City Lines, County Lines, Color Lines:
The Relationship between School and
Housing Segregation in Four Southern
Metro Areas
Genevieve Siegel-Hawley
Virginia Commonwealth University
Background/Context: At the close of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the intersection
of race, geography and opportunity is increasingly referred to as spatial racism. School quality
and resources, municipal services, employment opportunities, accessibility of transportation,
exposure to pollution, and tax rates all vary dramatically across a network of invisible boundary
lines that carve up U.S. metro areas into racially and socioeconomically distinctive spaces.
Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This analysis explores how district
boundary lines and school desegregation policy have impacted metropolitan school and
housing integration levels over the past two decades.
Setting: The study focuses specifically on the South, where the most comprehensive desegregation
strategies were pursued. Based on varying experiences with city-suburban school district
mergers, four metros—Richmond, Virginia; Charlotte-Mecklenburg County, North Carolina;
Louisville-Jefferson County, Kentucky; and Chattanooga-Hamilton County, Tennessee—
were identified for study between the years 1990 and 2010. This time period encompassed a
rising trend of unitary status for school districts, the serious resegregation of students, and
growing demographic complexity across the country.
Research Design: This is a quantitative analysis of school and housing segregation trends
that relies upon Geographic Information Systems (GIS) maps to depict spatial patterns of
isolation. School enrollment and segregation trends are derived from the National Center for
Educational Statistics’ Common Core of Data. Housing patterns describing the distribution
and segregation of persons by race and poverty status are explored using block group-level
information from the U.S. Census Bureau’s decennial census. Segregation is measured using
the Index of Dissimilarity (D).
Teachers College Record Volume 115, 060307, June 2013, 45 pages
Copyright © by Teachers College, Columbia University
0161-4681
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Findings/Results: Efforts to overcome the divisive nature of district boundary lines, in
conjunction with comprehensive school desegregation policy, were related to unambiguous
progress in combating both school and housing segregation. This central finding suggests
that, in some ways, school policy can become housing policy.
Conclusions/Recommendations: How we provide equal educational opportunity to an
increasingly diverse population of students is one of the principal concerns facing the country
today. As a nation, however, we are currently allowing a labyrinthine system of school-district
boundary lines to dictate the geographic distribution of learning opportunities. This study
provides concrete examples of metros implementing a more regional approach to educational
equity. It recommends that other metro area consider taking similar steps to subvert the
segregating power of school-district boundaries.
The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the
color-line.
– W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903
A child’s educational opportunity should be determined by her
intellect and work ethic, not by her zip code.
– Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell,
GOP Response to President Barack Obama‘s
State of the Union, January 2010
Two pronouncements uttered more than one hundred years apart,
from opposite sides of the racial divide, further separated by an ideological chasm, concur: lines matter. The contours of those lines, parsed into
geographical shorthand by Gov. McDonnell, may look somewhat different
today than when Dubois penned the opening paragraph of The Souls of
Black Folk, but the fundamental issues remain the same. At present, a network of invisible boundary lines fracture school districts and municipalities, giving structure to low-opportunity areas of racial and socioeconomic
isolation (Briggs, 2005; G. Orfield & McArdle, 2006; Weiher, 1992). And
it is largely because of school district boundaries that a child’s educational prospects—and, consequently, his or her future opportunities—are
indeed intertwined with his or her zip code.
For children, opportunity depends in large part on the neighborhood and
schools they will grow up and learn within. Those connected to high-opportunity geographic spaces—replete with good housing, strong schools, favorable environmental conditions, quality health care, and dependable public
serves—come into a very different set of life chances than children locked
into segregated, low-opportunity areas (Jargowsky & El Komi, 2011; Lareau,
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2003). These early experiences carry deep consequences for upward mobility, particularly in the form of educational and job prospects.
More than four decades ago, the nation’s highest court stood poised to
alleviate the segregating effects, and related implications for opportunity,
of school-district boundary lines. Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg, a 1971 case
out of Charlotte, North Carolina, signaled that the Supreme Court recognized the critical link between school and housing segregation. Attempting
to disentangle that relationship and holding that desegregation must be
achieved to the greatest extent possible, the justices ordered the two-way
busing of Black and White students across the already merged city-suburban school system in Charlotte-Mecklenburg (G. Orfield & Eaton, 1996;
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg, 1971). A looming question remained, however: How would comprehensive school desegregation be carried out in
metropolitan areas where the city-suburban lines remained intact?
In 1974, a Supreme Court packed with Nixon appointees agreed to take
up that question. In Milliken v. Bradley, the newly rightward-leaning court
discounted evidence of the government’s past involvement in contributing to racial isolation and ruled against a metropolitan desegregation
remedy for Detroit. The decision meant that, barring proof of intentional
suburban discrimination, future desegregation efforts occurring across
district boundary lines would have to be voluntary. Milliken thus hardened
the lines—and the inequities—between cities and suburbs.
Central to this analysis, though, is the way in which the splintering effects
of the 1974 Milliken decision have been ameliorated in the South. Along
with a handful of court-ordered metropolitan mergers, several states in
the region, like North Carolina and Tennessee, operate under laws that
facilitate city-suburban school consolidation. These regional characteristics
created an ideal backdrop for a study examining the long-term school and
housing segregation trends associated with metropolitan school districts.
Based on widely differing histories of city-suburban school district
mergers, four metros—Richmond, Virginia; Charlotte-Mecklenburg
County, North Carolina; Louisville-Jefferson County, Kentucky; and
Chattanooga-Hamilton County, Tennessee—were identified for study
between the years 1990 and 2010. These metros are part of a region that
is one of the most racially diverse areas in the nation, where the former
Black-White paradigm has shifted to a situation where one in five students
is Latino (G. Orfield, 2009). The South is also the first area of the country
to report a majority share of low-income students (Southern Education
Foundation, 2010). Moreover, after widespread desegregation during the
’70s and ’80s, since the early 1990s, many southern school systems have
experienced rapid resegregation (Boger & Orfield, 2005; G. Orfield &
Eaton, 1996). The rise of this new South—more diverse and yet contain3
TCR, 115, 060307 School and Housing Segregation
ing schools that are rapidly becoming more segregated—raises critical
questions about the future provision of equitable educational opportunities in cities and schools across the region.
Using cutting-edge spatial and graphic imagery and a multi-disciplinary
framework, this analysis adds to the body of evidence related to school
desegregation experiences across the South. In the region where the most
comprehensive strategies were pursued, This article explores how contemporary (1990-2010) school and housing segregation patterns have been
impacted by desegregation policy and the manipulation of district boundary lines in four southern metropolitan areas. Related areas of inquiry
include the following: First, how are patterns of school and housing segregation affected by different types of desegregation policy (e.g., controlled
choice versus magnet schools)? Second, in what way do school and housing
segregation patterns shift after desegregation plans are discarded?
Findings indicated that efforts to overcome the divisive nature of district
boundaries, in conjunction with school desegregation policy, were related
to unambiguous progress in combating school and housing segregation.
Indeed, results revealed that, in some ways, school policy can be housing
policy: metros with city-suburban school desegregation plans reported
much faster declines in housing segregation than metros lacking such
strategies. In a nation experiencing swift demographic transition and
rising inequality, evidence from these four southern locales emphasizes
the ongoing and urgent need for policies explicitly designed to equalize
educational and life opportunities.
The first section of this article presents background information related
to the impact of metropolitan fragmentation, the relationship between
school and housing segregation, and the power of metro-wide school
desegregation policy. The second section delves into key characteristics of
each of the sites, followed by a description of the data and methodology.
Next, the article provides an analysis of school and housing segregation in
and across the four metro areas. It closes with a discussion of key findings,
directions for future policy, and a conclusion.
BACKGROUND
METROPOLITAN FRAGMENTATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
Recent estimates show that the United States contains nearly 90,000 units
of government (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). Excluding the 51 entities that
make up the federal and state governments, local agencies accounted for
fully 89,476 units, making the U.S. one of the most fragmented political
systems in the world (Weiher, 1991). The vast majority of these local gov4
Teachers College Record, 115, 060307 (2013)
ernments, and their associated boundaries, are concentrated in American
metropolitan areas (M. Orfield & Luce, 2010).
Metro area divisions matter greatly on any number of levels. School
quality and resources, municipal services, employment opportunities,
accessibility of transportation, exposure to pollution, and tax rates all vary
dramatically across the multiple boundary lines that carve up U.S. metros
into racially and socioeconomically distinctive spaces (M. Orfield & Luce,
2010; Powell, 2009; Rusk, 1999).
Research specifically delineates the role boundaries play in exacerbating school segregation and limiting educational opportunity (Clotfelter,
2004, Eaton, 2001; Grant, 2009; Reardon & Yun, 2002; Ryan, 2010). One
recent study, for example, used census and school enrollment data to
analyze the supposedly race-neutral creation of numerous new school
districts in Jefferson County, Alabama. The author found that the existence of these newly fragmented school systems greatly aggravated school
segregation across district boundaries (Frankenberg, 2009). Another
recent research project used school observations and in-depth interviews
with school district officials in hyper-fragmented Long Island to uncover
tremendous resource disparities between racially and socioeconomically
isolated school systems and more privileged ones (Wells et al., 2009).
Disparities across municipal and school-district boundary lines exist
largely because, without an overarching political body managing regional
concerns, small local units compete with one another for advantages—
economic or otherwise. For instance, developing suburbs are incentivized
to build steeply-priced single family homes on large lots to encourage low
population density (and thus fewer costly municipal service needs) and
higher property taxes (Freund, 2007; M. Orfield & Luce, 2010). Some
scholars have suggested that the competition between locales is natural
and beneficial to metropolitan areas, effectively sorting the population
according to their preference for government services and tax rates
(Beck, 1983; Tiebout, 1956). This model assumes, of course, that everyone in a metropolitan area has full information about the availability of
other options, the financial means to relocate and faces no discrimination
in the housing market. None of these assumptions actually hold true in
the American metropolis (National Commission on Fair Housing and
Equal Opportunity, 2008; Shapiro, 2004; Turner & Ross, 2003).
THE COMPLEX RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BOUNDARY LINES
AND SCHOOL AND HOUSING SEGREGATION
The common practice of drawing school-attendance boundaries to encircle nearby neighborhoods buttresses a reciprocal and cyclical relationship
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between school and housing segregation (Mickelson, 2011; Sohoni &
Saporito, 2009). Because attendance zones concretely define the neighborhoods with which schools are associated, disentangling residential
decisions from schooling preferences is extremely difficult. These invisible boundary lines help structure patterns of segregation by ensuring that
racial or economic isolation present in neighborhoods will be reflected in
the school enrollment. On a larger scale, district lines send demographic
signals about entire systems of education. Families with children moving
to or across the typical metro thus face a series of racialized decisions
between attendance zones and school districts. And while those choices
are often billed as free and open, for many families they are constrained
by race and/or income level.
Choosing Neighborhoods and Schools
Families with resources talk about the ability to “buy into” a better school
zone or district, based on the assumption that a wealthy neighborhood
means good schools (Holme, 2002; Johnson, 2006; Shapiro, 2004). The
reasoning behind this assumption is largely accurate. Property taxes
that continue to make up a significant portion of local education funds
(Kozol, 1992; Ryan, 2010) are related to home values, and housing
prices in turn are linked to school districts and school zones (Chiodo,
Hernández-Murillo, & Owyang; Kane, Reigg, & Steger, 2010). These
circumstances bolster the relationship between educational and housing
choices, making it difficult for lower-income families to gain entrance
into highly resourced schools.
In addition to the limitation that socioeconomic status places on a family’s ability to choose a neighborhood and school, racial disparities related
to the accumulation of wealth in America also help define those choices
(Di & Liu, 2005; Masnick, 2001; Oliver & Shapiro, 1995). The wealth
gap translates into differential rates of homeownership for racial groups
and, relatedly, differential racial access to wealthy neighborhoods and
schools (Shapiro, 2004). Documenting one of the sources of disparate
access, a series of interviews with more than 200 families in several large
American metros uncovered an extensive web of family assistance for
young, lower-middle-class White families (Johnson, 2006). Grandparents,
for example, would often help place a down payment—sometimes covering it outright—on a home in a school district that would otherwise be
out of reach for their children and grandchildren (Johnson, 2006). For
families of color lacking those networks and resources, opportunities for
homeownership in an expensive neighborhood with well-funded schools
are more limited.
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School Demographics and Achievement Send Signals to Prospective Homebuyers
Qualitative studies have attempted to dissect the underlying motivations
behind family moving decisions and have found that interviewees speak
knowledgeably about their housing options in relationship to school
districts, even down to specific schools within the district (Holme, 2002;
Shapiro, 2004). In some cases, White home-seekers are guided by perceptions of school quality unrelated to tangible educational characteristics,
relying instead upon racially coded pieces of information shared among
social networks. One UCLA researcher conducted fieldwork on White
families moving “for the schools” in a Southern California school district.
She found that informal conversations passed through friends about the
degree to which educational settings were serving Whiter and wealthier
students largely formed the basis for decisions about whether or not a
zone or district should be sought out (Holme, 2002).
Indeed, race and racism continue to play a central role in determining
access to predominately White and wealthy neighborhoods and schools,
even as our “post-racial” society has become less willing to acknowledge
persistent patterns of discrimination. One reason for these denials may be
related to the subversion of blatant racial hostilities, which, in many cases,
have been replaced with less obtrusive—but no less damaging—barriers
to equal access to opportunity-rich neighborhoods. Research based on
an intensive historical case study of Detroit indicated that White homeowners became much less likely to express overt racial prejudice in the
decades following World War II, relying instead on an ideology linking
together home-buying, property values, and racial exclusion (Freund,
2007). This new dialogue around “race, property and neighborhood
integrity” has allowed Whites to shroud racist attitudes beneath the coded
language of protecting home investments (Freund, 2007, p. 10).
Given these evolving politics around race and homeownership, it makes
sense that the racial makeup of a school district appears to impact real
estate prices. A Connecticut study based on data from 1994 to 2004 found
that housing prices varied dramatically according to the percentage of
Latino students in a school district. After controlling for a variety of
neighborhood variables, the researchers found that higher home prices
were reported in districts with fewer Latino students (Clapp, Nanda, &
Ross, 2008). Using similar data from Connecticut, a second study found
that buyers were willing to pay $7,468 more for a house in order to live
near a less diverse school (Dougherty et al., 2009). Further south, North
Carolina research examining the Charlotte housing market after the district returned to neighborhood school assignments found that housing
prices varied significantly on either side of school-attendance boundary
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lines (Kane et al., 2010). Evidence from two different regions, then, suggests that home prices can be closely connected to the racial makeup of
a school zone or district.
Narrow achievement indicators like test scores may herald a new way
of discussing schools and neighborhoods in a coded manner. Certainly,
a byproduct of the recent policy focus on testing and accountability has
been the parental capacity to distill the complicated elements that come
together to produce a school environment down to a single numerical
score. The Connecticut-based research discussed above provides evidence
in support of that trend, finding that test scores became increasingly
predictive of housing prices after the passage of No Child Left Behind in
2001 (Clapp, Nanda, & Ross, 2008).
A recent Brookings Institute study further illuminated the relationship between test scores and home prices by examining how the two are
related to land-use policy. Using a variety of different data sources, the
author found that in the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, housing
prices near a high-scoring public school are nearly 2.4 times greater
(nearly $11,000 more per year), on average, than those near a low-scoring
public school (Rothwell, 2012). These price differences contributed to a
situation where the typical low-income student went to a school scoring
at a much lower percentile on state tests than did the typical middle- or
high-income student. Since exclusionary zoning practices effectively
block low-income families’ entrance into the highest-performing schools,
the study concludes that land-use policies have a tremendous impact on
educational opportunity.
Real Estate Agents Use Schools to Steer Clients
Research has documented extensive real estate practices geared towards
providing prospective buyers with racialized information about local
schools. Because providing direct information about the racial composition of a neighborhood is typically illegal (USHD, 1979), housing agents
often discuss school demographics or “quality” (which, as we saw, is often
conflated with racial composition or test score results) with prospective
buyers. One analysis found that real estate agents in racially fragmented
metro areas were more likely to place ads identifying schools by name.
The author of the study surmised that the name of the school served as
a code for, “this house is in a white neighborhood with a white school”
(Pearce, 1980, p. 14). A more recent probe of real estate sales found
that 87% of testers were steered into specific neighborhoods, with agents
using the racial composition of school districts as a proxy for neighborhood demographics (National Fair Housing Alliance, 2006).
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Interviewers in hyper-fragmented Long Island, New York have also
found that the relationship works in the other direction, with some school
officials hosting meetings with realtors to tout the quality of schools in
particular districts. These efforts provide another concrete example of
close relationships between the parties who help intimately link school
and housing decisions (Wells et al., 2009).
In sum, housing segregation remains closely connected to school segregation. Family choices based on racial and socioeconomic signals, test
scores, coded language, and real estate practices help perpetuate a cycle
of segregation where racially and socioeconomically identifiable schools
yield racially and socioeconomically identifiable neighborhoods, and vice
versa. Such a cycle is very difficult to disentangle without comprehensive
policy designed to undermine it (Powell & Kay, 2001).
IMPACT OF SCHOOL DESEGREGATION POLICY
The yellow school bus continues to be one of the most defining—and
controversial symbols of school desegregation. Transportation is fundamental to desegregation policy because of the way boundary lines have
shaped residential and school segregation patterns. Used to transcend
both school zones and district boundaries, buses have traditionally helped
break the link between housing and school segregation.
Relying heavily on transportation, a number of different school desegregation strategies have been introduced over the years. They run the
gamut from early, mandatory student assignment policies to the rise of
voluntary integration mechanisms like magnet schools and controlled
choice (G. Orfield & Eaton, 1996). During the 1970s, metropolitan-wide
school desegregation strategies implemented in a handful of metro areas
under different conditions gained particular favor due to their ability to
both stem long-standing patterns of White flight to the suburbs and to
promote stable, integrated schools and neighborhoods (Frankenberg,
2005; G. Orfield, 1978; Parents Involved v. Seattle, 2006; Pearce, 1980; U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights, 1977).
Indeed, earlier research shows that districts with comprehensive metro
school desegregation plans—including city-suburban transfers and magnet schools—have the most stably integrated schools (Frankenberg, 2005;
G. Orfield, 2001; M. Orfield, 2006; Parents Involved v. Seattle, 2006). Past
studies also show that, between 1970 and 1990, regions with metro-wide
school desegregation plans experienced decreases in residential segregation at more than twice the national average (Frankenberg, 2005; Parents
Involved v. Seattle, 2006).
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DYNAMICS OF METROPOLITAN SCHOOL DESEGREGATION’S
POSITIVE INFLUENCE ON SCHOOL AND HOUSING PATTERNS
The success of metropolitan-wide desegregation efforts in reducing both
school and housing segregation has a theoretical basis in the founding
documents of this country. In 1787, James Madison, writing in heated support of the ratification of the Constitution (and thus weighing in on the
side of a strong, unified federal government), warned against the dangers
of factionalism, which he defined as “a number of citizens . . . united and
actuated by some common impulse of passion . . . adverse to the rights of
other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community” (1787, p. 1). The remedy to this type of dissent, he concluded, was
to “extend the sphere . . . take in a greater variety of parties and interests
. . . make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common
motive to invade the rights of other citizens” (p. 5). Madison’s Federalist
Paper No. 10 thus outlined a basic but key governmental principle: The
most effective way to combat the pursuit of narrow political interests is to
broaden the limits of the community itself.
Metropolitan school desegregation is an important example of
Madison’s theory. Metro-wide desegregation plans are designed to extend
across an expansive city-suburban community. Once the boundary lines
separating city school districts from suburban ones are bridged, the constricted self-interests of White and/or middle class families seeking more
homogenous, higher-scoring schools linked to higher home property
values can be subverted. Schools across the metro area can then operate
in service of a broader ideal that aims for a unified, integrated, high-quality educational system benefitting all members of the community (G.
Orfield, 2001).
Another way of thinking about the mechanism behind the success of
metropolitan school desegregation is to imagine the housing market
in a fragmented metropolitan area where racially identifiable school
systems—either predominately White or predominately minority—are
located on either side of a school district line. In that metro area, families
and real estate agents can easily communicate about school preferences
between the districts without ever having to mention race. These conscious or unconscious maneuvers can occur even though the real estate
decisions will, of course, have serious racial implications for both schools
and neighborhoods (Pearce, 1980). In a different metro, one where
comprehensive city-suburban school desegregation is carried out in a
predictable fashion, the community comes to understand that movement
to any part of the metro area governed by the student assignment policy
will result in a similarly integrated school—and thus connected to the
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kinds of rich benefits that flow from those environments (see, e.g., Linn
& Welner, 2007; G. Orfield, Frankenberg & Garces, 2008).
Integrated school settings are linked to both short-term and longterm benefits for students of all races. The more immediate associated
outcomes include greater academic achievement, heightened critical
thinking skills, an amplified ability to communicate and make friends
across races, and a reduction in students’ willingness to accept stereotypes (Hawley, 2007; Mickelson & Bottia, 2010; Pettigrew & Trop, 2006;
Ready & Silander, 2011; Schofield, 1995). These trends later translate into
loftier educational and career expectations (Crain, 1970; Dawkins, 1983;
Kurlaender & Yun, 2005) and high levels of civic and communal responsibility (Braddock, 2009).
Most important, perhaps, is the finding that graduates of racially diverse
schools are more likely to attend integrated colleges and live in racially
diverse neighborhoods (Braddock, 1980, 2009; Butler, 2010; Stearns,
2010; Wells & Crain, 1994). The reinforcing and intergenerational nature
of this cycle (see Figure 1)—whereby products of integrated K-12 settings
are more likely to seek out integrated neighborhoods, making school
integration more likely for their children (Mickelson, 2011)—supplements Madison’s well-articulated rationale for a robust federal government by helping to further illuminate how a long-standing metropolitan
school desegregation plan might eventually produce advances in both
school and housing integration.
Figure 1. Perpetuating effects of school desegregation
Note. Reprinted from “The Reciprocal Relationship between integrated schooling and integrated housing: A
synthesis of social science evidence,” by R. Mickelson, 2011, in Finding Common Ground: Coordinating Housing
and Education Policy to Promote Integration, Washington, DC: Poverty & Race Research Action Council.
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It is likely safe to say that all of these different dynamics interact to produce the mechanism by which school desegregation policy might become
housing desegregation policy. This analysis will put Madison’s philosophy
and prior research and theory to a contemporary test, seeking to understand whether metropolitan school desegregation remedies continue to
promote school and housing integration across broadly conceived communities.
Site Selection
A school system’s capacity to override the splintering impact of district
boundary lines was central to this analysis. Two of the four metros
selected, Charlotte-Mecklenburg County and Chattanooga-Hamilton
County, are located in states governed by statutes supporting a key principle: one county, one school system (unlike other states where multiple,
fragmented school districts might exist within county lines). School districts in North Carolina and Tennessee thus have several methods at their
disposal when seeking to consolidate separate systems.
On the other hand, state laws and policies in Virginia and Kentucky do
not easily lend themselves—under current parameters, at least—to school
system mergers. Instead, during the 1970s, districts in the Louisville and
Richmond areas came under court order to consolidate as part of metropolitan-wide desegregation decrees. The experiences of the two metros diverged sharply, however, after higher courts overturned a district
court’s plan to desegregate Richmond-area students across a consolidated
city-suburban school system. Instead, Richmond City Schools implemented its desegregation plan within the city limits, while the school
systems in neighboring Henrico and Chesterfield counties remained
exempt (Ryan, 2010). Louisville-Jefferson County, by contrast, carried out
a 1975 merger and continues to implement a student assignment plan
dedicated to promoting racially diverse schools across the metropolitan
school district (Orfield & Frankenberg, 2011).
These differing consolidation origins meant that school desegregation was a central focus and thrust of the court-ordered mergers in the
Richmond and Louisville areas and merely an underlying consideration for
some stakeholders in the Charlotte and Chattanooga cases (see Table 1).
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Table 1. S chool Boundary-Lines and Desegregation Policy, Four Southern Metropolitan Areas
Boundary-line
configuration
Origins of merger
Contemporary student
assignment policy
LouisvilleJefferson
County,
Kentucky
Merged citysuburban school
district
CharlotteMecklenburg
County,
North Carolina
Merged citysuburban school
district
ChattanoogaHamilton
County,
Tennessee
Merged citysuburban school
district
Court-ordered
merger of city
and suburban
school systems
(1974);
formalized by
the Kentucky
Board of
Education
(1975)
Controlled
choice policy
governs student
assignment
plan; plan based
on geographic
distribution of
students by race
and poverty
Residents voted
by a 3-1 majority
to merge the
city school
system with
Mecklenburg
County schools
(1959)
City school
system ceased
operations
after narrowly
approved
referendum;
folded into
Hamilton
County Schools
(1997)
System of
magnet
programs,
otherwise
student
assignment
prioritizes
neighborhood
proximity
Choicebased policy
prioritizing
neighborhood
schools and
system of magnet
programs
RichmondHenricoChesterfield,
Virginia
Failed merger;
city school
district distinct
from two
surrounding
suburban
districts
Supreme Court
allowed lower
court ruling
rejecting
school district
consolidation to
stand (1973)
Open
enrollment in
Richmond City;
assignment
prioritizing
neighborhood
proximity in
Henrico and
Chesterfield
Sources: Bradley v. Richmond, 1973; Douglas, 1995; Eichenthal & Windeknecht, 2004; Hamilton County School
District, 2011; Keller, 2006; Newburg v. Area Council, 1971; Mickelson et al., 2009; Phillips et al., 2009; Pratt,
1989; Ryan, 2010; Smith, 2004; Timeline: Desegregation in Jefferson County Public Schools, 2005.
In addition to the various boundary-line configurations, contemporary student assignment policy—which, in the case of the Louisville
and Chattanooga areas, also represents current desegregation efforts—
diverges widely across the four metros. Each falls along a continuum
of policy designed to promote the creation of diverse schools across a
metropolitan area. At one end of that policy spectrum, the Louisville area
school system remains the only district under study that continues to pursue a widescale, voluntary integration strategy. The metro’s commitment
to promoting diverse schooling experiences has continued despite recent
political and legal challenges: A recent survey found that nearly 90% of
families supported district guidelines to ensure that students learn with
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students of different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds (G. Orfield
& Frankenberg, 2011). In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that LouisvilleJefferson County’s assignment plan was unconstitutional, stipulating
that districts could not use the individual race of a student as the sole
determining factor in assigning students to schools (Parents Involved in
Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 2007). In the aftermath of
the Parents Involved decision, Louisville-area school officials worked with
legal experts to craft a new multi-criteria assignment policy that takes
into account several neighborhood-level demographic factors like family
income, parent education level, and race (G. Orfield & Frankenberg,
2011).
Second behind Louisville on the spectrum is Chattanooga-Hamilton
County, where a 1997 district merger spurred renewed interest in magnet
schools. However, certain policy changes, like moving from race-conscious admissions policies to race-neutral ones and from providing more
wide-ranging transportation to more limited transport (Siegel-Hawley
et al., 2011), may have unfortunately limited the desegregating potential of Chattanooga-Hamilton County’s magnet schools. The programs
remain the sole method of bringing students together across the merged,
city-suburban school system.
Towards the other side of the continuum, since unitary status and the
subsequent implementation of a new student assignment policy in 2002
(dubbed the Family Choice Plan), schools in Charlotte-Mecklenburg
have resegregated at an alarming pace (Bhargava, Frankenberg, & Le,
2008; Mickelson, Smith, & Southworth, 2009; Smith 2004). Area desegregation experts described the Family Choice Plan as “essentially a neighborhood school assignment plan with race-neutral choice among nearby
magnet schools” (Mickelson et al., 2009, p. 136). The plan helped re-connect patterns of residential segregation to school enrollments, given the
heavy emphasis on providing families with the option of attending their
neighborhood school.
Finally, at the far end of the contemporary policy spectrum lies the
Richmond area, where the failure to consolidate Richmond, Henrico, and
Chesterfield in 1973 cemented the segregating impact of district boundary lines (Pratt, 1991). No stated desegregation policy has been pursued
in the Richmond area since the 1980s (Ryan, 2010). Within the city limits,
the basic principle of neighborhood schools remains somewhat complicated by the district’s open enrollment policy. Until 2007, free transportation was provided to all students enrolling in elementary schools within
their “megazone” (Richmond City is divided into three large zones, and
students in those areas are allowed to attend any elementary school within
their broad zone provided space is available once neighborhood students
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are enrolled). When transportation was cut back—likely the result of the
recent fiscal climate—controversy erupted. Some stakeholders, including
the head of the Richmond Parent-Teacher Association, suggested that
the open enrollment policy unfairly benefitted White and middle class
parents in the city who could more easily find the means to provide transportation (“School zones rekindling segregation,” 2008).
Despite the varied policy contexts of the districts today, each of the
metros experienced a basic post-Brown pattern in years past: token compliance with the decision, followed by a shift towards comprehensive
desegregation efforts after the 1968 Green ruling outlawed freedom-ofchoice plans. The advent of the 1970s marked the real point of departure, as Charlotte-Mecklenburg County and Louisville-Jefferson County
began integrating schools across city-suburban boundary lines (Phillips,
Rodosky, Munoz, & Larsen 2009; Smith, 2004), in addition to seeking to
combine school desegregation efforts with housing desegregation policy
(G. Orfield, 1981).
In fact, Louisville-Jefferson County was one of the only districts nationwide to include exemptions for integrated neighborhoods in its school
desegregation plan (G. Orfield, 1981). The exemptions fell under three
categories. First, neighborhoods meeting racial balance goals established
in the school desegregation court order were excused from the school
desegregation plan. Second, Black families making an integrative move
into a predominately White neighborhood through the use of housing
vouchers were exempted from busing. Third, neighborhoods that evolved
into integrated environments were released (G. Orfield, 1981). In this
manner, residential areas in the metro Louisville area were incentivized
to become more diverse. And they did: Research on the time period
from 1970 to 1980 indicates that school desegregation helped spur the
first decline in housing segregation in three decades (Briley, 1985). Yet
despite these positive early developments, Louisville-Jefferson County’s
exemption policies overlooked the critical process of public housing site
selection (G. Orfield, 1981). New public housing could be located in
historically segregated neighborhoods, throwing off the racial balance
component of the school desegregation policy.
Like metro Louisville, Charlotte blazed an early path in efforts to link
school and housing desegregation policy (Smith, 2004). The contours of
Charlotte’s strategy differed widely from Louisville’s, however, focusing
on the location of public housing instead of the distribution of vouchers
or certificates. A 1973 lawsuit detailing evidence that public housing had
been intentionally sited in racially isolated neighborhoods eventually led
to a settlement decreeing that approximately 900 scattered-site housing
units had to be built across the metro area (G. Orfield, 1981; Smith,
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2004). Importantly, school officials were consulted during the site planning process, leading one researcher to note, “Charlotte was the only
jurisdiction I visited [of twelve metros identified as having some model
of school and housing coordination] where both planners and school
officials mentioned that school integration considerations were a significant concern in the city’s planning process” (G. Orfield, 1981, p. 67).
Unfortunately, those initial efforts remain the most noteworthy to date.
In more recent years, the political interests of development—and the
associated windfall profits—took precedence over equity.
Meanwhile, in the 1970s-era Richmond and Chattanooga areas, school
desegregation was limited to the central cities and efforts to join school
and housing desegregation efforts were not attempted in any significant
way.
The ’80s and ’90s witnessed a shift towards voluntary school integration
for all of the metros, with each reporting efforts to create and expand
magnet programs. These developments mirrored trends in districts across
the nation and were incentivized by federal policy and an increased
emphasis on school choice (Siegel-Hawley et al., 2008; G. Orfield, 1978).
Richmond City’s efforts eventually fell far short of the establishment of a
broad magnet system, whereas Chattanooga’s early magnet implementation blossomed into an expanded set of programs after the 1997 merger
(Pratt, 1990; Keller, 2006).
In the Charlotte and Louisville areas, magnet schools were established in the 1990s alongside system-wide student assignment plans that
sought to promote diverse schools. Louisville-Jefferson County moved to
implement an assignment policy based on controlled choice (Phillips et
al., 2009). Controlled choice allowed parents some latitude in student
placement, though the district made final assignment decisions in service
of creating racially diverse academic settings. Unlike Louisville’s largely
successful transition to a choice-based desegregation plan, however, in
Charlotte the expanded emphasis on magnet programs in the early ’90s
signaled the beginning of a slow unraveling of what had been the first
completely desegregated school system in the country (Bhargava et al.,
2008). Visionary proposals to combat Charlotte’s housing segregation
were also subverted during the 1990s (Smith, 2004).
At present, three of the four sites continue to pursue some manner
of school desegregation strategy. None of the metros operates under
housing policy designed specifically to promote integration (as neither
Charlotte nor Louisville continued earlier efforts to join school and
housing policy). Though only one district, Louisville-Jefferson County,
still implements comprehensive city-suburban school desegregation,
Charlotte-Mecklenburg County employed similar prior practices, with
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policy shifts occurring within the time period under study. The Charlotte
area thus offers an important “before and after” portrait of a site that
engaged with and then retreated from the goals of Brown v. Board
of Education (1954). Chattanooga-Hamilton County also provides an
example of a district experiencing a significant policy change between
1990 and 2010, with the school-district merger occurring in 1997. The
Richmond area follows the traditional northern and western model of
central city desegregation absent suburban involvement. As such, the four
sites offer a critical comparative perspective on the relationship between
boundary lines, desegregation policy, and racial segregation patterns in
the metropolitan South.
DATA AND METHODS
School-level enrollment and segregation trends were derived from the
National Center for Educational Statistics’ Common Core of Data (NCES’
CCD). NCES is a reliable data source that collects federal school enrollment figures from virtually every district in the nation (Frankenberg,
Lee & Orfield, 2003). NCES CCD provided racial/ethnic and free and
reduced price lunch (FRL) enrollment data for the school years 1992
(the earliest year numbers are available at the school level), 1999-2000,
and 2008-09.
In terms of residential segregation, block group-level information from
the U.S. Census Bureau’s decennial census Summary File 3 (SF3) helped
describe the distribution and segregation of persons by race for the years
1990 and 2000. Summary File 3 data provides more detailed population
and housing information from a large sample of the universal census
count (U.S. Census, 2010). Redistricting data by race were used for 2010,
as Summary File 3 was not yet available. Released first for immediate use
in redrawing political boundaries every decade, the redistricting data
provide full population counts by race for all levels of geography. The
redistricting data is less comprehensive than census information released
later pertaining to age, sex, households, families, and housing units but is
highly reliable and useful for research dedicated to tracking racial trends.
Block groups were chosen as the unit of analysis because recent
research indicates that block group-level data most accurately depicts
trends in residential segregation (Bischoff, 2008; Mitchell, Batie, &
Mitchell, 2010; Wilson, 2011). Block groups also correspond most directly
with our understanding of neighborhoods, unlike the much larger census
tracts (Grannis, 2005; Steinmetz & Iceland, 2003).
This analysis employed sample counts of the entire population—not
simply the school-aged population—in an effort to better understand how
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comprehensive school desegregation policy might impact housing trends
over different generations. One component of the theoretical foundation
for the study suggests that school desegregation has perpetuating effects
(Wells & Crain, 1994), in part meaning that students growing up under a
school desegregation policy are more likely to seek out integrated neighborhoods later in life. Examining the wider population counts is thus in
keeping with part of the theory guiding this analysis.
A note also about the use of “metro area” or “metro” or “area” to
describe the four sites under study: here the terms simply refer to the
geographic area encompassed by the school-district merger (or proposed
merger, as was the case for the Richmond metro). This geographic unit is
much smaller than a census-defined Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA).
But since the “metro” boundaries defined by this analysis encompass only
areas directly affected by the school desegregation plan, they provide the
most pertinent school and housing data.
The mapping component of the project drew upon Census TIGER/line
Shapefiles, a geographic data format that provides spatial information
for use in mapping software. Housing population trends were mapped
using Census TIGER/line Shapefiles from the 1990, 2000, and 2010 U.S.
Census counts.
A variety of primary and secondary sources provided information about
the evolution of desegregation policy in each of the four sites. These
sources included court documents, newspaper articles, research publications, books, and several informal interviews conducted via email and
phone.
MEASURES OF SEGREGATION AND ANALYTIC STRATEGY
The dissimilarity index (D) is the most well-known and popular measure
of segregation (Massey & Denton, 1988; Reardon & Firebaugh, 2002).
The index reveals the proportion of persons in a particular racial/ethnic
group that would have to move in order to achieve an even spatial distribution of the races (Duncan & Duncan, 1955; Massey & Denton, 1988,
1993). Interpreted on a 0-100 scale, larger numbers indicate higher levels
of segregation for minority groups, so that 100 would mean perfect segregation, while 0 implies perfect integration. For instance, if Baltimore,
Maryland had a hypothetical Black-White D of .86, 86% of Black residents
in the city would have to move in order to achieve perfect integration with
the White population.
The analysis of segregation trends was limited to White and Black populations for the purposes of this article, due in part to the still small proportions of Latino, Asian, and multiracial students and residents in the four
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sites (though Latino students make up an increasingly significant share of
the population and should certainly be more closely examined in future
research). The South’s painful legacy of slavery and Jim Crow—as well as
the breadth and scale of school desegregation efforts in the region—also
made it particularly critical to understand how this history has shaped
existing patterns of segregation for Blacks and Whites.
Separate sets of maps, for each of the three different points in time,
were constructed to describe segregation patterns in the four metro
areas. Decennial census data for 1990, 2000, and 2010 were joined with
Census TIGER/line Shapefiles to produce GIS maps showing housing
patterns at the block-group level by race. Elementary school addresses in
the four metros were also geocoded into the mapping software, allowing
a pie graph illustrating the racial and socio-economic enrollment for each
school to appear on the actual school site.
Though overall segregation calculations were based on all regular public schools in the districts, the maps relied upon elementary school data.
Because elementary schools are associated with the smallest attendance
zones or catchment areas, their enrollment patterns most closely reflect
underlying housing patterns in districts without ameliorating desegregation policy (M. Orfield, 2002; M. Orfield & Luce, 2010). The visual
component of this study was thus aided by elementary school trends that
best indicate whether school and housing patterns are closely aligned or
whether school desegregation policies that deemphasize boundary lines
help break the link between the two.
ANALYSIS
This section underscores two critical findings: 1) Metro areas implementing school desegregation strategies that bridge city-suburban boundary
lines reported significantly faster rates of decline in housing segregation
over time, and 2) Metro areas implementing comprehensive school
desegregation plans decoupled patterns of school segregation from
housing segregation in a striking manner, so that even when residential
isolation remained high, students experienced integrated school settings.
Moreover, when desegregation plans were dismantled, patterns of school
segregation quickly rose to meet and mirror underlying residential segregation trends.
To illustrate these findings, the first half of this section presents elementary school enrollment by race and poverty and housing patterns
in tandem with one another for Black residents (beginning with a set of
maps to visually highlight the relationship). The second half provides an
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analysis of Black-White school and residential segregation trends using
the index of dissimilarity.
MAPPING SCHOOL AND HOUSING SEGREGATION TOGETHER
Spatial images of the distribution of the Black population of the four
metros, overlaid with the racial composition of metro elementary schools,
provide a telling portrait of the way school desegregation policy can disrupt underlying housing patterns. Figures 2-5 show that, while each of
the four southern metros contained areas of intense racial isolation for
Black residents (the deepest shade represents census block groups where
the Black population exceeds 90%), places with city-suburban school
desegregation policies were able to distribute students of different racial
backgrounds much more evenly across the metropolitan landscape.
In the early 1990s, the contrasts between Louisville-Jefferson County
and Charlotte-Mecklenburg County and the Richmond and Chattanooga
areas were arresting (see Figure 2). The former two metros displayed
trends showing a strong disparity between patterns of residential and
school segregation. Note, for example, the presence of racially balanced
schools in Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Louisville-Jefferson County even
in highly segregated neighborhoods where Black residents made up
90% or more of the population. The other two metros—Richmond and
Chattanooga (pre-merger)—were defined by patterns showing that Black
students attended racially isolated elementary schools that were, in turn,
surrounded by intensely segregated Black neighborhoods. During the
early 1990s, the vast majority of these segregated schools and neighborhoods were located within the school-district boundaries (illustrated by
heavy black lines on the maps) encircling Richmond and Chattanooga’s
urban cores.
In the late ’90s and through the 2000s, the Richmond and Chattanooga
areas continued to report elementary school enrollments that largely mirrored nearby block groups. As Richmond’s suburbs became more diverse,
so too did their school enrollments—but the predominant pattern of
racial isolation in the schools and neighborhoods of the inner suburbs
and urban core remained consistent. Chattanooga-Hamilton County
reported similar spatial patterns, suggesting that the expanded magnet
school policy implemented at the time of the 1997 merger may not have
been effectively altering the link between school segregation and underlying residential patterns.
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Meanwhile in North Carolina, Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s earlier success
in disrupting the relationship between school and housing segregation
gave way in the face of mounting political opposition and the 1999 unitary status decision. By 2000, schools in and around Charlotte’s urban
core (particularly in the west and northwest quandrants of the city) were
beginning to reflect the underlying Black population of area neighborhoods. Ten years later, Charlotte-Mecklenburg school enrollments had
become extremely linked to patterns of neighborhood racial isolation—
an unsuprising fact, given the post-unitary status emphasis on neighborhood schools (see Figure 4). The early disconnect between patterns of
residential and school segregation had all but disappeared.
With these developments unfolding in Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools,
Louisville-Jefferson County became the only metro under study to consistently disrupt the relationship between Black-White school and housing
segregation. Figures 2-4 display the impact of the metro’s ongoing commitment to a comprehensive city-suburban school desgregation policy.
It should be noted, though, that by 2008, several elementary schools in
Louisville’s still highly segregated inner city had become predominately
Black and Latino. This uptick in isolation may have been related to the
struggle to craft and implement a revised student assignment plan that
would comply with the 2007 Parents Involved decisoin (the new plan was
formally implemented in September 2009, and more recent changes were
approved in January 2012).
Interestingly, despite the varied sucessses of the racial desegregation
plans, patterns from each of the four metros indicated that racial isolation
for Black residents was linked to elementary schools with high levels of
student poverty. Using housing data from 2010 and school enrollment
data from 2008, Figure 5 shows that nearly all schools in neighborhoods
with high concentrations of Black residents contained a majority of students qualifying for free or reduced priced lunches (signified by the deep
green shade on the pie charts; non-poor students are represented with
blue). Conversely, block groups with very low counts of Black residents
were linked to schools with much larger shares of non-poor students.
These broad trends, which persisted even in the metro with an on-going, wide-ranging school desegregation plan, could reflect the historic
emphasis on integrating students by race, but not necessarily by class.
Importantly, Louisville-Jefferson County’s multicriteria student assignment plan—which considers socieoconomic status alongside race—may
produce a different set of patterns if it is fully implemented in coming
years.
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Figure 2.Elementary school racial composition by percent Black population living in census block groups,
four metropolitan areas, 1990 and 1992-1993
Source: NCES Common Core of Data, 1992-93. U.S. Census 1990, SF3, P012.
Figure 3. Elementary school racial composition by percent Black population living in census block groups,
four metropolitan areas, 2000 and 1999-2000.
Source: NCES’ Common Core of Data, 1999-2000. U.S. Census 2000, SF3, P007.
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Figure 4. Elementary school racial composition by percent Black population living in census block groups,
four metropolitan areas, 2010 and 2008-09.
Source: NCES’ Common Core of Data, 2008-09. U.S. Census 2010, P02, redistricting data.
Figure 5. Elementary school poverty composition by percent Black population living in census block groups,
four metropolitan areas, 2010 and 2008-09.
Source: NCES’ Common Core of Data, 2008-09. U.S. Census 2010, P02, redistricting data.
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LOW LEVELS OF SCHOOL SEGREGATION LINKED TO
SIGNIFICANTLY FASTER DECLINES IN HOUSING SEGREGATION
In the early 1990s, at a time when both the Louisville and Charlotte metros were implementing far-reaching, city-suburban desegregation plans,
the disconnect between patterns of school and housing segregation in the
two metros was clearly evident (see Figure 6). Using the most widespread
measure of segregation—the dissimilarity index—to broadly describe the
distribution of Blacks and Whites across the metro, Louisville-Jefferson
County and Charlotte-Mecklenburg both reported extremely low levels
of Black-White school segregation. About 20-25% of Black students in
both metros would have needed to change schools to be perfectly integrated with Whites. At the same time, the Louisville and Charlotte areas
displayed much higher levels of housing segregation—between 70% and
80% of Black residents needed to move to achieve perfect integration with
Whites, or vice versa. During the same time period, the two metros lacking policy that sought to desegregate students or bridge the urban-suburban boundary line—the Richmond and Chattanooga areas—reported
high levels of both school and housing segregation. These trends provide
support for the power of metropolitan school desegregation and the
perpetuating effects of integrated schooling experiences, the theoretical
elements undergirding the analysis.
Between 1990 and 2000, while Black-White residential segregation
declined in all four sites, the two metros with large-scale, city-suburban
desegregation plans reported swifter decreases in housing segregation
levels (see Figures 7 and 8). For example, in the Charlotte and Louisville
areas, the dissimilarity index indicated that Black-White housing segregation fell by approximately 10%, compared to a roughly 5% decline in the
Richmond area and an 8% reduction in Chattanooga-Hamilton County
(a figure that may be related to the 1997 merger). This trend is consistent
with prior research (Frankenberg, 2005; G. Orfield, 2001; Parents Involved
v. Seattle, 2006) and suggests that school desegregation policy may have
influenced housing patterns, though, of course, this methodology cannot
prove a causal relationship.
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Figure 6. School and residential Black-White/White-Black dissimilarity index, four metropolitan areas,
1990-2010.
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Source: NCES’ Common Core of Data, 1992-1993, 1999-2000, 2008-2009; U.S. Census 1990, 2000, 2010.
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Figure 7. Percent change in Black-White/White-Black residential dissimilarity index, four metropolitan
areas, 1990-2000, 2000-2010 and 1990-2010.
Source: NCES’ Common Core of Data, 1992-1993, 1999-2000, 2008-2009; U.S. Census 1990, 2000, 2010.
Later evidence from Charlotte-Mecklenburg (over the course of the
first decade of the 2000s) crystallized the impact of ending a comprehensive school desegregation policy. The resegregation of CharlotteMecklenburg schools following the unitary status ruling quickly led to a
situation where the relationship between school and housing segregation
trends looked identical to that of the Richmond metro, where school and
residential segregation patterns had long been virtually indistinguishable
(Figure 6). Furthermore, between 2000 and 2010, Charlotte’s housing
segregation began to decline at a much slower rate than it had during
the previous decade, when the school desegregation policy remained in
effect. The Black-White index of dissimilarity fell by about 5% between
2000 and 2010, compared to just over 10% between 1990 and 2000 (see
Figure 7). Charlotte-Mecklenburg County went from leading the group
of four metros in progress on Black-White housing segregation during
the 1990s to third from last, just in front of the Richmond area, between
2000 and 2010.
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The Richmond area—divided by city-suburban district boundaries and
where no desegregation policy has been enacted since the mid ’80s—experienced the slowest decline in Black-White school and housing segregation. Overall, Black-White residential dissimilarity declined about 12% in
Richmond from 1990 to 2010, a much slower rate than Louisville’s and
moderately slower than similar figures in the Charlotte and Chattanooga
areas. With no comprehensive efforts guiding desegregation in Richmond’s
schools and neighborhoods, these are not necessarily surprising results.
The two-decade overlap between school and housing segregation suggests
that racial isolation in schools will continue to mirror persistently high patterns of neighborhood isolation in the Richmond area.
In Chattanooga-Hamilton County, a metro that experienced a significant
policy shift just prior to 2000, dissimilarity trends for schools and neighborhoods showed that both housing and school segregation began to decline
much more quickly following the 1997 merger. Between 1990 and 2000,
Black-White school segregation only fell by about 4%, and housing segregation levels declined by just 8%. By contrast, from 2000 to 2010, when
patterns associated with the late 1990s merger were more likely to appear,
the dissimilarity index for Black-White school segregation dropped by
about 20%, and housing segregation levels fell by almost 11% (Figure 1A
in Appendix). However, the still largely intertwined relationship between
school and housing segregation (see Figure 6) suggest that the system of
magnet schools in place in the metro was not disentangling patterns of
school segregation from housing trends in the same manner as the student
assignment plans in the Louisville and pre-unitary Charlotte areas.
Finally, Louisville-Jefferson County provided an example of a metro with
sustained, low levels of Black-White school segregation. In conjunction
with that trend, Louisville-Jefferson County reported the fastest decreases
in housing segregation. Black-White housing segregation in LouisvilleJefferson County fell roughly 9 percentage points from 1990-2000 and
about 13 percentage points from 2000 to 2010. The faster rate of decline
from 2000-2010 came in the midst of slightly rising levels of school segregation but may reflect other factors, including the 2000 municipal merger
between the city and county. Findings from the Louisville area, located
at one end of the spectrum of policy and boundary-line interventions to
counter segregation, contrasted sharply with figures from Richmond, the
metro at the opposite end. Black-White housing segregation in LouisvilleJefferson County fell almost twice as quickly as residential segregation
trends in the Richmond area (see Figure 7). In short, evidence from
Louisville-Jefferson County underscores the positive relationship between
metropolitan school desegregation plans and declining rates of BlackWhite residential segregation.
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It should be noted that similar results were derived from another
measure of segregation, upholding the patterns of isolation in metro
schools and neighborhoods reported here using the index of dissimilarity (see Appendix, Figure 2A). Taken together, these findings help show
that school policy can indeed also become housing policy. Black-White
housing segregation declined considerably faster in metros with a stable, city-suburban school desegregation plan. School segregation trends
remained disconnected from high levels of housing segregation in areas
where desegregation efforts were maintained and adapted over time but
quickly rose to meet the intensity of housing segregation once school
desegregation policy was dismantled.
DISCUSSION
This analysis presented patterns of school and residential desegregation together in an effort to illuminate the relationship between the
two. Perhaps most striking among the findings was the way that school
desegregation plans encompassing the community writ large disrupted
the traditional influence of residential patterns on school enrollments.
In support of James Madison’s early Federalist philosophy, areas with
strong school desegregation policy across city-suburban lines were able to
significantly hasten declines in levels of Black-White housing segregation.
That trend was evident in both Charlotte-Mecklenburg and LouisvilleJefferson County during the early years of this study. Later, the example
of Charlotte illustrated the manner in which school segregation becomes
reconnected to housing trends once a desegregation policy is abandoned.
Indeed, the example of Charlotte highlights the influence of the current
political and legal context on the perpetuating effects of school desegregation. Those effects may not be enough to counteract broader social
forces that have, since the early 1980s, contributed to the rollback of
judicial oversight of desegregation efforts, to a heightened emphasis on
competition and test scores, to the conflation of race and property values,
and to widening income inequality (Boger & Orfield, 2005; Freund, 2007;
Petrovich & Wells, 2005; Reardon, 2011; Wells, Duran, & White, 2011). As
individuals who graduated from desegregated educational settings struggle to navigate contexts where these trends compete with their own values
and understanding of the benefits of diverse schools, the perpetuating
effects of their experiences may weaken (Wells et al., 2011).
In Chattanooga-Hamilton County, despite progress in reducing BlackWhite segregation after the merger, an intertwined relationship persisted—reflecting the difficulty in overriding patterns of pervasive
residential segregation with a limited system of countywide magnet
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schools. The Richmond metro, by contrast, has done nothing to intervene in patterns of school or housing segregation and trends in the area
reflected that inaction.
Broadly, the analysis indicated that three significant forces contribute to
patterns of school and housing segregation. First, demographic changes
and accompanying shifts in residential segregation help produce housing
patterns that surround schools. Second, in metros where school-district
boundary lines remain intact, they give structure to regional patterns
of school and housing segregation. Conversely, when those boundaries
are subverted, patterns become less distinct. And third, the presence of
school desegregation policy can significantly alter the contours of both
school and housing segregation trends. This analysis of four southern
metro areas shows each of the latter two forces must be positively aligned
in order to produce real gains in integration; subtract one of them and
major setbacks occur. For the one metro that has done nothing over the
past two decades to attempt to foster school integration, the absence of
any type of policy has meant virtually no gains at all.
In a nation experiencing rapid population shifts, evidence from these
four metros emphasizes the on-going and urgent need for policies
designed to equalize educational and life opportunities. The article’s
central conclusion is simply this: policy matters. Without it, the status quo
trends negative.
Some education stakeholders continue to advocate for strategies that
do little-to-nothing to shift the current course of segregated schools
and housing, dismissing policy efforts to alter it as “social engineering”
(Armor, 1995). Such arguments ignore the role of government policy in
fostering contemporary trends. For subsidized highways slicing through
city neighborhoods to carry middle-class families out to the suburbs,
lending practices underwriting suburbanization, and the selection of
public housing project sites, federal and state governments are responsible. For exclusionary zoning policy, unchecked and often unscrupulous
development, and racially identifiable school attendance lines, local government agencies should be held accountable (Freund, 2007; Massey &
Denton, 1993). Together with widely documented housing discrimination
(Hartman & Squires, 2010; National Commission on Fair Housing and
Equal Opportunity, 2008) and, in most regions, overwhelming inaction
in taking affirmative steps to counter the fallout from these decisions, key
actors at all levels of the public and private sector continue to be complicit in producing a modern-day version of Jim Crow.
These overarching circumstances, accompanied by the fundamental
fact that nearly all segregated environments remain desperately unequal
(Anyon, 2005; Grant, 2009; Ryan, 2010), mean we must push back hard
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against a line of reasoning suggesting we should be content with current
realities. Growing shares of under-served, non-White, and poor schoolchildren, along with their White and non-poor counterparts who will grow up
in a multiracial society, depend upon policy action—rather than inaction—
to help shape a better, more viable future for coming generations.
LIMITATIONS
Though this study provided valuable new evidence affirming the importance of metropolitan school desegregation strategies, it contained
several limitations. The absence of school and housing segregation data
from the years prior to 1990 meant that the analysis failed to capture
the effectiveness of metro desegregation policy during the years when it
was most powerfully implemented. However, previous studies have documented the desegregation of schools and associated academic benefits
in Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Louisville-Jefferson County (Kurlaender
& Yun, 2002; Parents Involved v. Seattle, 2006; Phillips et al., 2009; Smith,
2004), and this research sought to extend upon prior work to understand
more recent trends.
This study also limited the examination of school and housing segregation trends to the metro area encircled by the consolidated school-district
boundary lines (or, in the case of Richmond, the area of the metro that
would have been consolidated had the lower court ruling stood). This
methodological decision allowed for the most precise understanding of
how school desegregation policy impacted housing segregation, since the
areas under study were directly under the influence of the school policy.
Yet three of the four merger decisions occurred in the 1960s and ’70s,
and much outward suburban growth and development has occurred in
the intervening years. As a result, this analysis did not capture a larger
portrait of metropolitan change, limited as it was to the city and suburban
jurisdictions involved in the desegregation plan (or, again, in the case of
Richmond, the proposed plan).
Though certain aspects of this study provided insight into the impact of
school choice on segregation patterns (e.g., the open enrollment policy
in the Richmond metro or the magnet school program in ChattanoogaHamilton County), it did not delve specifically into the way different
types of choice affected segregation levels. The historical presumption
that students should attend schools closest to home—reinforcing the
school-housing segregation relationship—has increasingly been called
into question by the growth and popularity of school choice. Charter
schools, for example, have become a dominant presence in CharlotteMecklenburg, where a system of magnet schools and a controlled choice
31
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policy are also present. It would be important to understand how each of
these newer manifestations of choice is linked to school and residential
segregation.
Lastly, the four sites under study provided critical insight into the effectiveness of metropolitan school desegregation policy in the region of
the country where those strategies were most fully pursued. The diverse
demographic and policy contexts of each site promoted the generalizability of the findings, but the attention to the southern region of the U.S.
may limit more national implications. Still, the emphasis on the South
was somewhat mitigated, because the Richmond metro’s policy context
is not unlike more fragmented metro areas in other parts of the country.
DIRECTIONS FOR POLICY
This study provided evidence to support the still nascent movement
towards more regional solutions for metropolitan inequalities. The
regional agenda underlines the importance of metropolitan “elasticity,”
or the ability to minimize harmful development and sprawl on the outer
edges of a metro through a number of different avenues (Rusk, 1999).
Each of these avenues involves efforts to subvert boundary lines, either
through municipal consolidation or annexation processes or heightened
regional cooperation.
The federal government should provide unequivocally strong leadership supportive of regional efforts to combat metro area inequality. The
creation of a high-profile commission or task force to investigate innovative, region-wide school and housing integration strategies would be a
positive first step. Federal funding for a regional schools and housing initiative would also signal high-level leadership and interest in promoting
more equitable metropolitan areas.
State legislatures should work to support metropolitan elasticity, either
through the enactment of policy that stimulates municipal and school
district consolidation or annexation or with incentives to promote regional
strategies. Virginia, for example, passed a law in 1996 that provides money
for municipalities that collaborate through regional partnerships. Regions
are most heavily rewarded for plans to cooperate around education, revenue-sharing, human services, local land use, and housing (Rusk, 1999).
State law and policy permitting, the task of framing the political debate
surrounding annexation or consolidation in terms that are agreeable to
populations who have often been pitted against one another is immense
but not insurmountable (Leland & Thurmaier, 2004). City-county consolidation efforts require that narrow notions of neighborhood and community be expanded to include a diverse cross-section of interests and
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needs. Referendum campaigns that explore the fundamental interests of
the local community and devise their political strategy accordingly have a
higher probability of winning public support. Strong local leadership and
agenda-setting from business, media, and community stakeholders is also
critical (Leland & Thurmaier, 2004).
Despite the political difficulty linked to mergers, in the current fiscal climate, conversations around school district consolidation have
emerged with some frequency. Many recent consolidation efforts have
been spurred by the potential financial benefits that may come with the
elimination of duplicative bureaucracies, with some notable exceptions.
The Memphis School Board, for example, recently voted to surrender the
school system’s charter and consolidate with Shelby County, its neighboring suburban district. Events in Tennessee are still in progress but bear
close watching as an example of a contemporary effort to bridge district
boundaries in the name of equity.
Of course, in the absence of efforts to actually eliminate boundary lines,
other alternatives that ease the segregating effects of those lines should be
considered. With respect to efforts to promote educational opportunity
across regional boundaries, a number of options beyond actual consolidation are available. Pairing nearby city and suburban schools (or inner
suburban and outer suburban schools), one with declining enrollment,
the other with a burgeoning student population, seems like fiscal commonsense. Finding ways to leverage school choice across boundary lines
is another consideration. Regional magnet or charter schools, imbued
with appropriate civil rights protections, might offer integrative possibilities. The nation’s eight long-standing, inter-district transfer programs
could also be expanded. Finally, the student transfer provision under
ESEA, while currently underutilized, may deliver inter-district possibilities
(Holme & Wells, 2009).
While the Milliken decision presents a difficult legal barrier to crossing school district lines, fair housing law, if proactively enforced, could
advance regional housing opportunities (which, in turn, would positively influence school diversity efforts). The federal government should
heighten its efforts to expand and implement the 1968 Fair Housing Act.
In addition to fair housing enforcement possibilities, the federal government could work to broaden the Moving to Opportunity program to
other cities. All levels of government may help ensure that Section 8 and
the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit are disbursed in ways that promote
affordable housing in high-opportunity areas throughout a region (M.
Orfield & Luce, 2010; Pfeiffer, 2009). Law and policy should also guarantee that new metropolitan development contains a certain share of
affordable housing (Rusk, 1999).
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Each of the policy options described above should be crafted with an
eye towards jointly disrupting patterns of school and housing segregation.
For much of the time period under study, school desegregation policy
bore the full weight of responsibility for interrupting underlying patterns
of residential isolation. Given the success of those one-dimensional efforts
in the Louisville and pre-unitary Charlotte areas, it is difficult to comprehend the power of a joined school and housing desegregation strategy.
Early, pre-1990s evidence from the same two metros provided extremely
rare examples of coordinated school and housing desegregation efforts
(G. Orfield, 1981). The programs did not continue but offer ideas for
how regional communities might begin to design united housing and
school policy. For instance, voluntary school integration programs should
consider transportation exemptions for families making integrative
moves, in addition to providing exceptions for residents of stable, diverse
communities. There is also a need for expertise in the areas of housing
and schools to flow across metropolitan districts and agencies. Local
housing programs develop and shift—as do student assignment plans and
building and redistricting decisions—with little knowledge or discussion
about the two related processes within the different sectors (G. Orfield,
1981; Tegeler, 2011). Public officials should be put into place who can
help bridge these gaps.
CONCLUSION
Over the past half century, rapid growth and demographic change in
metropolitan areas has been accompanied by a dearth of policy seeking
to harness the potential of those transformations. Instead, in many ways,
law and policy has cemented tremendous racial and socioeconomic inequities into the structure of our cities.
This analysis provides evidence of the consequences of our retrenchment of strategies designed to equalize educational opportunities. It
revisited the region of the country most impacted by Brown’s lofty mandate, seeking to understand more fully the long-term effects of school
desegregation policies coupled with attempts to render district boundary
lines irrelevant.
In places where desegregation plans have been significantly altered,
or dropped altogether, the findings tell a story of what was lost—but
also what might still be regained. Areas that continue to operate under
comprehensive metropolitan school desegregation policies are decidedly
more likely to display integrated schools and residential communities.
Other locales that have not yet experimented with policies designed to
lessen the impact of boundaries and promote desegregation must exam34
Teachers College Record, 115, 060307 (2013)
ine the consequences of their inaction and be spurred towards greater
efforts.
The underlying story, highlighted by the unsteady trajectory of school
desegregation history, is that policy, law, and politics can and do change.
While circumstances in some of the metro areas under study may have
undermined progress towards more equal schools and neighborhoods,
there is always the promise that subsequent policies will be different.
The results of this analysis should inform those future efforts to promote
vibrant and healthy regional spaces across the country.
Notes
1. Showing intentional discrimination is difficult for several reasons. After Brown, governmental units were aware that segregating policies were illegal and thus more careful not
to create documents that would serve as evidence against them. Without direct evidentiary
material, plaintiffs have to collect a vast amount of materials showing the history of school
construction, rezoning, and feeder patterns and decisions about the formation of boundary
lines, among other things. Building such a case was typically beyond the reach of civil rights
groups and lawyers, already pressed for time and resources (G. Orfield, 1978).
2. Largely due to the increasing impermeability of district and municipal boundary
lines, the country now struggles with a situation where a vast proportion of both school and
housing segregation can be attributed to racial separation between districts or municipalities, rather than within them (Bischoff, 2008; Clotfelter, 2004; Farrell, 2008; Reardon & Yun,
2002; Weiher, 1991).
3. The Louisville-Jefferson County School Board recently approved a revised student
assignment plan by a unanimous vote. The new plan would allow many students to attend
schools closer to their homes, while still maintaining a focus on promoting racial diversity.
Language was added to the diversity index for the first time (Konz, 2012).
4. Rather than ask families to submit annual income reports, most American school
systems use the percent of children qualifying for free and reduced lunch as a measure of
poverty at the school and district level. In order for students to be considered eligible for
free and reduced lunch prices, family income must fall within a set of guidelines established
yearly by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). For 2007-08, the federal
poverty level for a family of three was $17,170. To qualify for reduced priced meals, the same
family of three would have to fall within 185% of the poverty level, with an annual income
at or below $31,765. To receive free meals, annual income had to be within 130% of the
federal poverty level, or $26,845. These figures are significant, as they demonstrate both
the low estimates of poverty in general, and for children in particular. This study thus uses
the terms “FRL-eligible,” “low-income,” and “poor” interchangeably. Though research has
shown eligibility for free and reduced priced lunch (a popular measure of relative student
poverty) to be somewhat problematic (Harwell & LeBeau, 2010), it is still widely used due
to the easy availability of the data.
5. The one exception for the school year 1999-2000 is Chattanooga-Hamilton County,
where data were not available. NCES data from 1998-1999 was used instead.
6. American Indian students were excluded from the analysis for all school years due to
the small size of the population in the four metros studied (less than 1%). Students identifying as two or more races or Hawaiian for the 2008-09 school year—the first year these data
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were collected—were excluded for the same reason, as they represented less than 1% of the
population in each of the metros.
7.It should be noted here that dealing with the reorganization of census boundary
lines is an important issue when examining changes in populations over time. A drawback to
using block groups instead of tracts for this analysis was that relationship/comparability files
that help standardize longitudinal boundary shifts were unavailable (Du, Coles, O’Campo,
& McNutt, 2007). Given the benefits of block group level data discussed in the text, however,
the tradeoff was considered worthwhile. Importantly, tract-level figures derived from one
of the nation’s leading centers for U.S. Census 2010 research, in U.S. 2010: America in the
First Decade of the New Century, provide support for residential segregation trends in the four
metros that were reported in this article (see http://www.s4.brown.edu/us2010/Data/Data.
htm). Also, since most population-related census boundary changes divide larger areas into
smaller units of geography, a logical extension of the empirical rationale for using the lowest
level of census data possible (Bischoff, 2008; Mitchell, Batie, & Mitchell, 2010; Wilson, 2011)
would suggest the patterns reported here may actually underestimate the level of segregation present in the four metros.
8.In a few instances, census block group data for the 1990 and 2000 decennial counts
were missing. In the maps, if tract-level data for the same year was available, it was layered
under block group data to fill in the gaps. See Table 1A in the Appendix for a list of missing
block groups by tract number in the metro areas under study.
9. For example, the Charlotte MSA includes five North Carolina counties and one
county in South Carolina. For the purposes of this study, though, the Charlotte area refers
to Charlotte City and Mecklenburg County (which encircles the city).
10. Richmond, of course, is a special case, since the metro area did not experience
consolidation. This analysis defines the Richmond metro as the city and two surrounding
counties that were targeted under the original consolidation proposal.
11.In addition, the vast majority of school desegregation plans in the region emphasized the desegregation of Black students and Whites (G. Orfield, 1978, 2007).
12. The two different sets of years noted in the title of the earliest school-housing figures
indicate that the decennial census count was used to illustrate or calculate patterns of residential segregation in 1990, while school trends were derived from the 1992-93 school year,
the earliest for which data were available at the school level for all four metros in NCES’
CCD.
13. Some predominately Black suburban communities, particularly in the Richmond
area, are linked to schools with higher shares of non-poor students.
14. The slow decline in Black-White housing segregation in the four metros mirrors
national trends over the same time period (Frey, 2010).
15. Recent research shows that district consolidation does not always result in financial
gains (Howly, Johnson, & Petrie, 2010).
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Appendix
Table 1A. M
issing U.S. Census Block Group Data by Tract Number, 1990, 2000, and 2010
Metro Area or Jurisdiction
Richmond City
Henrico County
Chesterfield County
Jefferson County
Mecklenburg County
Hamilton County
1990
060798
201001, 200405,
200108
100300, 100915,
100812
012204, 011301,
011002, 009000,
008700, 011101,
011102
000400
00200
2000
N/A
N/A
2010
N/A
980100
N/A
N/A
21111
21111
005606
N/A
980010, 980200
N/A
Figure 1A. School and residential percent change, Black-White/White-Black dissimilarity index, ChattanoogaHamilton County, 1990-2010.
Source: NCES’ Common Core of Data, 1992-1993, 1999-2000, 2008-2009; U.S. Census 1990, 2000, 2010.
43
TCR, 115, 060307 School and Housing Segregation
Figure 2A. Black students’ and residents’ exposure to White students and residents, four metropolitan areas,
1990-2010.
Source: NCES’ Common Core of Data, 1992-1993, 1999-2000, 2008-2009; U.S. Census 1990, 2000, 2010.
44
Teachers College Record, 115, 060307 (2013)
GENEVIEVE SIEGEL-HAWLEY is an assistant professor in the Department
of Education Leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School
of Education. Her research focuses on segregation, inequality, and opportunity in U.S. schools, along with policy options to promote an inclusive,
integrated society. She recently coauthored a publication in the Peabody
Journal of Education titled, “Redefining diversity: Political responses to the
post-PICS environment.”
45