{"id":93,"date":"2026-06-01T14:11:29","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T14:11:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worcestermovingreport.com\/?p=93"},"modified":"2026-06-01T14:11:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T14:11:29","slug":"lessons-from-boston-on-mass-school-segregation-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worcestermovingreport.com\/?p=93","title":{"rendered":"Lessons from Boston on Mass. school segregation lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

TWO YEARS AFTER<\/mark><\/strong> state data showed that almost two-thirds of Massachusetts schools are racially segregated, a new lawsuit is both a plea for Bay State education officials to step in and, advocates say, a chance to reckon with why these patterns persist decades after busing began shuttling students across district lines. <\/p>\n

Read more Political Notebook: A notable absence in the \u2018Nature for Massachusetts\u2019 coalition<\/a><\/p>\n

This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon<\/em> reporter Jennifer Smith talked with Dan O\u2019Brien, professor of public policy and urban affairs and director of the Boston Area Research Initiative at Northeastern University, about what Boston\u2019s long record of trying to address school segregation can illustrate about the effectiveness of desegregation efforts. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think the big lesson of the 1970s desegregation movement was that at the end of the day, everybody \u2013 white people, people of color, rich people, low-income people \u2013 everybody wants access to a high-quality school that is, in fact, close to their home,\u201d O Brien said. \u201cNo one really wants to have to go all the way across the city to access education.\u201d <\/p>\n

Let alone the state. The suit, filed by a coalition of students and community organizations, comes decades into the METCO program that buses students from certain parts of Boston into suburban districts, and argues that generally tying school assignment to residence in a state where neighborhoods are deeply divided by race and income amounts to state-maintained segregation. <\/p>\n

Some possible remedies from the coalition include expanding METCO, working to attract a diverse array of students through inter-district magnet schools and regional vocational technical schools, and attracting diverse families with more investment in buildings and infrastructure in poorer districts. <\/p>\n

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education\u2019s response acknowledged the disparity and pointed to efforts to monitor and address segregation, but said it does not have the authority to change school district boundaries or allow cross-district enrollment. <\/p>\n

The lawsuit has already opened a broader conversation about what, if anything, works to desegregate and improve access to quality education. <\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien was brought in by Boston to evaluate its 2014 Home-Based Assignment Plan, a redesigned lottery system that used an algorithm to guarantee every student access to high-quality schools near their home. <\/p>\n

Read more Senate\u2019s new audit compliance raises more questions than it answers<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cMost of our high-quality schools in Boston are in historically white, historically affluent neighborhoods,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. In neighborhoods like Mattapan, students had no access to top-tier schools within a few miles. Where high-quality schools did exist in communities of color, more families were competing for fewer seats. The proximity model on its own encoded existing inequities rather than correcting them. <\/p>\n

His research also found a point of diminishing returns: Once a school was more than about two miles away, families largely stopped considering it, regardless of quality. \u201cThey\u2019re consistently trading this off,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve definitely had colleagues and friends and families in those communities say, why can\u2019t we just have high-quality schools here?\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want our kids necessarily to have to go to some other neighborhood that we don\u2019t necessarily have a connection to \u2014 that\u2019s going to be long-distance travel. It makes all sorts of difficulties with access. It makes difficulties sometimes with being a part of sports teams or other clubs after school. It makes a difference with feeling included in the community that you\u2019re traveling to.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cNobody,\u201d he said, \u201cis loving that that solution.\u201d <\/p>\n

The lawsuit attempts what O\u2019Brien called \u201ca fascinating legal pirouette\u201d by extending the logic of intra-district desegregation orders up to the state level, in a system where each town retains jurisdiction over its own schools. <\/p>\n

\u201cI hope that it actually transitions from a legal discussion into a policy discussion, and does so rather quickly,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. <\/p>\n

On the episode, they discuss Boston\u2019s plan and its findings (2:00), the distinction between racial and income-based remedies (21:30), and what the lawsuit might realistically accomplish (30:00).<\/em> <\/p>\n

Read more Yet again, legislative competition in Massachusetts will be woeful<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Massachusetts has been busing students between neighborhoods and school districts for 60 years, but segregation within the school system persists \u2013 and in some places it\u2019s actually gotten worse over recent decades. This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith talks with Dan O\u2019Brien, professor of public policy and urban affairs and director of the Boston Area Research Initiative at Northeastern University, about a new lawsuit brought against the state. Students and civil rights organizations want the state to step in to address segregation across school districts, and Boston\u2019s long and fraught history of attempted desegregation may offer some lessons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-codcast"],"yoast_head":"\nLessons from Boston on Mass. school segregation lawsuit - Worcester Moving Report<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worcestermovingreport.com\/?p=93\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lessons from Boston on Mass. school segregation lawsuit - Worcester Moving Report\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Massachusetts has been busing students between neighborhoods and school districts for 60 years, but segregation within the school system persists \u2013 and in some places it\u2019s actually gotten worse over recent decades. 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