Integration worked. Why have we rejected it?
This profound question is at the heart of an excellent
article by David L. Kirp in today's NYT. The piece discusses the rise and fall of racially integrated schools in this country, and argues that integration achieved real, concrete successes in improving the educational achievements and the lives of the children, in particular the black children, who attended them.
African-American students who attended integrated schools fared better academically than those left behind in segregated schools. They were more likely to graduate from high school and attend and graduate from college; and, the longer they spent attending integrated schools, the better they did. What’s more, the fear that white children would suffer, voiced by opponents of integration, proved groundless.
Between 1970 and 1990, the black-white gap in educational attainment shrank — not because white youngsters did worse but because black youngsters did better.Not only were they more successful in school, they were more successful in life as well. A 2011 study by the Berkeley public policy professor Rucker C. Johnson concludes that black youths who spent five years in desegregated schools have earned 25 percent more than those who never had that opportunity. Now in their 30s and 40s, they’re also healthier — the equivalent of being seven years younger.
Why? For these youngsters, the advent of integration transformed the experience of going to school. By itself, racial mixing didn’t do the trick, but it did mean that the fate of black and white students became intertwined. School systems that had spent a pittance on all-black schools were now obliged to invest considerably more on African-American students’ education after the schools became integrated. Their classes were smaller and better equipped. They included children from better-off families, a factor that the landmark 1966 Equality of Educational Opportunity study had shown to make a significant difference in academic success. What’s more, their teachers and parents held them to higher expectations. That’s what shifted the arc of their lives.
The author rightly calls out the Supreme Court decisions, starting with Milliken v. Bradley in 1974, which blocked a metropolitan area's desegregation policy and culminating, five years ago, in PARENTS INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY SCHOOLS v. SEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 et al., where the Roberts Court issued a 5-4 decision that blocked an integration plan chosen voluntarily by a district (read more for details). In his powerful dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer declared that this decision “threaten[s] the promise of Brown.”
In addition to the courts, the author also laments the "absence of a vocal pro-integration constituency." This is the part that is so frustrating to him, as he details the evidence that these schools have succeeded, have changed the path of the lives of the kids who attended them.
In addition to the important evidence cited by the author, I'd add something less quantifiable but equally vital, namely that racially integrated schools, by and large, also strengthen the bonds between children (who grow to be adult citizens of course) across lines of skin color. President Obama speaks often about empathy, about being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes. Growing up in a racially integrated environment and having friends of different races, knowing people as individuals, helps enhance that kind of empathy. That matters as well. 'United we stand, divided we fall' still rings true.
Were there some problems with the implementation of desegregation in schools? Of course, notes the author. Busing kids a very long way is a real hardship, and more could have been done to make the policy work better. Nevertheless, the evidence shows that integrated schools worked, something that the author notes we cannot say about the "No Child Left Behind" reforms, the high-stakes testing fad, or charter schools. Please read the article for yourself, there's much more in there than I could summarize here.