Finnegan and Holme include a set of maps focused on economic and racial trends in the Milwaukee area that show “over the course of four decades, segregation and the concentration of poverty in Milwaukee grew even more severe.” They conclude, “These segregation patterns are important to educational policy because they correspond closely with perceived patterns of school ‘failure.'”
In “Education Next,” a quarterly based out of Harvard and Stanford, Steven Riskin, a professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, concludes that the average black student nationwide now goes to public school with more white students than a half century ago, but fewer white students than 30 years ago. “The rate of exposure has declined markedly since 1988,” he wrote.
Does segregation hurt education? “The best answer, in my view, is that the consequences of racial segregation for student learning are probably adverse, but not severely so,” Riskin concluded.
The National Bureau of Economic Research, a nongovernment group, issued a paper that concludes that poor minority students in segregated schools are more likely to get involved in crime than those in integrated schools.