Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - On the Anniversary of Brown v. Board, New Evidence That US Schools Are Resegregating

News Article

By: Emma Brown

Poor, black and Hispanic children are becoming increasingly isolated from their white, affluent peers in the nation's public schools, according to new federal data showing that the number of high-poverty schools serving primarily black and brown students more than doubled between 2001 and 2014.

The data was released by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office on Tuesday, 62 years to the day after the Supreme Court decided that segregated schools are "inherently unequal" and therefore unconstitutional.

That landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education began the dismantling of the dual school systems -- one for white kids, one for black students -- that characterized so many of the nation's communities. It also became a touchstone for the ideal of public education as a great equalizer, an American birthright meant to give every child a fair shot at success.

But that ideal appears to be unraveling, according to Tuesday's GAO report.

The proportion of schools segregated by race and class -- where more than 75 percent of children receive free or reduced-price lunch and more than 75 percent are black or Hispanic -- climbed from 9 percent to 16 percent of schools between 2001 and 2014, or an increase from 7,009 public schools to 15,089. The number of the most intensively segregated schools -- with more than 90 percent of low-income students and students of color -- more than doubled over that period.

The findings were based on an analysis of Education Department data.

The problem is not just that students are more isolated, according to the GAO, but that minority students who are concentrated in high-poverty schools don't have the same access to opportunities as students in other schools.

High-poverty, majority-black and Hispanic schools were less likely to offer a full range of math and science courses than other schools, for example, and more likely to use expulsion and suspension as disciplinary tools, according to the GAO.

The GAO conducted its study during the past two years at the request of Democratic lawmakers including Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the House education committee, and Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Scott on Tuesday announced legislation that would make it easier for parents to sue school districts for civil rights violations, saying the GAO report provided evidence of an "overwhelming failure to fulfill the promise of Brown."

"Segregation in public K12 schools isn't getting better; it's getting worse, and getting worse quickly, with more than 20 million students of color now attending racially and socioeconomically isolated public schools," he said in a statement Tuesday, calling on GOP leaders in the House to hold hearings on tackling segregation.

The GAO studied three school districts in the South, Northeast and West. Each took steps to increase racial and economic diversity in the schools but were hampered by transportation issues and getting support from the parents and the community.

The resegregation of schools during the past two decades has for the most part happened quietly, in the shadows of loud battles over standardized testing, teacher evaluations, charter schools and Common Core academic standards.

Segregation has returned to the forefront of education policy discussions only recently, amid broad public debates about race, racism and widening inequality.

The persistence of racial divisions in the nation's public schools was underscored Friday when a federal judge ordered a Mississippi district to integrate its middle and high schools, capping a legal battle that had dragged on for five decades.

As the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi put it, Cleveland, Miss. -- a town of 12,000 bisected by railroad tracks that divided white families from black -- has been running an illegal dual system for its children, failing year after year to reach the "greatest degree of desegregation possible."

Now Cleveland must consolidate its schools, integrating all its students into one middle school and one high school.

"The delay in desegregation has deprived generations of students of the constitutionally-guaranteed right of an integrated education," Judge Debra Brown wrote in her decision.

The Rev. Edward Duvall, an African American parent of two children in Cleveland's public schools, said he favored consolidation because it would save money, leaving more funding for classrooms and programs. But that wasn't the only reason: "We can break down this wall of racism that divides us and keeps us separated," he said, according to court documents. "And we could create a new culture in our school system that's going to unite us and unite our whole city."

While schools in Cleveland have never fully desegregated, many other school districts did integrate following the decision in Brown v. Board. But since the 1990s, hundreds of school districts have been released from court-ordered desegregation plans, making way for renewed divisions by race and class.

In 1972, just 25 percent of black students in the South attended the most segregated schools, in which more than 90 percent of students were minorities, according to a 2014 ProPublica investigation. But in districts that emerged from court oversight between 1990 and 2011, more than half of students now attend such segregated schools, ProPublica found.

The investigation found fault with a Justice Department that, starting with the Reagan administration, pulled back from pressuring districts on desegregation and was "no longer committed to fighting for the civil-rights aims it had once championed."

At the same time as federal courts were relinquishing oversight of school desegregation, the nation's overall student population was changing, becoming poorer and less white. More than half of students are now low income, as measured by eligibility for subsidized meals. Hispanic students have replaced black students as the largest minority group in schools, accounting for 25 percent of the overall student population.

But the growing number of minority and low-income children in the nation's schools does not mean that their segregation is inevitable, nor that they are doomed to receive fewer opportunities in school, Education Secretary John King Jr. said.

Just weeks after assuming the helm of the U.S. Education Department in January, Mr. King began calling on communities to find ways to diversify their schools. He was even more pointed this month, speaking of a "systematic lack of investment in high-needs communities and high-needs kids" that is made possible by policy choices that create segregated housing and segregated schools.

"The lack of concern for poor people is deeply disturbing," Mr. King said.

On Tuesday, he said that the GAO report shows the need for a proposed new regulation that would change the way schools prove they are providing adequate resources for needy students. GOP leaders and school superintendents have criticized Mr. King sharply for the proposal, accusing him of an illegal overreach.

Advocates for desegregation as an essential tool for closing the nation's persistent achievement gap have criticized the Obama administration for giving lip service to the issue without taking meaningful steps to address it.

President Barack Obama's current proposed budget, unlikely to win approval from a GOP-led Congress, includes a $120 million grant program meant to help local communities diversify their schools, such as through magnet programs or dual-language classrooms that could draw middle-class families into high-poverty schools.

There are still plenty of challenges associated with such efforts. Officials in one urban district told the GAO that their popular magnet schools had to deny admission to some minority students in order to maintain diversity. And they poured so many resources into those schools that the traditional neighborhood schools -- which enrolled large concentrations of minority students -- suffered.

Other findings:

* Students at these high-poverty minority schools were 7 percent of all ninth grade students in the country, but were 17 percent of all students held back that grade.

* Students at these schools accounted for 12 percent of all students nationwide, and represented 22 percent of all students with one or more out-of-school suspensions and 16 percent of all students expelled.

The report recommends that the Education Department more routinely analyze its civil rights data to identify disparities that need to be addressed. At the Justice Department, the GAO auditors suggested more monitoring of open federal desegregation court cases.

In a separate paper, the Civil Rights Project at UCLA said New York and Illinois have been "at or very near the top of the list" of states where African-American and Latino students have been most severely segregated. It found that "residential resegregation" in some parts of Maryland spilled over into the schools and that in California, the percentage of Hispanics was increasing as the overall school population declined.

"We need to create schools that build a society where the talent of all is developed and students of all races-ethnicities are prepared to understand and live successfully in a society that moves beyond separation toward mutual respect and integration," the group said.

The findings came on the same day that the National Fair Housing Alliance filed suit against a major insurance company, alleging the company refuses to insure D.C. buildings where tenants pay rent with public vouchers -- a violation of local and federal housing laws.

Travelers Indemnity Company has consistently denied commercial building owners habitational insurance -- critical insurance for multi-unit building owners that covers tenant liabilities -- according to the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia.

A spokesperson for the Connecticut-based Travelers said the company does not comment on pending litigation.

The denials of insurance are exacerbating a lack of affordable housing in the District, said Shanna Smith, president of the National Fair Housing Alliance. That's because building owners are refusing to rent to residents who use vouchers, since it makes it more difficult to obtain insurance, she said.

"We are concerned about the pushing out of lower income families from the city and the loss of affordable housing," said Ms. Smith, whose organization is seeking a change in Travelers' policies and damages.

During a 10-month investigation in 2015 and 2016, the National Fair Housing Alliance contacted six Travelers insurance brokers and sought coverage for well-maintained buildings in poor, largely African-American neighborhoods where some tenants use public housing vouchers. Each time the coverage was denied and the brokers all eventually said it was because some residents relied on federal housing vouchers, according to the lawsuit.

Ms. Smith said the housing advocacy organization launched the investigation to determine if insurance companies were contributing to growing segregation in some cities.

The insurance barriers discourage property owners from renting to voucher holders, who are likely to be black residents, Ms. Smith said. These low-income residents may leave the city to find housing, or are relegated to low-quality buildings in largely minority neighborhoods.

In D.C., for example, studies show that in recent years the city's poorer residents are increasingly concentrated in neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River, where the population is more than 90 percent black.

Nearly 11,000 households in D.C. participate in the federal Housing Choice Voucher subsidy program, and 92 percent are black households, the lawsuit states. Participants in the program use their vouchers to find housing in the private market, and are not limited to public housing projects.

The National Fair Housing Alliance investigated four other insurance providers in D.C., and will likely file more lawsuits, Ms. Smith said. She would not identify the other companies. She said the organization plans to expand its investigation to other cities.

The alliance also discovered that while some insurance companies do provide coverage to buildings with voucher holders, they often do so at a significantly higher costs.

"Travelers' criteria have a disproportionate harm on neighborhoods statistically more likely to have rental buildings with tenants participating in the Housing Choice Voucher program, as landlords must go without property insurance, pay higher premiums for second market policies, and receive fewer benefits and protections from those non-standard policies," the complaint reads.

Travelers' alleged actions violate the federal Fair Housing Act as well as D.C."s Human Rights Act, according to the lawsuit. Under the Fair Housing Act, policies cannot impact some groups more than others. Because housing subsidies in D.C. are primarily used by black families the lawsuit argues Travelers' alleged policy violates the federal act.

The D.C. law more directly addresses residents using government subsidies to pay rent and says that a person cannot be discriminated against based on their source of income. Under this local law, the National Fair Housing Alliances argues it is illegal to refuse insurance coverage because tenants are paying their rent with vouchers.

In 2013, a similar complaint was lodged against Travelers in U.S. District Court of Northern District of California, alleging that it did not renew a building owner's insurance coverage after the company discovered that some tenants received housing subsidies. The case was settled out of court.

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