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For decades, efforts to integrate NJ school district fell short — but signs of progress
By
Tiffany Hanssen
and
Louis C. Hochman
Published Jul 24, 2023
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By
Tiffany Hanssen
and
Louis C. Hochman
Published Jul 24, 2023
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New Jersey's constitution outlawed school segregation nearly a decade before Brown v. Board of Education. But segregation persists. The UCLA Civil Rights Project says New Jersey is the sixth most segregated state for Black students, and the seventh most segregated for Latino students, in large part because students' school assignments are so closely tied to where they live.
Some New Jersey communities have been trying to grapple with both racial and economic segregation for decades, with mixed success. Efforts to better serve and integrate in the South Orange-Maplewood school district go back decades — including the conversion in 1999 of the majority-Black Seth Boyden school into an “opt-in” demonstration school for multi-intelligence learning. Other moves have included “deleveling,” intended to increase Black students’ access to more advanced classes.
Yet the district has been sued twice — by the state chapter of the ACLU and then later a group of parents — alleging its tracking and disciplinary practices confine students of color to lower-level classes, and punish students of color with disabilities.
Those lawsuits have been settled, with the district promising changes. But a report by the Rutgers University Equity Lab in June found “stark” achievement disparities remained among student demographic groups, and described students’ criticisms about supports. Parents are threatening litigation once again.
Mary Mann, a co-editor with the Village Green hyperlocal website, cataloged the intricate history as part of the ongoing "Segregated" collaboration among New Jersey newsrooms, to tell stories about race, diversity and segregation in New Jersey schools. Her work draws on years of reporting along with co-editor Carolyn Parisi.
Mann spoke with WNYC’s Tiffany Hanssen regarding their findings – and an ambitious integration plan that’s currently underway. A transcript of their conversation below has been lightly edited for clarity.
Tiffany Hanssen: So lay out the situation for us. Just how segregated is it in South Orange and Maplewood?
Mary Mann: I think there are two areas. The elementary schools have been segregated — with one of five or six of the schools having 45% of the kids who qualify for free and reduced price lunches, and the other elementary schools all being below 20%.
The high school is one high school for both towns, so it's technically integrated. But there's a difference in higher-level honors classes and non-honors classes that's racially obvious.
This is a school district that's been trying to work on this issue for years. What have they tried and why has it been such a challenge?
They tried to rebalance the schools about 25 years ago, where they made the one elementary school that had many of the free and reduced-price lunch children into a demonstration school that people could opt into. So it was a very passive attempt. It also wasn't supposed to be an integration program. It was to demonstrate the use of multiple-intelligence learning with the hope that it also would rebalance the schools, but it did not.
And there were a couple of little cut-and-paste micro redistrictings that people pushed out against because they wanted it to be holistic. And I guess there just wasn't the political will until the last five years to do a rebalancing for the elementary schools. It also came hand-in-hand with a long-range facilities plan, because we had a shortage of space in the buildings.
And what about the high school?
The high school, as I said before, is integrated, but not by class — and AP classes being majority-white and lower-level classes being majority Black. So there have been several attempts throughout the years to open the door for Black students to be able to access higher-level courses and opt into them and then get the supports, but it still has not moved the needle substantially.
Well, what we're talking about here is not just integration. We're also talking about an achievement gap in these schools. The district has been sued twice for pigeonholing Black kids into lower-level classes. You're talking about the distinction there between AP classes.
So why has this achievement gap been so hard to overcome?
I think what it's coming down to is, they keep passing the right policies, but it seems like the implementation has fallen flat — and we look at some other things that have happened in the school district. For example, paraprofessionals were outsourced in 2010 or 2011 in order to plug a budget gap. That really puts a hole in classrooms. So you have teachers who are struggling with a lack of resources, with a lack of supports in the classroom. That could be a part of it. They've talked about more teacher training. There's a lot of things in play and it's been hard to get the arms of everyone around that to make those improvements.
We've spent some time talking about the history of all of this. So I'm curious what your assessment is of the situation right now. How is the new integration plan going?
Physically, very well — definitely seeing numbers moving in terms of the elementary schools being more racially and socioeconomically balanced.
And the algorithm for rebalancing the schools is based on socioeconomic status, because you really can't do it by law by race, but we find that race follows. And that seems to be working. The hope is that as that works, it will change the culture in the schools, where children will have the same education and it will start to bear fruit as they age into the middle schools in the high school.
In the meantime, the district does seem to be making strides. Finally, on social-emotional learning there's a lot to do.
And I think there is that worry that good policies are in place, but do we have what we need in classrooms?
Segregated NJ
In study after study, New Jersey — despite its diverse overall population — has been found to have one of the most segregated public school systems in the country. More than a dozen newsrooms covering New Jersey have come together to explain how it came to this, what might be done about it and how segregation affects the student experience.
The series, Segregated, includes reporting from Gothamist and WNYC, NJ Spotlight News, Chalkbeat Newark and newsrooms serving several communities. The continuing reporting can be found at SegregatedNJ.org.
Tagged
education
new jersey
Race And Justice Unit
Tiffany Hanssen
Tiffany is a host on WNYC. You can hear her regularly on Saturdays and Sundays during All Things Considered.
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Louis C. Hochman
After about two decades in (mostly) New Jersey-focused commercial print, digital and digital-but-radio-adjacent news, Lou stumbled into member-supported news in early 2021, as the editor and CEO of Montclair Local. There, he (hopes he) expanded enterprise, brought more sophistication to digital storytelling and moved the nonprofit newsroom closer to long-term financial sustainability. He helped lead the Local to its fourth consecutive General Excellence award from the New Jersey Press Association — the NJPA's highest honor with judges noting the paper's work to strip away layers of government opacity, to hold power to account, to make news accessible for more members of the community, to share the stories and concerns of more facets of the community and to tell compelling stories across multiple media. He's excited to continue the same ethic — news as a public service — at NYPR as the New Jersey and suburbs editor, drawing on the extraordinary talents of reporters including Karen Yi and Nancy Solomon. Lou lives in Philly (that commute!) with his partner and their two cats, about whom and about which he speaks incessantly.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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