Losing Ground: School Segregation in Massachusetts

• In Event: School Segregation Along the Eastern Seaboard: Illuminating Historical Circumstances, Exploring New Challenges, Updating Tested Policies

Abstract

Following the Brown decision, Massachusetts became an early leader in school integration by passing the Racial Imbalance Act and establishing the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO) in Boston and Springfield. METCO is one of the nation’s few existing inter-district transfer opportunities between city and suburban schools (Angrist & Lang, 2004). The Commonwealth also passed a unique law prohibiting the state from enacting mandatory assignment for desegregation and providing incentives for districts to create voluntary school desegregation plans.
Alongside court decisions restricting the use of race in student assignment plans in the late 1990s, Boston and Cambridge began using other approaches, such as socioeconomic status with a race-conscious backup factor, to achieve diverse schools (Fiske, 2002; Siegel-Hawley, 2011). Several districts across the state show mixed results in maintaining diversity by using choice options, including controlled choice and magnet, charter, and pilot schools (Abdulkadiroglu et al., 2009; Dillon, 2008; Frankenberg, Siegel-Hawley, & Wang, 2010; Rossell & Glenn, 1988).
Despite its early leadership, over the last two decades, the Commonwealth has eliminated two important mechanisms that once promoted integration—the Bureau of Equal Educational Opportunity, which oversaw desegregation efforts, and incentives for school districts that adopted desegregation plans. METCO continues to operate in 2013, though funding is insufficient.
This study’s findings show that despite an increasingly diverse student enrollment, Massachusetts’s public schools have become more segregated by both race and class. In 2010, over 25% of the state’s black and Latino students attended intensely segregated schools (90-100% minority), compared to 11% of black students and 6% of Latino students in 1989. Furthermore, in 2010, both the typical black and the typical Latino student attended schools with 36% white students, even though white students comprised 69% of the state’s enrollment. Conversely, the typical white student’s school was 81% white. These findings show increasing racial isolation across Massachusetts’s schools.
Moreover, in 2010, the typical black and Latino student attended schools with almost triple the level of low-income students as schools attended by the typical white student. In intensely segregated (90-100% minority) schools, 85% of students were low-income, although 33% of students in the state were low-income.
In addition to state-level findings, this study analyzes trends in Boston and Springfield. In both metros, schools have become more segregated despite an increasingly diverse student enrollment.
If these trends are unaddressed, segregation is likely to continue to intensify in Massachusetts and its major metropolitan areas. Prior research suggests this will have lasting negative effects for students and communities, including unequal educational opportunity and outcomes, which are compounded when, as is often the case in Massachusetts, racially segregated schools are also schools of concentrated poverty.
This paper provides multiple recommendations for Massachusetts that build upon existing (and distinctive) state-level policies to reduce racial isolation and promote diverse schools. In particular, as most of the segregation in the two largest metros results from segregation between districts, the state could provide additional funding and resources to strengthen programs, such as METCO, that are already in place and achieving success.

Author

• Jennifer Ayscue, University of California - Los Angeles