ThinkProgress
Published November 23, 2015
Six decades after the Brown v. Board of Education decision that determined that segregating white and black children is unconstitutional, American schools are drifting back toward racial segregation.
Across the country, schools are resegregating, with 53 percent of black students whose districts were released from desegregation orders between 1990 and 2011 attending “apartheid” schools, where less than 1 percent of their classmates are white, according to an analysis by ProPublica. A 2012 report from The Civil Rights Project at UCLA also noted that schools with high-minority populations usually have low-income populations, making the schools economically homogeneous as well.
This economic and racial segregation of students has real and pernicious effects. Schools with overwhelmingly black and Hispanic student populations usually have fewer resources and attract less experienced teachers, have higher teacher turnover, and have higher dropout rates, putting students of color at a disadvantage. Students in segregated schools also tend to make smaller gains in reading, according to a 2014 study conducted by the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute.