Want less-segregated Baltimore schools? Fix housing and transit first, researchers say.

The Baltimore region has some of the most segregated schools in the nation, but in a city shaped by redlining and unreliable public transit, school leaders have limited power to change the faces in classrooms, according to a report released Friday by Johns Hopkins University researchers.

With a student body that is more than 70% Black, Baltimore City Public Schools officials have done what they can to reduce segregation by allowing students choice of what school they wish to attend after fifth grade, the researchers said. But those efforts cannot overcome a Maryland Transit Administration system that can’t reliably get children across town to the school of their choice, the lasting effects of historic laws that kept Black residents in certain areas of the city, or a shrinking population that left low-income families in concentrated areas.

Researchers with Hopkins’ 21st Century Cities Initiative analyzed local school segregation patterns, concluding that it would be virtually impossible to better integrate schools without a regional approach that includes integrated housing and improving transportation options. A regional transportation authority that’s beholden to local, not state, interests, and more mixed-income housing development could help, they wrote.

“The ways that we need to try to address racial segregation need to involve the housing and transportation sectors as well as education. Only by working across all three are we going to be able to make a substantial dent in continued racial segregation of schools in the Baltimore region,” said Michael Bader, faculty director of the initiative, which brings together expertise from across the Hopkins faculty to better understand cities and communities.

School integration is one of the few strategies that has been shown to increase test scores for Black and economically disadvantaged students, according to research over many years. It works because middle-class families with more time and resources tend to push for high standards.

“Both middle-class Black and middle-class white families spend a lot of time and are pretty successful at advocating and identifying needs [in a school],” Bader said. But research has also shown that schools will react to white parents’ concerns more than to those of Black parents, he said, which means racial integration is as important as economic diversity.

“Segregation also reduces opportunities because it enforces social isolation that limits occasions for students to form friendships that reflect the diversity of American society,” the report says.

And parents in the Baltimore area support it. In the 2024 Baltimore Area Survey of 1,492 city and county residents, 61% reported that it is “very important” that their children attend schools with students of other races.

Because Maryland school districts are geographically larger and have more diverse student bodies than many other districts across the country, they are capable of finding ways to integrate classrooms, the report said. Instead, Bader and his colleagues found that attempts in Howard, Anne Arundel and Montgomery counties to redraw school zones to make them more diverse have failed under intense public pressure.

But Baltimore City schools face a different hurdle: Because so many white parents do not send their children to city public schools, the share of Black students is nine percentage points higher than it would be if it reflected the racial makeup of the city as a whole, according to the report. The authors said it is likely many white Baltimore families enroll their children in private schools.

To resolve that issue, the report suggests creating a transportation system that allows students true access to a wide range of schools. State leaders should consider creating a regional transportation authority that would give the city more control over the operation of the buses, subway and light rail systems within its boundaries, the authors wrote.

Currently, Baltimore City political leaders have no control over the MTA because it is a state agency. But giving more power to local leaders would help the agency be more responsive to the community, the report said.

Improving the local and regional transportation networks would also help foster more integrated housing by allowing people to live in Baltimore and commute to jobs more easily in Washington, D.C., Howard or Anne Arundel counties, according to the report.

“In doing that, we may be able to spur more housing and help alleviate some of the housing crunch across the entire region,” Bader said.

Baltimore’s vacant houses could be renovated into homes for people working outside the city. The report also encourages subsidies for housing in the city that would attract new residents to areas that need redevelopment.

In areas where housing costs are high, governments could encourage mixed-income development by requiring real estate developers to set aside a portion of new housing to be sold or rented at below the market rate, the report said. Then when school boundaries are drawn, they naturally include both wealthy and low-income students.

Integrating schools would likely save money for Maryland taxpayers, Baden said.

The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, a decade-long plan to provide more equitable funding to schools to raise achievement, calls for more funding for schools with concentrations of students living in poverty.

Economically diverse schools could lower the cost of implementing the Blueprint and likely help raise achievement.

“A better economy can actually help the Blueprint dollars go farther,” Baden said.

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.