Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

70 years after Brown v. Board of Ed., public schools still segregated

Mother and daughter sit outside the Supreme Court

Nettie Hunt and her daughter Nickie sit on the steps of U.S. Supreme Court in 1954, discussing the meaning of the court's ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education.

UPI/Bettmann via Getty Images

Frankenberg is a professor of education and demography at Penn State University.

Brown vs. Board of Education, the pivotal Supreme Court decision that made school segregation unconstitutional, turns 70 years old on May 17, 2024.

At the time of the 1954 ruling, 17 U.S. states had laws permitting or requiring racially segregated schools. The Brown decision declared that segregation in public schools was “inherently unequal.” This was, in part, because the court argued that access to equitable, nonsegregated education played a critical role in creating informed citizens – a paramount concern for the political establishment amid the Cold War. With Brown, the justices overturned decades of legal precedent that kept Black Americans in separate and unequal schools.

As a professor of education and demography at Penn State University, I research racial desegregation and inequality in K-12 schools. I’m aware that, after several decades of unraveling of desegregation progress, the upcoming Brown vs. Board of Education anniversary comes at an especially uncertain moment for public education and efforts to make America’s schools reflect the nation’s multiracial society.


Recent setbacks

In June 2023, the Supreme Court ended most race-conscious college admissions efforts. The decision followed the COVID-19 pandemic, which exacerbated racial inequalities in the U.S.

Meanwhile, politicians and school boards have banned or removed books by authors of color from school libraries and restricted teaching about racism in U.S. history. I believe these legal setbacks amid the current political climate make finally realizing the full promise of Brown more urgent.

Resistance to Brown ruling

The Brown vs. Board of Education decision did not immediately change the nation’s public schools, especially in the completely segregated South, where there was massive resistance to desegregation. Resistance was so fierce in the first decade after Brown that compliance with desegregation orders at times required federal troops to escort Black students to enroll in formerly all-white schools.

It would be a decade after Brown before the federal courts, a newly enacted Civil Rights Act and expanded federal education funding spurred greater compliance with desegregation requirements.

While only 2% of Southern Black K-12 students attended majority white schools in 1964 – 10 years after Brown – the number had grown to 33% by 1970. The South surpassed all other regions in desegregation progress for Black students.

Segregation persists

Public school students today are the most racially diverse in U.S. history. At the time of Brown, about 90% of students were white and most other students were Black.

Today, according to a 2022 federal report, 46% of public school students are white, 28% are Hispanic, 15% are Black, 6% Asian, 4% multiracial and 1% American Indian. Based on my analysis of 2021 federal education data, public schools in 22 states and Washington, D.C., served majorities of students of color.

And yet, public schools are deeply segregated. In 2021, approximately 60% of Black and Hispanic public school students attended schools where 75% or more of students were students of color. Black and Hispanic students who attend racially segregated schools also are overwhelmingly enrolled in high-poverty schools.

A 2019 report by EdBuild, a nonprofit that produced reports on school funding inequities, found that schools in predominantly nonwhite districts received $23 billion less in funding each year than schools in majority white districts. This equates to roughly $2,200 less per student per year. Unequal funding results in less student access to advanced, college-prep courses, to name just one example.

Benefits of diversity

While Brown was an attempt to address the inequality that students experienced in segregated Black schools, the harms of segregation affect students of all races.

Racially integrated schools are associated with reduced prejudice, enhanced critical thinking or simply building cross-racial friendships that teach children how to work effectively with others.

White students are the least exposed to students of other races and ethnicities, and therefore they often miss out on the benefits of diversity. Nearly half of white public school students attend a school in which white students are 75% or more of the student body.

Factors that exacerbate segregation

Although residential segregation is slowly declining, many U.S. communities remain both racially and economically segregated. Segregated schools, therefore, often reflect segregated neighborhoods.

However, how students are assigned to schools and districts can play a key role in how segregated those schools are.

This is because school attendance boundaries often determine which local public school a student may attend. How those boundaries are drawn or redrawn can exacerbate or alleviate school segregation. More than 13,000 U.S. public schools that are predominantly of one race are located within 10 miles of a school that is predominantly of another race.

Studies show that redrawing school attendance zones within school districts could make a substantial number of schools less segregated.

The same is true when it comes to school district boundaries. A high level of income and racial segregation also exists between neighboring school districts. And district secession – when schools leave an existing school district to form a new district – is linked to higher segregation. Redrawing district boundaries or preventing the formation of new boundaries could affect segregation.

Another key factor is the rise of public school choice, which allows parents to send children to charter schools or other schools beyond their zoned school. One study found that areas with more students enrolled in charter schools were associated with higher school segregation.

Potential solutions

Several hundred remedial court desegregation orders, which require districts to eradicate segregation that existed prior to the Brown decision, still exist. These are largely concentrated in some Southern states.

For the rest of the country, voluntary integration efforts are attempts to finally achieve the goals of the Brown decision. These include Berkeley, California’s elementary school assignment plan and legal cases brought against states including Minnesota that challenge existing segregation under state constitutions.

Finally, since reducing residential segregation could also reduce school segregation, some efforts have combined school desegregation and housing integration policies. Connecticut, for example, has piloted coordinating housing mobility vouchers for eligible participants in its interdistrict school desegregation program.

Like 70 years ago when Brown was decided, addressing public school segregation remains important for a healthy democracy – one that today is more multiracial than ever before. The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Read More

Leaders Can Promote Gender Equity Without Deepening Polarization − Here’s How
Getty Images, pixelfit

Leaders Can Promote Gender Equity Without Deepening Polarization − Here’s How

Americans largely agree that women have made significant gains in the workplace over the past two decades. But what about men? While many Americans believe women are thriving, over half believe men’s progress has stalled or even reversed.

To make matters more complex, recent research has revealed a massive divide along gender and partisan lines. The majority of Republican men think full gender equity in America has been achieved, while the majority of Democratic women think there’s still work to be done.

Keep ReadingShow less
Trump Is Sabotaging America’s Greatest Demographic Advantage

The U.S. flag, a certification of naturalization, and a U.S. passport.

Getty Images, Thanasis

Trump Is Sabotaging America’s Greatest Demographic Advantage

“A profoundly dangerous and destabilizing thing.” That’s how Vice President J.D. Vance recently described America’s falling birthrate. Recently, the “ inherently pronatalist ” White House is considering a new set of proposals to address it—including government-funded menstrual cycle education and even a national medal for women who bear six or more children. But while Republicans may recognize the problem, their broader agenda actively undermines the most immediate and effective solution to population decline: immigration.

The Trump administration is enacting an all-out assault on immigration. Breaking from decades of Republican rhetoric that championed legal immigration, the current approach targets not just undocumented migration but legal pathways as well.

Keep ReadingShow less
An illustration of diverse people around a heart with the design of the American flag.
An illustration of diverse people around a heart with the design of the American flag.
Getty Images, wildpixel

The Next Hundred Days: America's Latest Test of Democracy

For decades, we have watched America wrestle with its demons. Sometimes, she has successfully pinned them down. Other times, the demons have slipped beyond her grasp. Yet, America has always remained in the ring. There is no difference right now, and the stakes couldn't be higher.

Across America, from small-town council meetings to state legislatures, there's a coordinated effort to roll back the clock on civil rights, geopolitical relations, and the global economy. It's not subtle, and it's not accidental. The targeting of immigrants and citizens of color has become so normalized that we risk becoming numb to it. For example, what happened in Springfield, Ohio, late last year? When national politicians started pushing rhetoric against Haitian immigrants, it wasn't just local politics at play. It was a test balloon, a preview of talking points soon echoed in halls of government and media outlets nationwide. Thus, this is how discrimination, intolerance, and blatant hate go mainstream or viral—it starts small, tests the waters, and spreads like a virus through our body politic and social system.

Keep ReadingShow less
Two groups of people approaching each other over a chasm, ready to shake hands.

Two groups of people approaching each other over a chasm, ready to shake hands.

Getty Images, timsa

The Impact of Trump’s Executive Actions: Efforts To Eliminate DEI

This essay is part of a series by Lawyers Defending American Democracy (LDAD) explaining in practical terms what the new administration’s executive orders and other official actions mean for all of us. Virtually all of these actions spring from the pages of Project 2025, the administration's 900-page blueprint for government action over the next four years. The Project 2025 agenda should concern all of us, as it tracks strategies already implemented in countries such as Hungary to erode democratic norms and adopt authoritarian approaches to governing.

Project 2025’s stated intent to move quickly to “dismantle” the federal government will strip the public of important protections against excessive presidential power and provide big corporations with enormous opportunities to profit by preying on America's households.

Keep ReadingShow less