Socioeconomic Integration and Segregation

Overview

The de facto segregation of students by socioeconomic status in U.S. public schools has long been of general concern for policymakers, but it is only in recent years that explicit efforts to promote socioeconomic integration have been adopted. The new focus on socioeconomic integration has been [Page 2020]spurred in part by court decisions that reduce the ability of school districts to use race in voluntarily integrating schools. Because of the overlap between race and socioeconomic status in American society, a program of socioeconomic integration will often produce significant racial diversity but in a manner that is perfectly legal. The rise of socioeconomic integration plans is also spurred by research finding that in raising student achievement, socioeconomic integration is even more important than racial integration.

This entry begins with a discussion of socioeconomic segregation in U.S. public schools. It examines 19th-century educator Horace Mann's original notion of socioeconomically integrated “common schools” and then turns to the rise of socioeconomic school segregation after World War II. The entry then discusses the reasons why economic school segregation is of concern to researchers and policymakers.

The next section of the entry examines the growing effort of school districts to combat socioeconomic segregation with conscious policies to bring children of different economic backgrounds together in their schooling. It traces the shifting emphasis from race to socioeconomic status and sketches an example of the way that school districts try to reduce socioeconomic isolation among students.

Socioeconomic Segregation

One of the founding fathers of American public education, Horace Mann believed that if schools were to provide genuine equal opportunity, they could not be economically segregated. He wrote that to become “the great equalizer,” public schools had to be “common schools,” that is, schools that educate rich and poor under one roof. In economically integrated schools, more advantaged students would set a high bar of expectations and all students would rise to reach it. Moreover, wealthier families would be more likely to support the financing of schools if their own children attended them.

In the 19th century, before the invention of the automobile, many public schools were economically integrated because people of all economic backgrounds needed to live near their work. Even then, however, throughout much of the nation, the common school ideal was violated by de jure and de facto segregation by race. American public schools were racially segregated by law throughout much of the southern United States until the famous 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, declaring separate schools for Black and White students inherently unequal.

But just as de jure racial segregation began to crumble, the United States saw a mass migration of more affluent families to the suburbs, and increasing residential segregation by economic status, particularly following World War II. In the housing market, as researcher David Rusk has noted, “Jim Crow by income is replacing Jim Crow by race.” Rusk found that in the 1990s, American public elementary schools became more economically segregated. In the largest 100 metropolitan areas in the United States, economic segregation increased in 55 areas, was stable in 14, and lessened in 12 (with data unavailable in 19). Moreover, Rusk projected that economic school segregation will increase in all but 6 of 50 states by 2025.

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