Student assignment, crime and moving vans

A couple of recent academic studies provide intriguing looks at the impact of  "resegregation"  in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools 12 years after the district gave up race-based student assignment.

In a newcomer-rich community like this one, the 2002 demise of court-ordered desegregation and the long legal battle that led up to it may seem like ancient history.  But researchers take the long view,  and both papers used years of individual data for CMS students before and after the switch to a race-neutral system.

For those who missed it,  CMS used school boundaries to achieve racial balance from the 1970s to the 1990s.  At that point,  magnets began to play a growing role in efforts to encourage voluntary desegregation.  Lawsuits by white families seeking to end race-based assignment  led to the end of court-ordered desegregation. The ensuing assignment plans, which combine neighborhood schools and magnets, created a rapid and dramatic increase in mostly-black and mostly-white schools. (Both papers give a more detailed history.)

Image: AtlantaBlackStar.com

"School Segregation,  Educational Attainment and Crime:  Evidence From the End of Busing in Charlotte-Mecklenburg"  draws a striking conclusion:  The strongest,  most lasting impact of sending students to high-poverty,  mostly-minority schools is a rise in crime among minority males who live in poverty.

"The results show clearly that it is the combination of race and income segregation that leads to 

increases in crime.  Minority males have significantly more arrests and days incarcerated when they are assigned to schools with more poor minorities.  However, we find no impact on crime of being assigned to schools with more non-poor minorities or poor non-minorities,"  says the study by Stephen Billings  (UNC Charlotte),  David Deming  (Harvard Graduate School of Education)  and Jonah Rockoff  (Columbia University Graduate School of Business).  It's published in the February issue of The Quarterly Journal of Economics, but the link above takes you to an earlier working paper you can read free.

The report also found negative academic impacts on all groups assigned to such schools,  but found that those disadvantages faded over time.  "Our results suggest that equal or greater resources combined with active policy efforts may be able to reduce the impact of school segregation on academic outcomes, but not for crime,"  the report says. "To the extent that crime is driven by social context and peer interactions,  it will be difficult for schools to address racial and economic inequality through means other than deliberately integrative student assignment policies."

Image: Writeforit.Wordpress.com

"Does School Policy Affect Housing Choices?  Evidence From the End of Desegregation in Charlotte-Mecklenburg"  acknowledges that housing patterns shape the racial composition of schools.  It then examines a follow-up:  Does student assignment also affect housing decisions?

The conclusion:  Yes  --  for a relatively small number of white families.

The study by David Liebowitz  (Harvard University)  and Lindsay Page  (University of Pittsburgh)  found that African American and Hispanic families are more mobile than white ones,  and their moving patterns didn't change significantly when student assignment changed. But they found differences for white families after 2002,  when moving became a practical way to seek a higher-quality neighborhood school,  "even if one criterion was racial homogeneity of the school."

Even during race-based assignment,  whites who moved  "exhibited a strong preference for communities that were less integrated than their starting community."  After 2002,  the researchers found,  "White families were much more likely to select into a Whiter but worse performing zone than their current one.  However,  they were no more likely to select into a Whiter and academically stronger neighborhood than before the new assignment policy."  Despite those trends,  the researchers found that the numbers were too small to affect the district's overall level of segregation.

Please note that I am simplifying two long,  complex papers about touchy subjects.  There's no way to crunch some combined 80 pages of academic analysis into a blog post and catch all the nuances.  I can't find a free version of the second article,  which is published in the American Educational Research Journal, so it may be tough to read the full thing.  Just know that both papers contain a more sophisticated analysis than I can summarize here.

West Charlotte's segregation history makes Retro Report

A 10-minute documentary about the history of court-ordered desegregation and its reversal in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools -- specifically at West Charlotte High  --  went online today as part of the Retro Report, a new documentary news group created to give historic context to issues in the news.

Griffin

"The Battle for Busing"  uses archival news clips and interviews with participants,  especially former school board Chairman Arthur Griffin,  who experienced segregation and desegregation as a student.  As board chair,  Griffin led the court battle to keep race-based student assignment for diversity in place.  After losing that fight,  Griffin says in the documentary,  he decided not to seek election because "I was out of step."

"I said,  'I'll just step aside and I won't try to stop you and we'll see what happens,' "  says Griffin,  who is now an executive with McGraw-Hill Education.

What happened,  in terms of racial composition,  was that West Charlotte went from being viewed as a national model for desegregation  --  "a darling of the national media,"  as the report puts it  --  to reverting to its origins as a black high school. Although no one is assigned by race now,  last year 87 percent of West Charlotte students were black and 2 percent were white  (2013-14 numbers aren't in yet).

Retro Report was created with a grant from former television editor Christopher Buck;  read more about the nonprofit group that emerged here.  "Retro Report is there to pick up the story after everyone has moved on, connecting the dots from yesterday to today, correcting the record and providing a permanent living library where viewers can gain new insight into the events that shaped their lives,"  the introduction says.

The New York Times features Retro Report on its online  "Booming"  section,  designed to appeal to those of us born between 1946 and 1964.  

Couple featured in Booming (remember this look?)

NAACP chief to talk on school resegregation

Officials from the National Education Association are headed to Charlotte this week, and they want to talk about school resegregation, a dynamic they see as one of the most troubling trends on the American education scene. As part of the CIAA tournament, the NEA's minority community outreach office is sponsoring a "Salute to Educators" lunch on Friday. Keynote speaker? the Rev. William Barber, the N.C. NAACP chief who has been railing against resegregation in Wake County.

"We thought it was important to have someone from the local area who has been working on the resegregation issues we're concerned about," said Becky Pringle, the NEA's secretary-treasurer. "Our vision is great public schools for every student...We acknowledge that achievement gaps exist, and resegregating public schools only exacerbate that."

Given all the debate over issues of race and class swirling through Wake and Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools these days, it's a timely topic. Unfortunately, NEA officials say the lunch isn't open to the general public. (Some teachers have been invited, though).

Pringle said the NEA wants to make sure what's happening in Raleigh doesn't spread across the country.

What do you think? Are should we be concerned today if schools are resegregating? Or have we reached the point where such concerns are outdated?