Despite decades of integration, Seattle schools are re-segregating

In 1978, Seattle began an effort to desegregate its schools.

More than two decades after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling, it was the first major city to voluntarily take on racial segregation in schools — the enduring legacy of racist policies like redlining.

Today, analysis by The Seattle Times shows that since integration efforts ended, schools have become increasingly segregated.

For 40 years, Seattle students were bused to schools across town in an effort to put students and schools in different parts of town on equal footing. In 2007, the district’s integration policies were challenged by white parents and ultimately deemed unconstitutional.

Integration succeeded in making schools more diverse, but since busing was halted, Seattle schools are facing a growing divide between educational outcomes in north and south ends of the city. This divide is seen most starkly by using the shipping canal as a primary dividing line.

"West Woodland Elementary School, which is in Northwest Seattle ... is about 27% students of color. Back in the '90s, it was nearly 50% students of color," says Dahlia Bazzaz, a reporter with The Seattle Times' Education Lab. Bazzaz and her team have used decades of data to build a map showing that schools are still being defined by remnants of redlining.

"If we look at another school, such as Bailey Gatzert Elementary School, which today is 88% students of color, that school boundary wraps around a public housing complex. So today 80%, going back to 1990 to 1991, it was 64.9% students of color."

There were criticisms of the integrative busing program from its inception. The district was already reeling from an enrollment loss beginning in the 1960s. Then there were two lawsuits in the 1980s, one of which was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Opposition gradually enacted policies requiring fewer students to bus, which winnowed numbers down until a final lawsuit in 2007 deemed mandatory busing unconstitutional.

At its height, around 12,000 to 15,000 students were mandatorily bused. While integration succeeded in making schools around the city more diverse, Bazzaz and the EdLab team ultimately found that Black students bore a heavier burden of integration.

"It was not an equal burden shared by Black families and white families," Bazzaz said. "It definitely relied on students of color and Black families to move out of the south end, where they primarily were, into other areas of the city."

The Seattle Times' analysis also found that the educational benefits to students as a result of integration are inconclusive.

"There is just no detailed, long-term study that you've seen in other areas, where they've studied students in the south students and other large districts," Bazzaz said. "That just didn't happen here."

You can read Dahlia Bazzaz's full series on the legacy of integration by clicking here.

Listen to the full Soundside interview by clicking "play" on the audio above.