Research shows that diversity in schools — including staff and the student body — produce benefits such as improved academics for all compared to less diverse schools, less racial prejudice and better life outcomes. Other studies have found diversity in the student body of schools increases students’ feelings of safety and leads to less bullying and feelings of loneliness.
Unfortunately, segregation between white and Black students has increased in the U.S. by 64 percent since 1988 in the 100 largest districts, and segregation by economic status has increased by about 50 percent since 1991, according to researchers at Stanford and USC. Further, segregation between Latino and white students, while lower on average than that of Black and white students, more than doubled in large school districts since the 1980s. And according to the UCLA Civil Rights Project, California has the highest percentage of Latino students (59 percent) in intensely segregated schools, followed by Texas and New York (both at 53 percent).
New research from Northeastern University aims to add to districts’ desegregation toolbox by exploring how school mergers could meaningfully reduce segregation in elementary schools. Other tools include redistricting and magnet programs. “Prior work has demonstrated how ‘redistricting,’ or redrawing school district boundaries, might foster more diverse and integrated schools while, surprisingly, possibly also slightly reducing travel times … Unfortunately, school redistricting is often hotly contested and opposed by community members. Racial/ethnic integration is typically not a redistricting priority,” according to the report.
While research “suggests that nearly two-thirds of segregation can be attributed to the lines that are drawn between school districts, which fall under the purview of state legislatures. However, within-district boundaries — like school attendance boundaries, which districts themselves have jurisdiction over redrawing — still contribute to segregation in a nontrivial way, and so, may serve as powerful and more practical levers for reducing demographic segregation across schools.”
School mergers
School mergers involve combining the attendance boundaries of adjacent schools and modifying the grades they serve in order to promote demographically diverse classrooms. In this report, merged schools would balance demographics by isolating the grades served. For example, one school could offer kindergarten through second grade for the current attendance areas of two elementary schools, while the remaining school could serve third through fifth graders for the same two areas.
The authors modeled the approach in elementary schools across 200 large school districts serving over 4.5 million students, finding that combining two or three schools could reduce racial/ethnic segregation by a median of 20 percent and up to 60 percent in some school districts. Driving commutes to school would rise by just 3.7 minutes, on average. Mergers could, however, reduce walkability.
An example of this can be found in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina, which began a merger of two elementary schools in 2017. Billingsville Elementary was originally built in 1927 as a school for Black children and in the 2017–18 school year, had a majority Black, high-poverty student body. Two miles away, Cotswold Elementary with a majority white, high-income student body.
In 2019, the district instituted the merger by blending the student body of the two schools, having grades K-2 at Billingsville and grades 3-5 at Cotswold. While the district was under a 20-year-old federal court order not to assign students to schools on the basis of race, the district used socioeconomic status to determine placement.
The schools maintain their names, though together they are Bllingsville Cotswold Elementary, and are much more racially balanced now with Billingsville at 67.2 minority enrollment and Cotswold at 64.9 percent minority enrollment.
Resources
Segregation Explorer — This interactive website by researchers at Stanford and USC provides searchable data on racial and economic school segregation in U.S. states, counties, metropolitan areas and school districts from 1991 to 2022.
School merger dashboard — This dashboard explores how school mergers might help advance elementary school integration across 2,741 U.S. school districts.
