difference, they cannot erase the damage
caused by concentrated poverty and
racial isolation.
A highly regarded investigation of
Chicago school reform (Bryk, Sebring,
Allensworth, Luppescu, & Easton,
2010) attempted to distinguish the
characteristics of schools in which students improved from those in which
they stagnated. Schools with well-developed and aligned curriculums,
good teacher–principal collaboration,
and concerted efforts to involve parents
made greater progress. But such reform
programs made little or no difference
in neighborhoods of concentrated
poverty, where nearly all students were
residentially mobile, were black, and
had low-income parents with little
formal education and a likelihood of
unemployment. The investigators concluded, “Our findings about schooling
in truly disadvantaged communities
offer a sobering antidote to a heady
political rhetoric arguing that all schools
can be improved” (p. 210).
The Benefits of Integration
Accumulating evidence confirms the
need for school integration. Black
students’ achievement decreases as
their schoolwide proportion grows
(Hanushek, Kain, & Rivkin, 2009).
Attendance at high-poverty schools
causes disadvantaged students’ performance to decline (Rumberger, 2007).
A review of studies evaluating court-ordered desegregation concluded that
“the circumstantial case linking school
segregation to the test score gap is
compelling” (Vigdor & Ludwig, 2008,
p. 208).
Perhaps even more important than
narrowing the test score gap are the positive behavioral outcomes from school
racial integration: improved graduation
rates, higher rates of employment,
and higher earnings in adulthood, as
well as avoidance of teen childbearing,
delinquency, homicide, and incarceration (Guryan 2004; Johnson, 2011;
Weiner, Lutz, & Ludwig, 2010). For
both academics and behavior, benefits
of integration for black students are
unaccompanied by corresponding deterioration in white students’ outcomes.
Ethnographic studies of students
who participated in racial integration
programs confirm that students of
different races benefit from working
together and are better prepared for
civic engagement. Interviews with adult
graduates of integrated high schools in
1980 found that the black graduates felt
Even the most
committed advocates
of racial diversity
in schools have
forgotten, or failed
to learn, the history
of residential racial
segregation.
more comfortable and confident about
competing in a predominantly white
economy (Wells, Holme, Revilla, &
Atanda, 2009).
Experiments add evidence. In one,
Chicago public housing residents
received vouchers to subsidize moves
to private apartments. Whether they
were offered apartments in racially
isolated urban neighborhoods or in
predominantly white suburbs was a
matter of chance. Adolescent children
who moved to the suburbs fared better
than those who stayed in the city: They
had lower dropout rates and were more
likely to attend college (Kaufman &
Rosenbaum, 1992).
In another experiment, Maryland’s
Montgomery County government
purchased apartments in more- and
less-affluent areas and randomly
assigned them to families that were
eligible for public housing. Children—
nearly three-quarters were black—who
moved into and attended schools in
more affluent neighborhoods out-
performed comparable children
who attended schools with higher
proportions of low-income students
(Schwartz, 2010).
De Jure, Not De Facto
In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court
made school integration more dif-
ficult when it prohibited the Louisville,
Kentucky, and Seattle, Washington,
school districts from making racial
balance a factor in assigning students
to schools in cases where applicant
numbers exceeded available seats. 1 The
plurality opinion by Chief Justice John
Roberts called student categorization
by race unconstitutional unless it was
designed to reverse the effects of explicit
rules that segregated students by race.
Desegregation efforts are impermissible
if students are racially isolated not
from government policy but because of
societal discrimination, economic char-
acteristics, or what Roberts termed “any
number of innocent private decisions,
including voluntary housing choices.”
Constitutionally forbidden segre-
gation is commonly termed de jure,
whereas racial isolation independent
of state action is termed de facto. It’s
generally accepted today, even by
sophisticated policymakers, that black
