| Sarah Reber
Harvard University
School desegregation: Successes and failures in integration since Brown vs. Board of Education
FINAL REPORT:
The integration effort following the 1954 Supreme Court Brown vs. Board of Education decision is considered one of the most important education policies of the twentieth century. A variety of factors could have limited the effectiveness of school desegregation orders in improving the school quality experienced by black children. The Court hoped that desegregation plans would reduce segregation and that these difficulties would be overwhelmed by whites' desire to improve schools that served blacks when their own (white) children would attend those same schools. Whether the integration effort did, in fact, reduce segregation and improve school quality for blacks depends on the extent of enforcement, the responsiveness of white families, and the political economy of support for public education. This dissertation explores these questions theoretically and empirically.
Chapter 1 uses variation in the timing of implementation of court-ordered plans to estimate their effects on segregation and white flight. I find strong evidence that districts did integrate schools in the years following implementation of court-ordered segregation plans, but short-term reductions in segregation were partially offset by white flight over the longer term. White enrollment losses were particularly severe in districts with more districts in the same metropolitan area.
In Chapter 2, I estimate the effects of desegregation on the local property tax base and school district finances. There is scant evidence that school districts were harmed financially by desegregation. Implementation of a desegregation plan is associated with declining enrollment, but no change in the per-pupil local property tax base or per-pupil local revenue. Non-local (state and Federal) revenue per pupil increased somewhat, increasing total per-pupil revenue by about 6 percent after desegregation.
In Chapter 3, I explore the relationship between school desegregation and districts finances in more detail for Louisiana. I present evidence suggesting that black schoolchildren saw improvements in the financing of their schools as a result of school desegregation. Despite larger declines in public school enrollment, increases in private school enrollment, and reductions in the local property tax base, districts with high black enrollment shares -- where whites were more affected by integration -- experienced larger increases in revenue from all sources -- state, local, and Federal -- at the same time that schools integrated. These increases appear to have allowed districts to "level up" average quality to that previously experienced only in the white schools.
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