A Sobering Study on Segregation by School Districts
EdBuild, a nonprofit that focuses on education funding inequality, published its latest report highlighting the fiscal impact of segregation.
“What we take away here is the whiter a community is on one side of the border, or the more nonwhite a community is on the other side of the border, the bigger the difference is in funding for the more disadvantaged,“
Rebecca Sibilia, CEO of EdBuild
The fight for desegregation didn’t end after the ruling in the case of Brown v Board of Education in 1954. Those that were intent on reversing the ruling, fought in other ways. In 1970, the NAACP sued Michigan state officials, arguing that although no official policy of segregation existed, Detroit and surrounding counties had enacted economic and housing policies that locked out black families and increased racial segregation in schools. The district judge agreed, as did the Sixth Circuit Court, but state officials won out in their challenge to the Supreme Court, effectively cementing the segregation that exists between school districts.
The report’s release marks the 45th anniversary of the 1973 education equity Supreme Court case, Milliken v Bradley, in which a conflicted bench ruled 5-4 that school districts were not obligated to desegregate unless it had been proven that the lines were drawn with racist intent.
Divisive School District Borders
969 divisive school district borders mark significant gaps between neighboring districts: 10% differences in school funding, or $4,207 per pupil on average, and 25-point divides in rates of nonwhite enrollment. That racial difference is about the same as the one between Beverly Hills, California and Charleston, South Carolina. View this interactive map.
