The Growth of Segregation in American Schools: Changing Patterns of Separation and Poverty since 1968.

This study shows where school segregation is concentrated and where schools remain highly integrated. It offers the first national comparison of segregation by community size and reveals that segregation remains high in big cities and serious in mid-size central cities. Many African-American and Latino students also attend segregated schools in the suburbs of the largest metropolitan areas, while rural areas and small towns, small metropolitan areas, and the suburbs of the mid-size metro areas are far more integrated. States with more fragmented district structures tend to have higher levels of segregation, particularly in states having relatively small proportions of minority students who are concentrated in a few districts. Based on these and other study findings, the country and its schools are perceived as going through vast changes without any strategy. It appears that the civil rights impulse from the 1960s is dead and racial segregation is reemerging. This report recommends policies to school districts, state government, and federal civil rights and education officials to foster integrated education and to make interracial schools function more effectively. It calls for: (1) resumption of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department; (2) restoration of federal aid for successful integration strategies; (3) basic research on the consequences of segregation by race, ethnicity and poverty; and (4) an examination of the ways in which multiracial education functions most effectively. (GLR)