Among the top 10 states where school segregation is at its worst, several are in our community.
More than 70 years after the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision declared that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal, a new report suggests that the American public school system remains deeply fractured.
According to a comprehensive analysis released by researchers at the University of Southern California and Stanford University, racial, ethnic, and economic segregation in U.S. schools has not only persisted but, in many large districts, has intensified over the last three decades.
And among the top 10 states with the highest percentage of segregated school districts, seven – New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, and Maryland – are in our community.
The geography of inequality
The report emphasizes that the vast majority of school segregation—often 75% to 85% or more, depending on the demographic group—occurs between school districts rather than within individual schools within the same district.
This “between-district” segregation is largely driven by local residential patterns, large-scale migration, and the jurisdictional boundaries that define where students live and attend school.
Because school districts serve as the primary locus for funding, curriculum, and enrollment policies, these boundaries act as “bright lines” that parents consider when choosing where to live.
The researchers note that individual districts are effectively powerless to control enrollment patterns that cross their borders, leaving them to grapple with the consequences of broader regional inequality.
However, the report warns that focusing solely on between-district dynamics masks a growing problem within the districts themselves.
The share of total segregation occurring within school districts—between schools in the same system—has been steadily rising.
Civil rights pioneers Laverne Greene-Leech & Barbara Turner-Bankhead received a medal of excellence in 2016, 50 years after being one of three African-American students to desegregate Mississippi State College for Women in 1966. Now Mississippi University for Women (MUW), the school dedicated a mural depicting their journey. (Image courtesy of Wikicommons)
Rising segregation in large districts
When the researchers zoomed in on the 100 school districts that enroll the highest numbers of Black, Hispanic, and Asian students, the trends were particularly stark. In these large districts, White-Black and White-Asian segregation have increased substantially since 1991.
White-Asian segregation, in particular, more than doubled during the study period, rising from 0.07 to 0.17 on the researchers’ normalized exposure index.
Meanwhile, White-Black segregation in these large districts increased by 35%. While White-Hispanic segregation saw a decline starting in the late 2000s, it remains high, reflecting the complex, shifting demographics of immigrant destinations across the country.
The economic divide
Perhaps most concerning is the trajectory of economic segregation.
The study measured this using eligibility for the National School Lunch Program, specifically focusing on students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.
Economic school segregation has increased by nearly 50% since 1991 and by over 30% since 1998 in large school districts. By 2020, the gap in the free-lunch rate between the average eligible student’s school and the average ineligible student’s school within the same district had widened to 21 percentage points—a 47% increase from 1991.
This data suggests that schools are becoming increasingly stratified by family income, which often correlates with access to resources, experienced teachers, and advanced coursework. As the report notes, economic segregation is not just a statistical trend; it reflects unequal opportunity that directly impacts student outcomes.
Call to action
The authors of the brief argue that the persistence of these trends, nearly seven decades after the legal end of “separate but equal,” represents an urgent crisis for policymakers.
While acknowledging that school districts cannot unilaterally dismantle the residential segregation that drives between-district disparities, they argue that local leaders have agency over the factors within their control.
“Our findings highlight the pressing need for school districts to act in ways they can control,” the report states.
The researchers suggest that districts should prioritize voluntary integration programs, socioeconomic-based student assignment policies, and school choice initiatives that are specifically designed to promote, rather than hinder, integration.
The study serves as a critical reminder that school segregation is not merely a historical artifact of the Jim Crow era but a contemporary reality shaped by modern housing, migration, and policy choices.
As the U.S. school population becomes increasingly diverse, the failure to address these systemic divides threatens to entrench educational inequality for generations to come.
For policymakers, scholars, and parents, the message is clear: the work of integration is far from finished.
