Inequity Across the Empire State: School Segregation in New York From 1989 to 2010

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

Abstract

Forty years ago, school desegregation was at the forefront of New York’s education policy. Key desegregation cases arose throughout many segregated communities. The case in Yonkers was the first in history to combine housing desegregation and school desegregation claims simultaneously. The remedy for the school desegregation case in Rochester led to one of the country’s eight existing voluntary interdistrict programs. The integration plan for the school desegregation case in Buffalo was hailed as a model for other similar metros across the county.

In the face of intense local and political resistance, however, New York has gone backwards. Today, New York is the most segregated state in the country for underrepresented students on some measures. In 2009, black and Latino students in the state had the highest concentration in intensely segregated public schools, the lowest exposure to white students, and the most uneven distribution with white students across schools (Orfield, Kucsera, & Siegel-Hawley, 2012). Heavily impacting these state rankings is New York City, home to the largest and one of the most segregated public school systems in the nation (Fessenden, 2012).

In this study, we explored the demographic and segregation patterns across New York over the last 20 years in a variety of geographic areas. We found a growing diversity of student enrollment in schools and school districts across the state and main metropolitan areas, particularly in urban schools. Across the state, the proportion of students Latino and Asian in New York nearly doubled from 1989 to 2010. This changing demography, accompanied by a lack of diversity-focused policies over the last two decades, has been linked to another main finding: persisting segregation patterns, and in some contexts, an increase in segregation. In New York City, charter schools took the city’s segregation to an extreme. In Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan, nearly all charters were intensely segregated in 2010. Both the inner-ring region of the metro (consisting of Rockland and Westchester counties) and New York City experienced a segregation increase between white and black students over the last 20 years.

Black and Latino students experience dramatic overexposure to low-income students, a significant finding because school poverty is so closely linked to many harmful social and educational conditions and outcomes. In Buffalo, the typical white student attended a school with 30% of poor students, in comparison to 73% of poor students for the typical black student.

The proliferation of numerous small, fragmented school districts and lack of inter-district policies is linked to the fact that the majority (close to 90% or above) of segregation in the state is occurring between rather than within districts. The exception to this trend is New York City, where the reverse has occurred due to the size of the district.

We provide a number of policy recommendations that can be implemented at the local, state, and federal level to create and maintain integrated schools across New York. These include the development and expansion of inter-district transfer programs, regional magnets and student assignment policies to promote diversity.

Author

• John V. Kucsera, University of California - Los Angeles