Desegregated but Still Separated? Impacts of School Integration on Student Suspensions and Special Education Classification

• In Event: "We Are Our History”: Historicizing Current Black-White Disparities in Exclusionary Discipline

Abstract

The desegregation of K-12 schools by race can improve the outcomes of Black students. But levels of Black-White isolation across schools have at best stagnated after decades of efforts to integrate. Any positive effects appear to stem from the more equitable distribution of school resources, which could be more directly achieved through other policies that arguably face fewer social, political, and judicial barriers. Furthermore, because Black communities often carry a disproportionate burden during efforts to reduce racial isolation in schools—Black teachers lose jobs, Black schools are closed, and Black students are the ones bused to desegregated schools—school district leaders should fully understand the negative ramifications of integration before doing so. In this study, I investigate how court-ordered school integration impacts two outcomes that have been understudied in this literature but contribute to observed educational inequalities in the present day: student suspensions and special education identification. I focus on a set of the largest districts in the country that were mandated by courts to racially desegregate schools following the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, and I analyze data on outcomes reported by these districts from the 1970s and 1980s. To recover causal effects, I use difference-in-differences and explore the changes in suspension and special education rates between Black and White students in desegregating districts to those in a set of comparison districts that are never under a court order.

I find that though suspension rates are rising for all students after Brown v. Board, rates increase faster in desegregating districts relative to comparison districts. Notably, changes in suspension rates for Black students are over double those of their White peers. Because I employ a quasi-experimental strategy and identify statistically significant differences, this study provides the first causal evidence that certain populations are negatively affected on a key educational measure—school suspensions—that predicts worse outcomes in adulthood though prior research shows overall positive effects of integration for Black youth. I also find that relative to students in comparison districts, students in desegregating districts are classified as having an intellectual disability at higher rates, with impacts again being concentrated for Black students in particular. These results, however, are less robust than those for suspension rates, and effects are smaller in absolute terms. This study thus yields some evidence that integration leads to differences in the special education identification for Black and White students and provides support for conclusions from the one prior study investigating this topic causally (Bergman, 2019). Though descriptive and theoretical work has suggested links between integration and suspension and special education classification rates, few have studied the causal relationship. My results thus contribute to this literature and urge careful consideration for policymakers when adopting school integration policies. Increases in categorical inequality may result as an unintended consequence of such efforts, and theoretical gains to racial attitudes as predicted by contact theory may not be accrued if Black and White students remain separated through increased use of exclusionary policies.

Author

• Mark Chin, Vanderbilt University