Dive Brief:
- In Minneapolis, an analysis by the Star Tribune found that 19 district elementary schools are now 80% minority students, while two are almost entirely white.
- Meanwhile, the investigation found that suburban districts are now more diverse than many of their urban counterparts, with 34% minority students — up from 6% in 1990.
- An achievement gap exists between the suburban and urban schools: “Test scores in the most minority-concentrated schools lag integrated schools in the metro by about 25 percentage points,” the Star Tribune reported.
Dive Insight:
Various factors are blamed for the lack of diversity in the urban St. Paul and Minneapolis districts, including new immigration trends, the end of bussing, and the rise of charter schools. Both districts also began programs that encouraged students to attend neighborhood schools. Daniel Shulman, a civil rights lawyer, is reportedly going to attempt to force the state of Minnesota to integrate classrooms by filing a lawsuit that might inspire a reconfiguration of districts, mixing suburban and urban kids together. Former laws that integrated schools have also expired, as demographics shift dramatically and districts that were once integrated become more homogenous.
Minnesota isn’t the only state grappling with the subject of racial integration and changing demographics. In 2014, over 60 years after Brown v. the Board of Education, re-segregation has occurred in various schools across the South — notably in Alabama, where “43 school systems are still under federal desegregation oversight." Education Week’s year-long series "Beyond Bias: Countering Stereotypes in School,” published in September 2015, took an in-depth look at racial bias in U.S. schools.