Integrating American classroom has not produced all the benefits ascribed to it, report researchers.
Integrating schools has long been a goal of many who seek to eradicate racial discrimination. But the new paper from four economists suggests Black students do not always benefit from attending racially balanced schools.
Instead, Black adults who attended racially balanced high schools in the mid-20th century completed significantly less schooling than those who attended either predominantly Black or predominantly white schools, the authors find.
“Standard wisdom has it that school desegregation paves the way to racial nirvana in the United States,” says William A. “Sandy” Darity Jr., director of Duke University’s Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity and a professor of public policy, African and African American Studies, and economics. “Our study suggests that the effects have been more muted than typically claimed in other studies and in the popular media.