Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., is requesting that the House Committee on Education and the Workforce examine school integration nearly seven decades after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
"While the decision was lauded as a victory to right constitutional wrongs, the fact is that the massive resistance movement that followed and other factors slowed the efforts to eradicate decades of legal segregation," said Scott in an April 17 letter to Chair Virginia Foxx, R-N.C."As such, we have yet to achieve equity in education that was promised in 1954."
Scott, ranking member of the committee, said House lawmakers must "examine whether our nation's schools are meeting the charge given by the Supreme Court and evidence-based policies to eradicate the vestiges of school segregation." The letter comes less than a month before Brown's 70th anniversary.
Scott pointed to a 2016 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office that found the proportion of public schools with students who are poor and are mostly Black or Hispanic is growing, and that these schools were the most racially and economically concentrated. In these schools, at least 75% of students were Black or Hispanic and eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.
In 2022, the GAO also released a report showing that more than a third of students — or about 18.5 million — attended schools where 75% or more of students were of a single race or ethnicity. It also found that 14% of public school students attended schools where 90% or more students were from a single race or ethnicity.
A committee spokesperson confirmed receipt of the letter and said in an email to K-12 Dive that Scott will "have the opportunity to highlight this issue and his concerns." However, rather than hearing from field experts to examine the state of segregation in schools, Scott would instead have the opportunity to raise the issue with U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, who is expected to testify this spring before the committee about the president's FY 2025 proposed budget.
Last year, the department released a report on the 69th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education showing that segregation between White and Black students increased between 1991 and 2000 — and has remained a problem for the past two decades despite growing racial and ethnic diversity in the overall school population.
“Despite research showing the wide-ranging benefits associated with attending racially and socioeconomically integrated schools, isolation in schools continues,” the report found.
The benefits of a diverse student body are well-documented.
In 2022, a study based on state accountability tests published by Stanford University's Center for Policy Analysis showed "a very strong link between racial school segregation and academic achievement gaps."
Racially diverse schools are also associated with more positive social and emotional outcomes for students, especially for White students, according to a 2021 study published in Education and Urban Society, a peer-reviewed journal.
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