Patrick Wall
Senior Reporter, Chalkbeat Newark
Black-white segregation rate is three times the national average.
The schools in Newark and nearby communities are among the most severely segregated in the nation, according to a new nationwide analysis.
The Newark area ranks first in economic segregation and second in Black-white segregation, according to the analysis of public and private schools in all 403 metropolitan areas in the United States. The rate of segregation between Black and white students in Newark’s region is nearly three times the national average.
The Newark metropolitan area includes 118 school districts spread across six counties in northern New Jersey and one county in Pennsylvania. The vast majority of racial and economic segregation in that area occurs between school districts, not within them, according to the analysis, which also found that school segregation is more extreme in the Northeast than in other regions of the country.
The new report was published Tuesday, exactly 68 years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated schools are inherently unequal. On the same day four years ago, a coalition of families and advocacy groups filed a lawsuit claiming that New Jersey’s widespread school segregation violates the state constitution and harms students.
“Almost seven decades after Brown v. Board, we still see intense levels of segregation across the country,” said Halley Potter, author of the report and a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a liberal think tank.
Legal challenge
The Newark area “stands out as one of the most segregated metro areas,” Potter added, though the legal challenge, which a state Superior Court judge is expected to rule on in the coming weeks, has the potential to change that. “It also stands out to me as one of the places where I do see some hope.”
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