Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The Supreme Court issued three decisions in the early 1990s that dramatically altered the legal basis for court-ordered desegregation (1991 Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell ruling (498 U.S. 237); 1992 Freeman v. Pitts decision (503 U.S. 467); 1995 Missouri v. Jenkins (515 U.S. 70)). These decisions collectively made it easier to terminate court-mandated plans, and more than half of all districts ever under court-ordered desegregation have been released from court oversight.

Recent research has shown the integrative effects of court-ordered desegregation plans erode following the end of the plan, as dismissal causes a gradual, moderate increase in segregation levels (Reardon et al., 2011; Lutz, 2011; Clotfelter, Ladd, Vigdor, 2006). In 1972, 25% of black students in the South attended schools in which more than 90% of students are minorities; in districts released from desegregation court orders between 1990-2011, 53% of black students now attend such schools. This de facto `re-segregation’ has the potential to worsen racial attitudes and partially unwind the documented benefits that have been found to stem from the earlier waves of desegregation (Johnson, 2016). However, the end of race-based busing not only changed schools’ racial composition, but was also often accompanied by increases in district resource allocation to schools in high poverty, minority neighborhoods. There is evidence that dismissed school districts sometimes engage in capital investment in minority neighborhoods, which has mitigated negative impacts on minority students. Districts often paired the new student assignment policy with programs to provide additional funds for lower student-teacher ratios, school renovation projects, learning equipment and supplies, and bonuses for teachers in high poverty schools to attempt to prevent the flight of effective teachers from inner city schools (Mickelson, Smith and Southworth 2009). Southern school districts have taken compensatory actions (investments in poorly performing neighborhood schools) to blunt the impact of dismissal on black students.

This paper combines this comprehensive data on the timing of court releases from desegregation plans of more than 200 school districts that occurred since 1990 (obtained from Reardon et al.) with nationally-representative longitudinal micro data of children born since 1980 followed through 2017. In particular, I use the geocoded Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its Child Development Supplement (PSID-CDS) and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add-Health) matched to children’s school and neighborhood characteristics and school desegregation policy variables. Using an event study framework and difference-in-difference model, I examine the impacts of the termination of mandated desegregation plans on academic achievement outcomes, including cognitive test scores, high school graduation rates, educational attainment, and non-cognitive behavioral outcomes and racial attitudes, separately by race. Preliminary results show that the increased allocation of school resources to those in high poverty, minority neighborhoods following the release of continued court oversight actually served to mitigate the potential negative impacts of resegregation on black student achievement.