Segregation, Desegregation, and Resegregation: The Rise of Buffalo's Two-Tiered School System

• In Event: School Choice, Stratification, and Civil Rights: The Buffalo Story

Abstract

In 2014, the Office for Civil Rights launched an investigation into a discrimination complaint alleging Buffalo Public Schools (BPS) discriminated on the basis of race by using admissions criteria that disproportionately exclude non-white students from enrollment in the district’s criteria-based schools. This paper describes the history and context of the city of Buffalo, larger metropolitan area, and BPS through the eras of school segregation, desegregation, and resegregation, leading up to the recent investigation. This paper also analyzes demographic enrollment trends in BPS’s criteria-based and non-criteria-based schools.

Decades of social science research suggest racially and socioeconomically diverse schools benefit all students academically, occupationally, socially, and civically. Additionally, there is no evidence that school integration harms any student group (Mickelson, 2015).

A variety of sources, including scholarly articles, legal documents, newspapers, and maps, were synthesized to describe the history and context of poverty and segregation in Buffalo, the metropolitan area, and the school district. Data from the New York State Department of Education were analyzed to compare student demographics between the criteria-based and non-criteria based schools.

Once a thriving city, Buffalo’s steady decline began during the mid-1900s with the collapse of the manufacturing industry in the Northeast. After that, population shifts population occurred, with whites moving outward to the suburbs and blacks segregated into neighborhoods within the city. With white-flight came poverty, decreased property values, and therefore, a shrinking tax-base to support the city’s infrastructure, particularly its schools. With a predominately poor, non-white city core and more affluent, white suburbs, Buffalo’s levels of segregation and poverty have remained consistently high in recent decades. Despite persistent residential segregation during a period of court-order desegregation (1976-1995), BPS created a successful system of magnet schools to achieve integration. Since achieving unitary status in 1995, BPS’s magnet/criteria-based schools have abandoned diversity goals.

In 2013, BPS’s total enrollment was almost 37,000. Over half (54%) of the district’s students were black and whites and Latinos accounted for 21% and 16% of the district’s enrollment, respectively. While proportions of white and black students have slightly decreased over time, Latinos and Asians have increased gradually, growing BPS’s English Language Learner (ELL) population to 10.3%. Four in five BPS students are low income.

Comparisons of criteria-based to non-criteria-based schools indicate the two types of schools are quite different, especially in terms of white and black enrollment proportionate to district totals. In 2013, criteria-based schools enrolled almost 40% white students, while the white share in non-criteria-based schools was 18.5%. Moreover, the black proportion of criteria-based schools was 43%, compared to 56% of non-criteria-based schools. Criteria-based schools also have significantly fewer low-income students (57.3% v. 84.7%), ELLs (1.5% v.11.7%), and students with disabilities (12% v.20.7%).

The findings underscore the persistence of poverty and segregation in Buffalo, and the impact of each on BPS, particularly the criteria-based schools. It is important to understand the factors leading up to the recent civil rights investigation and current status of Buffalo’s two-tiered school system of inequitable access to educational opportunities.

Author

• Jenna Tomasello, American Youth Policy Forum