Study Finds Boston Schools Segregated

Boston area public schools remain effectively segregated and unequal, two researchers affiliated with the Civil Rights Project at the Harvard School of Education told a crowd at Harvard’s Longfellow Hall yesterday.

Chungmei Lee, a research associate at the Civil Rights Project and Joseph Berger, associate professor of education at the University of Massachusetts, unveiled a series of sobering statistics at the conference on minority achievement, entitled “Separate and Unequal: Segregation and Educational Opportunity in Metro Boston.”

Lee said that her study found that school segregation is increasing not only in the city of Boston, but also in surrounding suburbs.  “Ninety-one percent of the students attending schools in the suburbs are white while only 15 percent of the students in Boston are white,” she said.

Lee said that there is also a “powerful relationship” between racial and economic segregation.

“Schools with high minorities have high concentrations of poor students,” she said. And, she writes in her study, “94 percent of the teachers in schools with less than 10 percent poor and minority students are certified, in contrast to only 78 percent in high-minority and high-poverty schools.”

High-minority and high-poverty schools also have substantially lower scores on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System test, or MCAS.

In a separate study, Berger found a significant gap between minority and white test scores. He said that minorities and students in the city score substantially lower on the SAT, a test which he said was an “indicator of whether or not students are prepared.”

The average SAT score for students in Boston was 896 compared to 1083 in the suburbs.

“Even after controlling for income and race—where you go to school still mattered,” Berger said.

But Leonard Alkins, the president of the Boston branch NAACP, disputed the notion that standardized tests were a good measure of achievement.

“Standardized tests do not address a multicultural audience. That must change,” he said. His comment elicited applause from the approximately 125 people in the audience and vigorous nods from the panelists who were discussing Lee’s research.

Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project, challenged Boston

Schools Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant, who was also in the audience, to respond to Lee’s findings.

“I don’t think separate education is ideal but given the reality of what we

face it’s important to take single-race schools and give them the opportunity to meet high standards,” Payzant said. He also said that the data could not be changed in the short term.

Miren Uriarte, an associate professor of human services at the University of Massachusetts, concurred that it is difficult to close the achievement gap.

“[Lee’s] recommendations are small in comparison to the dimensions of the problem. But I don’t have much better. Unless we begin to think bigger— perhaps at the federal level—there is very little we can do,” she said.

Lee recommended the expansion of a program in which Boston suburbs voluntarily receive minority transfer students from the city.

In his report, Berger said that “colleges should reconsider the role that standardized test scores play in the admissions process.”

“It often matters what type of college you go to—it opens different doors,” he said.

—Joseph M. Tartakoff can be reached at tartakof@fas.harvard.edu.