The publication of the report from The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, was timed to mark the 68th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education and demonstrates the degree to which the nation’s schools remain segregated by race long after it was legally outlawed. 

‘Pernicious’ segregation between school districts, not within them, is the primary reason for racial isolation in 280 out of the 403 metro areas, the report said. That is particularly true in the Northeast and Midwest, where counties often have multiple small school districts. Within-district segregation is greater in the South, which tends to have larger, countywide districts.

“The way that district lines are drawn has a huge impact on segregation and the resources that students in segregated districts have,” said lead author Halley Potter, a senior fellow at the progressive think tank.

Enrollment losses in urban public schools, exacerbated by the pandemic when many students left for private and charter schools, have likely contributed to further racial isolation in some communities, Potter said. But she chalked up the chief causes of segregation to migration, immigration and population growth. School attendance policies that keep students from enrolling in neighboring districts and white residents’ push to secede from majority minority districts are also contributing factors.

The Biden administration has proposed policies to address the issues, including a $100 million to support racial and socioeconomic diversity. Potter said states also have “carrots and sticks” to achieve more integrated schools.

For example, states can allow students to transfer across district lines. They also can design magnet schools to draw students from multiple districts. And they can require districts to take diversity into account when making boundary changes — a practice that only Arkansas and California have implemented.

“It’s a lot of work and coordination to get individual districts to come up with this on their own,” she said, adding that if more states prevented secessions and actively encouraged district mergers that promote integration, “that could be a powerful tool for tackling interdistrict segregation.”

The report complements recent research from Bellwether Education Partners that focused on “border barriers” — district boundaries that keep low-income families from enrolling their children in higher-quality schools.

The Foundation’s report features a first-of-its-kind interactive — developed by Ann Owens of the University of Southern California and Sean Reardon from Stanford University — that allows users to isolate metro areas and different types of segregation. The team developed a measure that ranges from 0, which means no segregation, to 1, which indicates students attend schools with no students from other races. 

Here are four takeaways from the data:

1 Milwaukee leads the pack

Overall, Black-white segregation is especially pronounced in 39 — or about 10% — of the nation’s 403 metro regions, including Milwaukee (.73), Newark (.71), Chicago (.70), Detroit (.70) and New York (.69). 

Hispanic-white segregation is greatest in Philadelphia and Reading, Pennsylvania, as well as Boston, Memphis and Los Angeles.

2 Economic segregation affects Black students the most

Economic segregation is also extreme in many metro areas, particularly Newark, Bridgeport, Milwaukee and Chicago, and affects Black students more than other groups. The average Black student attends a school where the rate of students who qualify for free or reduced-price meals is 16 percentage points higher than in the average white student’s school in the same metro region.

3 Private schools are not a leading factor

Private school enrollment is not a driving force behind segregation overall. But there are some areas where it’s a bigger factor, including Sumter, South Carolina, Napa, California, and the New York-Jersey City-White Plains area of New York and New Jersey. 

4 Research influenced White House on charters

Potter’s past influenced the Biden administration’s controversial proposal to revamp the federal Charter Schools Program. The plan would discourage the creation and expansion of charter schools in districts that have voluntary integration programs. 

The new report, however, shows that charter schools account for just 6% of segregation by income and 4% of white-nonwhite segregation across metro areas. 

Conducted by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Maryland, the analysis of over 14,000 districts nationwide shows that in 2000, the average child from a poor family went to an elementary school where almost half of the students were defined as middle class. By 2015, that figure had fallen to 36 percent.

As the nation’s population grows, the shift — especially in the West and the South —means they are less likely to experience of racially and socioeconomically mixed schools, the study notes, including higher test scores, smaller racial achievement gaps and higher college enrollment rates.

The findings, according to the researchers, also carry broad implications for academic recovery efforts in the wake of the pandemic. 

A previous analysis by ����Ӱ�� showed disproportionate increases in chronic absenteeism among English learners, three-fourths of whom are Spanish-speakers. And data shows that Latino families were among those by COVID-related job loss and financial hardship, creating a larger challenge for schools serving high concentrations of Latino students.

“Deeper forces have sustained achievement disparities in recent decades, especially this worsening isolation of the poor from middle-class students,” said Bruce Fuller, a Berkeley sociology professor and lead author of the paper. “COVID-era learning loss is but a surface symptom of deeper ills that beset public education.”

“slowed desegregation efforts” in districts with large Black student populations and shifted attention toward improving schools in Black and Latino communities, the authors said. 

Now among Latinos, combined with the movement of Latino families to the suburbs, have contributed to racial isolation, they wrote.

“‘White flight’ from the public school system translates into resource flight from racially isolated schools,” said Feliza Oritz-Licon, chief policy and advocacy officer at Latinos for Education, a nonprofit focusing on teacher recruitment and education policy. She added that in racially isolated schools it becomes easy to “dismiss” Latino students as underperforming.

But not all districts have seen a decline in their white student populations. The chances that Latino children will interact with white peers at school are higher in the Midwest and Northeast. In fact, the researchers found 800 school districts where the white student population had not declined over that 15-year time period, even as the Latino student population grew. 

‘Under one school roof’

The Berkeley study builds on research by Sean Reardon at Stanford University, drew connections between racial segregation and large achievement gaps due to concentrations of Black and Latino students in high-poverty schools.

Pedro Noguera, dean of education at the University of Southern California, said rising segregation not only affects who students sit next to in class, but also broader support for public schools. 

“All of this is troubling. We have to get better at offering the kinds of programs that will attract affluent parents,” he said, noting that International Baccalaureate programs, Advanced Placement courses and other offerings “send the signal of a high standard. That’s what Latino parents want as well.”

Fuller and his co-authors wrote that without more inter-district choice programs, which would allow entree to higher-performing schools in wealthier neighborhoods, Latino students will continue to have fewer opportunities to attend integrated schools. 

A report released last year by Bellwether Education Partners explored additional obstacles to integration created by a lack of affordable housing in districts with higher performing schools; even if low-income families want to move into such school districts, housing options are scarce.

“Civic leaders and educators must expand ways of pulling the nation’s diverse children under one school roof,” Fuller said.

In 2020, the Century Foundation, a left leaning think tank, identified initiatives underway in school districts and charter school networks to increase integration. Some of the programs were voluntary, while others resulted from desegregation orders.

‘The country’s prosperity’

But Noguera said some charter schools predominantly serve Black students or Latino students, . 

By 2060, Latinos are projected to make up over one fourth of the U.S. population, according to Census Bureau , and Latino children currently account for of public school enrollment. 

Increasing the numbers of Latino educators is one way for districts to increase achievement, researchers at the Brookings Institution wrote in last year that focused on the Clark County School District in Nevada. They cited studies showing that Latino students are more likely to be placed in gifted programs and take Advanced Placement courses when their schools have more teachers that look like them.

Recruiting more Latino educators and giving Latinos a greater role in education policy is also a priority for philanthropist McKenzie Scott, who last week donated to Latinos for Education to support the organization’s work.

Latino educators are often assigned to high-need, racially isolated schools because they reflect the cultural backgrounds of students. But turnover is high, with many leaving the profession within four years, noted Oritz-Licon of Latinos for Education.

The organization’s October featured concerns from Latino educators, such as the cost of earning a degree and requests from administrators to provide translation services without additional compensation. 

Oritz-Licon called on schools serving Latino students to use relief funds for afterschool programs, academic support and parent engagement efforts since many high-needs schools might lack those services. 

“Latino students are American students,” she said. “Their educational outcomes should matter because as a growing population, their prosperity is the country’s prosperity.”