6 of Every 10 Alabama Students in High-Poverty Schools are Black

By Trisha Powell Crain | tcrain@al.com Alabama public school students are attending more racially diverse schools than they were 20 years ago, but most Black students are still concentrated in high-poverty schools, according to an analysis of historical school enrollment data by AL.com. The rising racial diversity in public schools is a good thing, said Erica Frankenberg, a Pennsylvania State University professor and Alabama native who studies the impact of racial and socioeconomic diversity on students. “Given the benefits of racially integrated schools for students of all races,” she said, “this is a good trend to see.” The U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board ruling in 1954 declared state-mandated racially-segregated schools were unconstitutional. Alabama and other southern states resisted the federal court’s orders, and meaningful integration efforts of public schools didn’t get underway until the late 1960s. In many areas, white families fled to private schools or created “segregation academies” to avoid enrolling their children in a school with Black children. By the 1980s, according to UCLA’s Civil Rights Project, the share of Black students in majority white schools in the South “reached a peak of 43 percent.” After the Supreme Court directed ending desegregation plans in 1991, it declined...