‘Do You Support Busing?’ Is Not the Best Question
by Emily Badger
July 6, 2019
The New York Times
NCSD Research Advisory Panel members Genevieve Siegel-Hawley and Erica Frankenberg were quoted in this article, following Kamala Harris and Joe Biden’s exchange about busing on the Democratic debate stage.
“But historically, the defendants in most school desegregation cases were school districts and school boards, and so courts had no power to demand fixes that might have affected the housing market.
That placed outsized expectations on busing that would be the same today, and raises another question: ‘Why was the burden of undoing centuries of discrimination and segregation placed solely on schools?’ said Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who studies the relationship between schools and housing.”
…
“George Romney, Mitt Romney’s father and the secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the Nixon administration, argued for witholding federal money from communities that blocked housing for lower-income and minority families, rather than just transporting African-American children to schools in such places. But President Nixon halted the idea.
‘That could have been a really different turning point in terms of how we think about school desegregation, but also about our neighborhoods,’ said Erica Frankenberg, a professor of education at Penn State.”
This article also references NCSD’s statement regarding the proposed Strength in Diversity Act:
“Some of these choices would have to be made locally. But the federal government could offer grants to entice districts and states willing to make them.”