Experts, including Reardon, also point to rapidly growing economic segregation. The NEA reports that of all public school students today, nearly half are low-income and 44 percent are students of color, and both populations are concentrated in segregated schools. African-American and Latino children are 2 to 3 times more likely to be poor than white children, says Communities in Schools President Dan Cardinali. “The link between poverty and race is quite real in America,” he adds.
Segregation statistics also reflect demographic changes, which are attributed to birth rate and immigration patterns. In the two fastest growing regions of the country – the South and the West – whites now comprise less than 50 percent of students, the UCLA Civil Rights Project found. In California, one of the most segregated states in the country, Latino and black students are isolated from white and Asian students, Orfield points out. “If you think about desegregation in a changed country, you kind of have to think about whether the groups that have been historically excluded are getting access to the schools that really are connected to opportunity,” says Orfield.
There’s also debate about how much can be done to address the problem through policy. Scholars point out that resegregation of public schools began in the 1990s, when the Supreme Court stopped actively pushing desegregation and began to turn more power back to state and local governments. Since that time, almost all the large desegregation orders that were in place as a consequence of the Brown decision have been dissolved by the courts, Orfield says. He believes some policies, including expanded magnet schools and voluntary transfer programs, can be effective integration tools today.
Though the costs of segregation can be difficult to measure, studies have demonstrated that black students who attended integrated schools, which tended to have more resources, fared markedly better in life (as did their children) than those who did not. But in an increasingly multiracial America, everyone may pay the price for separate and unequal education. “Schools are partly supposed to prepare kids not just to know how to read and do math and get into college, but also to prepare them to be productive, engaged members of a democratic society,” Reardon says. “Part of what it means to be an engaged member of a democracy is to be able to understand different points of view, to be able to communicate well with people from different backgrounds and experiences, and to engage in the kind of communication and interaction that’s going to be reflective of the society you’re going to be in as an adult.” When this awareness is lost, the entire nation suffers.
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