students thereby sustaining
the race gap between teachers and students in schools. ACT college admissions test scores,
for example, are directly related to family income (the richer the students'
parents are, the higher the average scores across income groups) and race
(whites outscore all groups when factors such as course work, grades, and
family income are equal). The ACT also does a poor job of predicting the
college performance of minority students—explaining only 7% of the difference
in first-semester college grades of black students. Despite its inaccuracies
and biases, ACT scores are often used to determine entrance into colleges
and for allocation of scholarships. The SAT, which is a direct descendent
of the racist anti-immigrant Army Mental Tests of the 1920s, is also plagued
by biases that are effective in eliminating academically promising low-income
and minority students from college classrooms. ACT or SAT test scores above a specified
level are required for admission to most teacher education programs. As
a result of biases in both these tests large numbers of potential minority
teachers are being excluded from opportunities to become classroom teachers.
A detailed study of the impact of standardized tests on the teacher candidate
pool in Florida indicated that test score requirements eliminated 80% of
black and 61% of Latino applicants to teacher education programs, but only
37% of whites. There is also a long history of
cultural bias on teacher licensure tests, which are typically taken upon
exit from teacher education programs. A recent National Research Council
report on teacher tests concludes that raising cut-off scores on these tests
will reduce racial diversity in the teaching profession without improving
quality. The differences in average scores among racial/ethnic groups on
teacher licensure tests are similar to the differences found among these
groups on college admission tests, showing substantial disparities between
the passing rates of white and minority test takers. Most importantly, the NRC found
that these tests do not predict who will become effective teachers. The NRC
concluded that by their design and as currently used tests like the PRAXIS—the
most widely-used teacher licensure test—fall short in their use as accountability
tools, as levers for improving teacher preparation, and encourage erroneous
conclusions about the quality of teacher preparation. Nevertheless, over
40 states rely on standardized tests for teacher licensure. Current efforts to improve learning and teacher
quality rest on a misguided use of standardized tests. Rather than improving
learning or increasing teacher quality, the latest research indicates that
an emphasis on testing results actually lowers student academic performance,
increases dropout rates, and serves as a barrier to diversifying the teaching
profession with improving teacher quality. A recent study by Arizona State
University researchers showed that in states that have adopted high-stakes
exams there has actually been a decline in student performance on independent
measures of achievement, such as the National Assessment of Educational
Progress (aka “The Nation’s Report Card”). What is To Be Done?
As the authors of the Harvard study
note, segregation is a failed educational policy that produces deeply unequal
education and a polarized society. So to is test-driven educational reform.
Clearly the struggle for the civil rights continues and desegregated schools
are an important achievement that must be preserved, but school desegregation
is not a panacea. For example, even though the city of Louisville has a
highly integrated public school system, in the past three years five African
American men have been shot dead by white Louisville police officers. Frankenberg and her colleagues at
the Civil Rights Project offer a basic policy framework that they say is
needed to increase integration in US public schools. The framework includes
principles such as: (1) explicit recognition of integrated education as a
basic education goal and judicial recognition that integrated education is
a compelling educational interest in our society; (2) a resistance to terminating
desegregation plans; and (3) in cases where schools districts are forbidden
to continue its desegregation plan by a federal court, that consideration
should be given to efforts to keep diversity by social and economic desegregation. There is a mountain of evidence
documenting the deleterious effects of high-stakes tests on teaching, learning,
and society. Many of the backers of these tests are aware of the problems
and nonetheless remain committed to their use as a tool to regulate knowledge
in schools and universities; to sort students by race and class; and limit
access of minorities to the teaching profession. Increasing numbers of students,
parents, and educators are pushing back against educational “reform” efforts
that divide students and teachers along racial, ethnic, and class lines.
The Rouge Forum (www.rougeforum.org),
The Whole Schooling Consortium (www.coe.wayne.edu/CommunityBuilding/WSC.html),
and the Coalition for Commonsense in Education (free.freespeech.org/ccse) are
but three examples of grassroots groups working for more inclusive schools
and classrooms; organizing across the barriers of race, class, ability;
and acknowledging that schools remain a pivotal, if not the most important,
battleground of political and economic interests in the US today. Author note: E. Wayne Ross is a Distinguished
University Scholar at the University of Louisville and a co-editor of the
journals Workplace: The Journal for Academic Labor and Cultural Logic.
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