Massachusetts residents often express smugness about the strength of their education system, tying it to the state’s liberal political leaning. On the surface, this arrogance appears to be earned—Massachusetts regularly ranks among the top three states in the country for K-12 education and houses many of the nation’s top universities. In reality, the veneer of overall excellence covers up stark inequities and systemic failures in the state’s education system.
According to a 2024 report by the Massachusetts Racial Imbalance Advisory Council (RIAC), three in five Massachusetts public school students attend a racially segregated school (one in which more than 71 percent of students come from the same racial group). ‘Segregated white’ schools vastly outperform ‘segregated nonwhite’ schools, with gaps of over 20 percentage points in high school graduation rates and college attendance rates between the students who attend these institutions.
In Randolph, Massachusetts, my hometown, around 40 percent of the population identifies as Black or African American, 28 percent identifies as white, 13 percent identifies as Asian, and 13 percent identifies as Hispanic. Yet according to RIAC, Randolph High School, the town’s only public high school, falls under the category ‘intensely segregated nonwhite,’ with 91.6 percent of students identifying as nonwhite. Meanwhile, in neighboring Milton, 66.4 percent of the public high school’s students identify as white. At Milton High School, 76 percent of students met or exceeded Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) expectations in English Language Arts (ELA) and 73 percent met or exceeded expectations in Math. In Randolph, the numbers were 29 percent in English and 26 percent in Math.
These inequitable circumstances can be traced back to the complex history of exclusionary housing practices and unequal development in Massachusetts. In the 1950s and 1960s, the fruits of a decades-long plan to develop a highway surrounding Boston materialized as Route 128, or the Yankee Division Highway. A boom of suburban growth resulted, which would spread miles beyond Boston’s bordering communities. A consequence of Route 128, however, was the possibility of urban migration for low-income groups—a prospect viewed by wealthy towns as a devaluation of their land and communities. During the 1950s, many affluent towns along Route 128 responded to this threat by enacting large-lot zoning ordinances that mandated a minimum lot size in their designated areas, thus restricting the ability of low- and moderate-income groups to build single-family housing. This resulted in the migration of lower classes into less desirable neighborhoods, increasing income homogeneity within Boston’s suburbs. Consequently, landlords in lower-income communities adapted to the increased demand and began to raise rents. Local governments responded by removing land from the market to prevent new families who could not share the tax burden of funding public schools and amenities from moving in. The result of this unequal development was not just segregation between suburbs but also segregation within suburbs, with the lowest income communities being pushed into older and more rundown subsections of low-income suburbs. This enduring pattern of segregation has produced the stark educational disparities between towns like Milton and Randolph that we see today.
A table of Boston’s suburban population in the 1970s shows that in the more affluent inner suburb of Milton, 77 residents out of approximately 27,000 identified as “Blacks and other races.” In its similarly sized neighboring town, Randolph, 564 “Blacks and other races” were identified out of about 27,000. This gap of just hundreds widened rapidly over time. Milton fought to maintain its restrictive zoning laws, which limited residency to those who could afford its increasingly expensive single-family homes (the average value of a home in Milton is currently $1,046,686). In Milton, the majority of land falls under the Residential A zone, which mandates a minimum lot size of 40,000 square feet for any single-family home. Even when the Massachusetts legislature passed the MBTA Communities Law in 2021, requiring Milton to establish “at least 1 district of reasonable size in which multi-family housing is permitted,” Milton voters rejected a proposal to bring the town into compliance with the law. Meanwhile, Randolph upheld less restrictive zoning laws, with the majority of land in the town being part of a Residential Single Family High Density District, mandating a minimum lot size of 12,000 square feet. Home prices in Randolph also stayed significantly cheaper than those in Milton (the average home value in Randolph is currently $576,067), increasing its popularity as a destination for families priced out of Dorchester, Mattapan, and other immigrant neighborhoods in Boston. At the time of the 2000 census, 61.5 percent of Randolph residents were white, compared to 84.4 percent of Milton residents. By the 2020 census, the numbers were vastly different, with 71 percent of Milton residents identifying as white and only 28 percent of Randolph residents identifying as white.
Yet this does not fully explain the disparity between the two public school systems. In fact, the issue of ‘white flight’ in Boston and its suburbs is often viewed exclusively through the disastrous effects of the desegregation busing crisis. In 1974, the Massachusetts legislature ordered desegregation busing in the Boston Public Schools system in accordance with the Racial Imbalance Act of 1965. A period of intense and violent racist backlash followed, leading to a decline in public school enrollment of white students and white flight to the suburbs. White flight in Massachusetts, however, should not be viewed only as the migration of white people from racially diverse neighborhoods in Boston into white enclaves in the suburbs. This phenomenon is equally prevalent within suburbs themselves, as studies have shown evidence of white schoolchildren increasingly relocating into private schools in response to increases in minority populations. A 2007 study published in the Economics of Education Review found that a one percentage point increase in a county’s proportion of minority school-age children increases the probability of white students going to private school by 0.27 percentage points. This response was even stronger to increases in the concentration of Black children. Similarly, a Harvard University study found that “in school districts and metropolitan areas with higher shares of black students in the population, a higher proportion of whites attend private schools.”
This can severely impact the quality of education for affected school districts. In Randolph, white flight out of public schools was reflected through a decrease in overall enrollment, from roughly 4,000 to 3,000 students, in the first decade of the 21st century. During this time period, the number of white students enrolled in Randolph Public Schools dropped, while the number of students from other racial groups remained constant.
When violent incidents exacerbated existing issues for the Randolph Public Schools system in 2007, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges placed Randolph High School’s accreditation on probation. In November of that year, the Massachusetts Board of Education officially declared Randolph Public Schools “Underperforming,” with the MCAS data revealing that only 59 percent of 10th-grade students in the district achieved the levels Proficient or Advanced in ELA, while 55 percent did so in Math.
In 2024, the figures dropped to 27 percent and 25 percent, respectively. During the school year, enrollment also fell to just under 2,900 students. This reflects a profound failure of the Randolph Public School system to prepare its students for future success adequately and highlights the long-term consequences of unequal development. For the students that remain in Randolph Public Schools—92 percent of which are students of color and 77 percent of which are identified as High Needs—the decreasing enrollment means reduced funding, staffing cuts, reductions in course offerings, and other declines in school quality. This is especially devastating for High Needs students (identified as Low Income, an English Learner or Former English Learner, or a Student with Disabilities), who often rely more heavily on school based supports and require more funding to achieve positive outcomes. The losses of funding and resources have resulted in diminished graduation rates, college matriculation rates, and college readiness levels, disproportionately affecting marginalized students and hindering socioeconomic mobility.
This trend is certainly not unique to the towns of Milton and Randolph. The RIAC identified this trend in schools across the state, comparing Springfield’s Sumner Elementary and Longmeadow’s Center Elementary, two elementary schools with radically different demographics and student outcomes located just two miles apart in western Massachusetts.
The long-term solution is not merely funneling more money into intensely segregated, underfunded schools. Investing in creating more racially and economically integrated schools is significantly more impactful and cost-effective, as well as beneficial to the general welfare of students and society. Schools that are both racially and economically diverse promote equity, civic engagement, cultural competence, and reductions in racial bias. They also improve academic performance, as students from integrated schools are much less likely to drop out of school than those from segregated, high-poverty schools.
The Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth (MassINC) “Choosing Integration” report identifies a policy framework for promoting racial and socioeconomic integration in schools. The think tank’s recommendations include a more sophisticated system for publishing and analyzing integration data and adopting practices that promote integration in diverse schools and in charter schools. This includes supporting housing mobility and suburban mixed-income, multifamily housing developments; passing and enforcing strong fair housing laws; and utilizing public transportation to further integration.
The challenge in addressing racial segregation is the unpopularity of legislative solutions among wealthy, white suburbanites—the beneficiaries of housing and schooling inequity. The resistance to multifamily zoning in Milton, in defiance of state law, illustrates how affluent communities fight to maintain their homogeneity and keep out minorities and lower-income residents. Yet there is still hope for school desegregation efforts. The Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO), a state-funded, voluntary school desegregation effort that aims to reduce racial isolation by enrolling select students from Boston and Springfield in affluent, high-performing suburban public schools, has yielded promising results. METCO participants are five to 10 percentage points more likely to “meet expectations” in MCAS Math and ELA testing and have a four-year graduation rate 10 percentage points higher than those who did not participate in the program. Similarly, METCO participants are also 17 percent more likely to enroll in a four-year college than nonparticipants. Despite opponents of METCO expressing concerns that the program could lead to lower performance for suburban students, there has been “no negative impact on college preparedness, competitiveness, persistence, or graduation.”
Still, METCO has significant limitations. Despite the program’s popularity—with around 50 percent of Black youth and 20 percent of Latino youth in Boston applying—the limited number of seats within the program necessitates a lottery-based system, ultimately excluding many students who are then forced to remain in underfunded, segregated schools. METCO is also limited to Boston and Springfield residents, excluding students from poor suburban areas. For METCO students, there are also challenges to remaining in the programs. Students of color in METCO have been subjected to racist harassment and bullying, often without adequate support and intervention, leading to civil rights complaints and even criminal charges. One student noted that within the schools, both educators and peers alike can create a hostile environment: “They see us as charity cases. They have to educate us because our schools are not good, and basically, we are relegated to second-class citizens.”
To create a more robust school desegregation program, we must be vocal and uncompromising about the unnatural, inequitable, and unsustainable nature of highly segregated schools, as well as the benefits of a more equitable and integrated school system. We must reject NIMBYism for the development of affordable housing in affluent neighborhoods and the enrollment of nonwhite, nonaffluent students in well-resourced schools. Moreover, we must confidently call out fearmongering rhetoric about demographic change as racist and classist.