What Future for School Integration?

Posted On July 31, 2015

In a previous post on Brown v. Board and racial segregation in America’s schools, ongoing integration efforts in the Connecticut schools were presented as a positive example of the potential for integration at a time when the degree of racial segregation in our nation’s schools is rising to levels not seen in decades. While many schools are experiencing resegregation at an alarming rate, a number of approaches to achieve school integration have proven successful.

 In the coming weeks, we’ll explore these approaches through a series of posts that review the plans themselves and reflect on their strengths and weaknesses. By better understanding the options that exist to combat school segregation, we can be better equipped to advance integration and equality in schools across America – a project that demands our attention now as it did after Brown.

In this post, we will return to the Connecticut case for a deeper look at the plan designed to achieve greater integration in Connecticut schools as well as its impact.

Contemporary school integration efforts in Connecticut can be traced to the 1996 ruling in Sheff v. O’Neill.In Sheff, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that levels of racial segregation in public schools across the state violated the principle of equal opportunity, and in so doing violated the state’s laws. The court ordered Connecticut’s executive and legislative branches to ameliorate this injustice.

In response, the state enacted Open Choice, a voluntary interdistrict transfer system that allows urban students to transfer to nearby suburban districts, and vice versa. Enrollment in Open Choice is offered wherever space is available, and is open on an equal basis to all students. In addition to interdistrict transfers, Connecticut initiated a system to fund regional magnet schools. The idea at the core of this approach is simple: neighborhood schools are segregated because the neighborhoods themselves are segregated; allow enrollment beyond neighborhood schools and you get greater integration.

As demonstrated in a Civil Rights Project report, after nearly 20 years of school-of-choice, Connecticut schools are markedly more diverse:

  • In 1987, 16.4% of Black and 9.9% of Latino students attended “apartheid” schools (or, schools with 99-100% minority enrollment). In some metropolitan areas, as many as one in eight minority students attended an apartheid school.
  • As of 2013, the enrollment in apartheid schools dropped to only 4.2% of Black and 1% of Latino students, statewide.
  • Moreover, from 1987 to 2013, Black student enrollment in schools where minority students accounted for 50-100% of enrollment increased from 61% to 81%; Latino student enrollment in the same category of school increased from 67.4% to 74.1%.

Enrollment numbers from Connecticut show a significant decrease in extreme segregation, as well as an increase in exposure to low-income students across all racial/ethnic groups. Under this school-of-choice scheme, graduation rates and academic performance of Black and Latino students are improved, while White and Asian student achievement has remained the same.

Connecticut’s experiment in school integration demonstrates that in cases of extreme racial segregation in schools, facilitating parental choice in enrollment can go far to alleviate segregation. School-of-choice addresses the challenges of highly-segregated neighborhood schools, while at the same time promoting achievement amongst all students.