4 ms·

Such busing was court-mandated in the US for several decades. It is widely considered to have been a failure.

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
That depends on what you classify as failure. It failed in the sense that the white and wealthy mostly fled to the suburbs and reversed any progress integration had made. It succeeded in the sense that in the places and times where schools were well integrated the racial achievement gap closed.
- toxiccwm 9y ago
  Do you have any pointers to data showing this close? Most of what I've seen shows the gap being shockingly persistent in the face of intervention across a wide variety of systems, but I'm always looking for more.
  - boomboomsubban 9y ago
    I reccomend Malcolm Gladwell's podcast on the subject. He makes a strong argument that the failure to integrate teachers to any degree caused a large part of the failure. Some of his sources are on the page, but I haven't reviewed them well personally. http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/13-miss-buchanans-period-of-adjustment http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/13-miss-buchanans-per...
- gmarx 9y ago
  The racial achievement gap closed? That would be a huge story and I would be surprised if I missed it...unless you mean the gap closed within the school (i.e. not relative to society at large) because the remaining whites achievements were lower than the average before they fled, i.e. selection bias :)
  - devinhelton 9y ago
    To save people from litigating busing, there was a thread on this earlier this year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13902960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13902960 (I cited evidence saying that busing did not close the gap).
  - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
    Integrated schools help to reduce racial achievement gaps. In fact, the racial achievement gap in K–12 education closed more rapidly during the peak years of school desegregation in the 1970s and 1980s than it has overall in the decades that followed—when many desegregation policies were dismantled. More recently, black and Latino students had smaller achievement gaps with white students on the 2007 and 2009 NAEP when they were less likely to be stuck in high-poverty school environments. The gap in SAT scores between black and white students continues to be larger in segregated districts, and one study showed that change from complete segregation to complete integration in a district could reduce as much as one quarter of the current SAT score disparity. https://tcf.org/content/facts/the-benefits-of-socioeconomically-and-racially-integrated-schools-and-classrooms/ https://tcf.org/content/facts/the-benefits-of-socioeconomica... Not only were they more successful in school, they were more successful in life as well. A 2011 study by the Berkeley public policy professor Rucker C. Johnson concludes that black youths who spent five years in desegregated schools have earned 25 percent more than those who never had that opportunity. Now in their 30s and 40s, they’re also healthier — the equivalent of being seven years younger. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/opinion/sunday/integration-worked-why-have-we-rejected-it.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/opinion/sunday/integration... Desegregation and Black Dropout Rates J, Guryan. 2001. has some good data on the decline in black dropout rates in districts with integration.
    - devinhelton 9y ago
      Integrated schools help to reduce racial achievement gaps. In fact, the racial achievement gap in K–12 education closed more rapidly during the peak years of school desegregation in the 1970s and 1980s than it has overall in the decades that followed—when many desegregation policies were dismantled. Why I don't find that evidence convincing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13904403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13904403
      - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
        Care to summarize? It's a wall of quotes.
mercutio2 9y ago
Amongst progressives, busing is considered one of the only effective mechanisms for reducing educational inequality. That it only moderately alters test scores is also true, but that is far, far from being the same thing as a failure. Busing is largely out of favor because it’s inconvenient for parents. Even I, who live in Berkeley precisely because it still buses-to-desegregate its students, was relieved when the school lottery meant my daughter would attend our nearest school.

That depends on what you classify as failure. It failed in the sense that the white and wealthy mostly fled to the suburbs and reversed any progress integration had made. It succeeded in the sense that in the places and times where schools were well integrated the racial achievement gap closed.

toxiccwm 9y ago
Do you have any pointers to data showing this close? Most of what I've seen shows the gap being shockingly persistent in the face of intervention across a wide variety of systems, but I'm always looking for more.
- boomboomsubban 9y ago
  I reccomend Malcolm Gladwell's podcast on the subject. He makes a strong argument that the failure to integrate teachers to any degree caused a large part of the failure. Some of his sources are on the page, but I haven't reviewed them well personally. http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/13-miss-buchanans-period-of-adjustment http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/13-miss-buchanans-per...
gmarx 9y ago
The racial achievement gap closed? That would be a huge story and I would be surprised if I missed it...unless you mean the gap closed within the school (i.e. not relative to society at large) because the remaining whites achievements were lower than the average before they fled, i.e. selection bias :)
- devinhelton 9y ago
  To save people from litigating busing, there was a thread on this earlier this year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13902960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13902960 (I cited evidence saying that busing did not close the gap).
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  Integrated schools help to reduce racial achievement gaps. In fact, the racial achievement gap in K–12 education closed more rapidly during the peak years of school desegregation in the 1970s and 1980s than it has overall in the decades that followed—when many desegregation policies were dismantled. More recently, black and Latino students had smaller achievement gaps with white students on the 2007 and 2009 NAEP when they were less likely to be stuck in high-poverty school environments. The gap in SAT scores between black and white students continues to be larger in segregated districts, and one study showed that change from complete segregation to complete integration in a district could reduce as much as one quarter of the current SAT score disparity. https://tcf.org/content/facts/the-benefits-of-socioeconomically-and-racially-integrated-schools-and-classrooms/ https://tcf.org/content/facts/the-benefits-of-socioeconomica... Not only were they more successful in school, they were more successful in life as well. A 2011 study by the Berkeley public policy professor Rucker C. Johnson concludes that black youths who spent five years in desegregated schools have earned 25 percent more than those who never had that opportunity. Now in their 30s and 40s, they’re also healthier — the equivalent of being seven years younger. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/opinion/sunday/integration-worked-why-have-we-rejected-it.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/opinion/sunday/integration... Desegregation and Black Dropout Rates J, Guryan. 2001. has some good data on the decline in black dropout rates in districts with integration.
  - devinhelton 9y ago
    Integrated schools help to reduce racial achievement gaps. In fact, the racial achievement gap in K–12 education closed more rapidly during the peak years of school desegregation in the 1970s and 1980s than it has overall in the decades that followed—when many desegregation policies were dismantled. Why I don't find that evidence convincing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13904403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13904403
    - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
      Care to summarize? It's a wall of quotes.

mercutio2 9y ago

Amongst progressives, busing is considered one of the only effective mechanisms for reducing educational inequality. That it only moderately alters test scores is also true, but that is far, far from being the same thing as a failure. Busing is largely out of favor because it’s inconvenient for parents. Even I, who live in Berkeley precisely because it still buses-to-desegregate its students, was relieved when the school lottery meant my daughter would attend our nearest school.