Maryland public schools are some of the most racially segregated in the nation, according to a new report. Experts say that division reduces children’s chances of academic success.
Maryland’s schools are ranked as more segregated than Connecticut, Massachusetts and Mississippi, but better than New York, which was the worst in the nation.
“Racial segregation remains at a higher level than economic in a lot of states,” said UCLA sociology professor Ann Owens, who with Stanford University professor Sean Reardon estimated the racial and economic segregation across every school district in the U.S. at the Segregation Tracking Project.
“Maryland kind of follows that pattern. What [the data] is showing me is that race still remains kind of a bright dividing line,” she said. Parents are more willing to have their child in a school with low-income children than have racial integration in their school, Owens said.
Researchers for the Segregation Tracking Project collaborated with Brown’s Promise, an advocacy organization that promotes integration, to rank states’ public schools based on data from the 2023-2024 school year, the most recent available from the U.S. Department of Education.
The report also evaluates states based on their public schools’ economic segregation. Maryland ranked 23rd by that measure.
Research has shown students in schools with large portions of children living in concentrated poverty are less likely to succeed academically.
The report found that Maryland’s racial segregation is largely between school districts. Some rural areas have schools with high percentages of white students, while many Baltimore schools have high percentages of Black and Hispanic students.
Some schools have far more students of one race or economic status than the district as a whole. For instance, 54% of students at Rosa Parks Middle School in Montgomery County are White compared to 26% of the district as a whole.
Districts could redraw their school attendance zones to balance that segregation. But urban districts in Maryland have seen contentious fights over redrawing school boundary lines. In many cases in the last several years, school district leaders and school boards relented to community outcry and scaled back redistricting plans.
Halley Potter, director of PK-12 education at the Century Foundation, said racial and economic integration matters for the long-term success of students of all races and economic status.
“We have decades of research that show that integration promotes better academic outcomes, better critical thinking skills, better college attainment rates,” she said.
Research also shows that school diversity helps students think differently about the world. “When they go to racially diverse schools they are less likely to have racial prejudices,” Potter said. Graduates of racially diverse schools are more likely to grow up and live in diverse neighborhoods.
At a time of polarization in our country, creating diverse schools is important, she said. “I really do think it is an existential crisis in our schools.”
Some of the racial segregation in Baltimore schools mirrors housing segregation that began decades ago, said Owens. “We have a past where there were legal decisions that separate people by race to more of an extent than economic status. Those residential and school segregation patterns linger in a lot of places.”
Though schools were desegregated by law in 1954 after the U.S. Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education it took decades for some states to adhere to the court’s ruling. In Baltimore, the school board attempted to integrate some of its schools months after the decision, it took longer in other parts of the state.
Black achievement on national standardized tests rose quickly in the 1970s as desegregation took hold, but it slowed after a backlash against integration beginning in the 1980s and 1990s.
In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public school systems cannot seek to achieve or maintain integration through measures that take explicit account of a student’s race. Since then, districts have turned away from policies aimed at racial integration and used economic status, instead.
Recently, the nation has focused more on market-based solutions that allow families to choose where their children learn though private school vouchers and charter schools, Owens said. Some states like Texas have invested heavily in private school vouchers. But the report ranked Texas 12th worst for economic segregation.
“Choice does not lead to integration,” Owens said.
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