Black, white students in Tampa Bay more segregated now than 20 years ago

Data: Stanford Education Data Archive ; Note: Index ranges from 0 to 1, where 0 implies no segregation (all schools have identical proportions of Black and white students) while 1 implies complete segregation (no Black student attends a school with any white students, and vice versa); Map: Axios Visuals

​​Racial segregation in schools has increased dramatically over the last three decades, according to two new reports and an Axios review of federal data.

Why it matters: Friday was the 70th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling , and American public schools are growing more separate and unequal even though the country is more racially and ethnically diverse than ever.

• Decades after Brown and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the U.S. has moved toward policies that increased the isolation of Black and Latino students by race and poverty.
• Segregated schools disproportionately hurt Black and Latino students since those schools tend to have fewer resources, more teacher shortages , higher student-to-school counselor ratios , and fewer AP class options.

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The big picture: The resegregation of America's public schools coincides with the rise of charter schools and school choice options, and as civil rights groups have turned away from desegregation battles.

• Florida has been at the forefront of the push for school choice, with Gov. Ron DeSantis championing one of the country's largest universal voucher programs last year.

State of play: Analyzing data from U.S. public schools going back to 1967, a Stanford and the University of Southern California study found segregation between white and Black students has increased by 64 percent since 1988 in the 100 largest districts.

• Florida is home to four of the largest 10 school districts in the country: Miami-Dade, Broward, Hillsborough and Palm Beach counties.

The state had some of the largest increases in integration after the 1960s but has had large declines as programs were dissolved since a peak in the early 1980s, according to the UCLA study of federal data .

By the numbers: Across the state, segregation has risen in the last two decades between Black and white students, data show, increasing from 36% in 1991 to 42% in 2022.

• Segregation between white and Hispanic students, however, fell during the same time period, from 47% to 35%.

Between the lines: Segregation in the data looks at student enrollment, with the number of intensely segregated schools defined as schools that are 90-100% nonwhite students.

Zoom in: In the Tampa Bay metro area, segregation between white and Black students has more than doubled since the early 90s — from 14% in 1991 to 36%.

• The increase between white and Hispanic students was less drastic, moving from 16% to 21% in the same time period, data show.

What they're saying: "I'm not surprised by the data at all," Daniella Pierre, president of the Miami-Dade chapter of the NAACP, tells Axios.

• Some of the factors at play, she argued, included some Black students being regulated to certain schools or traveling elsewhere to participate in specific programs offered outside of their neighborhood.
• Another consideration is the housing crisis, she says, which has impacted certain communities more than others.

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