The new reality of racial segregation in Mass. schools

School segregation based on race and ethnicity is alive and well in the Commonwealth. Where’s the urgency to address it?

Students listened to their K-2 teacher Jemma Joseph at the Trotter Elementary School in Boston on May 23, 2023.David L. Ryan/Globe Staff

There seems to be a lot to celebrate this year in the name of racial justice in public education.

In May, the nation observed the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision that declared racial segregation in publicly funded schools unconstitutional. Boston is preparing to mark its own historic ruling later this month: the 50th anniversary of the court order mandating students to be bused all over the city to desegregate schools.

But a closer examination of enrollment data, student outcomes, and policies in Massachusetts shows a less celebratory and much more concerning panorama. A new statewide report shows just how little urgency has been given to the prevalence of racial and ethnic school segregation.

Segregation is alive and well in Massachusetts. More than 225,000 students attend segregated or intensely segregated nonwhite schools, those where the nonwhite student population represents at least 71 percent of the total, according to the 2024 annual report from the Racial Imbalance Advisory Council, one of a dozen or so councils that advise state education authorities.

Take a moment to digest the stark finding: Nearly a quarter of all public school students in the state attend segregated schools. Not only that, more than half of those students who attend segregated schools are Latino and roughly one-fifth are Black.

Where’s the urgency to address the disparities? Make no mistake, the intense segregation of schools has a dramatic impact on academic outcomes.

The council’s analysis, based on data from the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, showed that “there is a consistent pattern of white and Asian students faring better than Black and Latino students, with Latino students consistently suffering the worst outcomes” in intensely segregated nonwhite schools, or those where at 90 percent or more of the student population is nonwhite. What’s more, all students who attend segregated schools, including white and Asian students, achieve worse outcomes. A look at third-grade MCAS test scores in English Language Arts reveals “a stunning gap — students at intensely segregated white schools are 2.5 times more proficient than those in intensely segregated nonwhite schools,” the report read.

There’s “a numbness” that people have to these findings, Raul Fernandez, chair of the racial imbalance council and a senior lecturer at Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development, said in an interview. This is despite Massachusetts having laws already on the books related to racial imbalance in schools. But a real reckoning is needed, a paradigm shift if you will, especially in the way we talk about racial segregation of schools, which is still thought of as a Black vs. white issue.

“I’m not saying it’s not a Black issue, but what I’m saying is it’s also a Latino issue,” Fernandez said. “And not just now. There was the Mendez case that preceded Brown v. Board of Education.” The Mendez v. Westminster case took place in California in 1947 and is known as the first one that successfully challenged school segregation in the courts. Similarly, there was the Tape v. Hurley case concerning an Asian family in the Chinese exclusion era.

The council’s report offers nearly 20 comprehensive policy recommendations, among them to expand METCO, the voluntary school integration program; update the way racially imbalanced schools are identified in the state to meet most modern and nuanced definitions of racially integrated schools; and improve state oversight and enforcement of existing laws pertaining to racial imbalance. On this last point, the law dictates that students who are enrolled in a racially imbalanced school have a right to request a transfer to another school in the district. But according to the council, not many districts and schools inform families of this provision.

Of course, the reasons why schools are segregated are multidimensional and complex. One of them is that the population is already segregated economically. “[M]ore than 60 percent of our Black population lives in just 10 cities, while just 10 cities are home to over half the state’s Latinos,” the report found. In a statement sent Monday night, Massachusetts Secretary of Education Patrick Tutwiler said the administration “is committed to ensuring that all students receive a high-quality education in inclusive learning environments.”

Still, the pernicious racial and ethnic segregation in schools is unacceptable. The report’s recommendations are a good place to start addressing it, but state policy makers and decision makers should first agree that the disparities cannot stand. “There’s a difference between those who think racism and its effects are unfortunate and those who think it’s unacceptable,” Fernandez said. “Our task is to get people to move from feeling like it’s unfortunate to being unacceptable.”

Now that would be something to celebrate.