Report: Segregation of Public Schools in Mass. Has Actually Gotten Worse Over Time
A recent report found that the state’s public schools, while growing more diverse, have become more segregated according to students’ race and class since first desegregating in the 1970s.
The report, published by The Civil Rights Project, was released about a week before the 60th anniversary of the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education ruling against “separate but equal’’ schooling.
From the late 1960s through 1980, the amount of black students enrolled in schools with mostly white students declined, reported The Boston Globe, a trend that seems to continue to this day.
The Globe reported on what it called “resegregation:’’
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The report, titled Losing Ground, provided some astonishing findings for the Bay State’s public schools minority students, including that “over 25% of the state’s black and Latino students attended intensely segregated schools (90-100% minority) during the 2010-2011 school year, a substantial increase from 1989 when 11% of black students and 6% of Latino students attended intensely segregated schools.’’
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US Attorney General Eric Holder last week remarked that “significant divisions persist and segregation has reoccurred’’ in some school districts.
It would seem that it’s time for our state’s politicians and education leaders to act quickly to reverse this disturbing trend that depicts a separate and unequal Massachusetts public school system. We’ll see if they heed this report’s findings or not.
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