Milwaukee area schools rated highest in U.S. for Black-white segregation on Brown v. Board anniversary
Rory Linnane
Schools in the Milwaukee metro area are more segregated for Black and white students than any other metro area of the country, according to a report published Tuesday by the Century Foundation, a progressive East Coast think tank.
It’s not surprising for Milwaukee, which frequently tops lists of most segregated regions and has a long history of racist housing policies.
The foundation looked at 270,102 students in the four-county area of Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Washington and Waukesha. It gave the area a Black-white segregation rating of .73, where 0 represents no demographic differences between schools and 1 represents total separation of Black and white students.
Several areas are just below Milwaukee's rating for Black-white segregation between schools, with the Newark, Chicago and Detroit areas within .03 points. The average rating across all metro areas was much lower, coming out to 0.24.
The foundation also gave the Milwaukee region a rating of 0.5 for segregation between white students and all students of color, and a .46 rating for separation of students who are and are not considered from low-income families, based on 2017-18 federal data.
The report comes on the 68th anniversary of the May 17, 1954, U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which ruled racial segregation of students to be unconstitutional.
It also comes as the Century Foundation is supporting recent work by local education leaders to team up on efforts to integrate schools in the region and provide more equitable resources to all schools.
"The promise of Brown is still not fulfilled," said Bob Peterson, president of the school board for Milwaukee Public Schools. "It's an important anniversary for people to step back and think about where the future is."
Leaders renew integration talks after decades of efforts
A decade after Brown v. Board, Lloyd Barbee and the Milwaukee United School Integration Committee (MUSIC) famously campaigned to end persistent segregation in MPS, as Black students were often bused to white-majority schools but taught in separate rooms.
Barbee ultimately sued in federal court, and in 1976, Judge John Reynolds ordered MPS to desegregate.
In response, some, including Peterson who was involved at the time as an activist and would soon start teaching at MPS, proposed a two-way busing program through which some students from the north and south sides would swap schools, evenly distributing the burden of busing across populations.
Instead, the district opted for a “voluntary” busing system, still in place today, involving citywide specialty schools like MacDowell Montessori and Rufus King High School meant to attract students from a cross-section of neighborhoods.
Community organizer Larry Harwell, an advocate for two-way busing, argued the district’s method effectively burdened Black students with busing across the city, as many of their neighborhood schools were shuttered or replaced with specialty schools. Far fewer white students were busing out of their neighborhoods.
Harwell also warned that as Black students were bused into majority-white schools, their needs would take a backseat to those of white students, they would experience discrimination, and the district would lose Black teachers. He pushed instead for equitable resources for majority-Black schools.
When in 1984 MPS sued suburban districts over their resistance to integration, there were other proposals floated, including redrawing district lines across the community to to include parts of the city and suburbs together, attorney Bill Lynch told WUWM.
Instead, officials doubled down on busing, expanding the Chapter 220 program that provided busing for city students to attend suburban schools, and vice versa (but mostly the former). That program is now being phased out.
Some students who participated in that program have said it gave them access to more educational resources, while they've also shared stories of experiencing racism, exclusion and challenges with having to bus far from their homes and communities.
"It was desegregation without integration," wrote Mary Pattillo, a graduate of the 220 program who now chairs the Department of African American Studies at Northwestern University.
"The material and spiritual solutions cannot be realized through the co-location of Black and White bodies alone, but must include the real stuff of equality," Patillo continued, calling for broader public health equity and "schools that compensate for inequalities in family resources."
On April 8 this year, school leaders from Milwaukee and suburban districts gathered at North Division High School to take up discussions anew, this time not through litigation.
The work follows a 2020 resolution from Peterson and MPS board vice president Sequanna Taylor to develop a regional plan to desegregate schools and reduce inequities.
As part of that commitment, MPS joined the Century Foundation's Bridges Collaborative, which offers resources for integration efforts around the country and co-sponsored the event April 8.
With 45 education leaders from eight regional school districts, the group began brainstorming a wide range of ideas — from joint summer school programs, to a campaign to better fund MPS as part of reparations for housing discrimination.
Peterson said the group is planning a retreat to continue discussions. He encouraged residents in the metro area to ask their school district leaders to get involved with the group.
Peterson said a push for equitable funding for MPS must be part of any work for integration.
"Hopefully, school districts around the state will join with some of the urban school districts that have already voiced strong opinions about what the state legislature needs to do to serve all kids well," he said. "That's going to be a theme that's woven through our work."
Contact Rory Linnane at rory.linnane@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @RoryLinnane.