User:Natalieychu/School segregation in the United States

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A principal source of school segregation is the persistence of residential segregation in American society; residence and school assignment are closely linked due to the widespread tradition of locally controlled schools. Residential segregation is related to growing income inequality in the United States.

The deterioration of cities and urban education systems between the 1950-80s is the consequence of several post-war policies like the Home Owners' Loans Corporation, Federal Housing Administration, Interstate Highway Act, discriminative zoning practices, and loss of war-time industrial employment perpetuated ‘white flight’ and suburban sprawl at the expense of poor, marginalized urban residents. Mid-20th century urban divestment and suburban development redirected social services and federal funding to predominantly white residencies. Remaining urban residents witnessed dramatic decreases in quality of living, creating countless barriers to a stable life, including in academic success. Consequently, urban school districts became relatively accurate measures for documenting the increasing educational inequalities among students of color.

A study conducted by Sean Reardon and John Yun found that from 1990 to 2000, residential black/white and Hispanic/white segregation declined by a modest amount in the United States, while public school segregation increased slightly during the same time period. Because the two variables moved in opposite directions, changes in residential patterns are not responsible for changes in school segregation trends. Rather, the study determined that in 1990, schools showed less segregation than neighborhoods, indicating that local policies were helping to ameliorate the effects of residential segregation on school composition. By 2000, however, racial composition of schools had become more closely correlated to neighborhood composition, indicating that public policies no longer redistributed students as evenly as before.

In the 2005 Civil Rights Project conducted at Harvard University, researchers reported that over 80% of high-minority schools—where student population is over 90% non-white—are high poverty schools as indicated by a large majority qualifying for free and reduced lunch. Additionally, of five million enrolled students in two dozen of the largest central cities, 70% are Black and Latino students in predominantly minority-majority, urban schools.

Urban high schools reported significantly greater drop-out rates than their suburban counterparts. Nationwide, high school drop-out rates are centered in a few hundred public schools that are overwhelmingly impoverished, urban, and non-white. The 2000 Census noted that roughly 50% of high school dropouts are employed and earning 35% less than the average national income while college graduates make 131% of the mean national income with 85% employment.

The categorization of ‘at-risk’ youth typically defines learning differences as disabilities based on a standardized, non-inclusive curriculum; the label ‘at-risk’ inherently follows students of color and low-income students as a generalized academic failure. National academic standardization also extends to federal policies like the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which implemented high-stakes standardized testing across the country in an attempt to address socio-economic disparities in learning outcomes. Schools that were labelled “failures” and faced sanctions under the NCLB Act were typically high poverty schools in segregated districts. Both the standardization of learning outcomes and the implementation of these policies fail to address the structural barriers that created high poverty, highly-segregated schools.

Another study targets spatial inequalities and student outcomes based on the physical and social presence in specific neighborhoods. Factors like pollution, perceived safety, proximity to other students, and healthy learning environments can all affect academic outcomes of various student groups. In correspondence to high poverty environments, students are likely to face various obstacles that prevent effective learning environments including food and housing insecurity. Likewise, Black, Latinx, and Indigenous students experience twice the exposure to poor students than their Asian and white counterparts.

Award-winning CQ Researcher Peter Katel amplifies the argument made by Maya Rockeymoore, CEO of Global Policy Solutions, who addresses the geospatial resegregation of schools as structural barriers for impoverished students in inner-city neighborhoods who are never actually prepared to achieve higher education. Katel also reports that educational experts see high densities of marginalized students as a loss of financial resources that most white families do not experience because they are more likely to have the capability to move schools. Acknowledging the resegregation of school and disproportionate allocation of resources is crucial to addressing how the achievement gap is concentrated in underserved urban communities.

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A principal source of school segregation is the persistence of residential segregation in American society; residence and school assignment are closely linked due to the widespread tradition of locally controlled schools. Residential segregation is related to growing income inequality in the United States.

A study conducted by Sean Reardon and John Yun found that from 1990 to 2000, residential black/white and Hispanic/white segregation declined by a modest amount in the United States, while public school segregation increased slightly during the same time period. Because the two variables moved in opposite directions, changes in residential patterns are not responsible for changes in school segregation trends. Rather, the study determined that in 1990, schools showed less segregation than neighborhoods, indicating that local policies were helping to ameliorate the effects of residential segregation on school composition. By 2000, however, racial composition of schools had become more closely correlated to neighborhood composition, indicating that public policies no longer redistributed students as evenly as before.

A 2013 study corroborated these findings, showing that the relationship between residential and school segregation became stronger over the decade between 2000 and 2010. In 2000, segregation of blacks in schools was lower than in their neighborhoods; by 2010, the two patterns of segregation were "nearly identical".