Title: Did busing for school integration succeed? Here’s what research says. - Chalkbeat
Headings: Did busing for school desegregation succeed? Here’s what research says.
Did busing for school desegregation succeed? Here’s what research says.
Research shows that school desegregation — often including “busing” — helped black students in the long run.
More recent research continues to find benefits of integrated schools, though they tend to be somewhat smaller.
There’s little evidence that integration hurts white students — and it may also reduce racial bias.
School desegregation has had some negative side effects.

Content: The only failure is that we stopped pursuing it and allowed the reign of segregation to return.” At the same time, there is evidence that desegregation efforts have had some unintended consequences, like the loss of black teachers. Here’s what research tells us about how these desegregation policies worked. Research shows that school desegregation — often including “busing” — helped black students in the long run. To isolate the impact of court-ordered school integration in the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, Johnson used two strategies. First, he compared students in the same school district right before and after court-ordered integration was put in place. Second, he compared pairs of siblings, when one went to integrated schools but the other didn’t. His conclusions were similar: integration helped black students academically and into adulthood. The effects were quite large: