TWO YEARS AFTER state data showed that almost two-thirds of Massachusetts schools are racially segregated, a new lawsuit is both a plea for Bay State education officials to step in and, advocates say, a chance to reckon with why these patterns persist decades after busing began shuttling students across district lines.
This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith talked with Dan O’Brien, professor of public policy and urban affairs and director of the Boston Area Research Initiative at Northeastern University, about what Boston’s long record of trying to address school segregation can illustrate about the effectiveness of desegregation efforts.
“I think the big lesson of the 1970s desegregation movement was that at the end of the day, everybody – white people, people of color, rich people, low-income people – everybody wants access to a high-quality school that is, in fact, close to their home,” O Brien said. “No one really wants to have to go all the way across the city to access education.”
Let alone the state. The suit, filed by a coalition of students and community organizations, comes decades into the METCO program that buses students from certain parts of Boston into suburban districts, and argues that generally tying school assignment to residence in a state where neighborhoods are deeply divided by race and income amounts to state-maintained segregation.
