Anyone familiar with American public education knows that many large, professedly progressive cities have some of the nation’s worst rates of school segregation. Traditional zoned neighborhood schools, which teachers’ unions believe should be the only form of public education available, have made the problem worse. The unions may not intend to cause these disparities, but their efforts to monopolize public education have contributed to the persistence of racial segregation.
Throughout the twentieth century, zoned public schools advanced formal and informal plans to remain racially segregated. In 1964—a decade after Brown v. Board of Education—New York City students boycotted classes to protest educational segregation. “You don’t have to go to Mississippi to find a segregated school system,” said Malcolm X, who attended the demonstration. “We have it right here in New York City.” Nine years ago, then-city councilmembers Ritchie Torres and Brad Lander mentioned that some of the city’s public schools are called “apartheid” schools because 90 percent of their students are black and Latino. Though their language may sound extreme, they had a point: in prioritizing zoned public schools, city government disadvantages black and Latino students by denying them quality school choices, both public and private, in more racially and economically integrated environments. This contributes to the perpetuation of racial disparities and de facto segregation. To close such opportunity gaps, policymakers must allow for competition and parental choice in public education.
For big-city teachers’ unions, however, choice undermines their aims, even if it would promote racial and socioeconomic integration. They claim to have the interests of American students at heart, but the unions’ real mission is to insulate their members from potential job losses through competition or accountability. One of their main tactics is to pressure policymakers to increase funding for traditional neighborhood public schools, where their members work. Following activism by the United Federation of Teachers, for example, New York City mayor Eric Adams held individual school budgets “harmless” in 2022, 2023, and 2024, continuing funding despite enrollment declines in many schools over the last few years.
Whether public schools adequately educate children is financially immaterial to the unions—so long as the school stays open, their members’ interests are safe. Expanding education funding, with little accountability, is how Chicago Public Schools and the New York City Department of Education can spend far above the $18,614 national average per pupil and still see some schools producing dismal reading and math scores. Many of these poorly performing schools are in minority neighborhoods, where, without other options, parents must accept a substandard education for their children.
Black families lose out the most from the unions’ efforts, and they are fleeing cities like Chicago and New York as a result. Between 2000 and 2020, Chicago lost 49 percent of its black child population. New York City’s population of black children and teens dropped more than 19 percent from 2010 to 2020 alone. Black children in 2005 made up 35 percent of the city’s K-12 public school students; as of last year, that figure hovers around 20 percent. Black students have also disenrolled at a steeper rate than other demographic groups, in no small part thanks to poor-quality zoned schools.
Unions also cajoled school districts to subject children and parents to months, or even more than a year, of virtual learning during the pandemic, despite overwhelming evidence that kids were highly unlikely to develop severe symptoms of Covid-19. Because of these prolonged shutdowns, tens of thousands of parents pulled their kids from the New York and Chicago public school systems, turning to local private, parochial, or other jurisdictions’ public schools for in-person learning. The episode proved the power of parental choice and school competition.
For poor families, disproportionately black and Latino, public charter, magnet, and state private school scholarship programs offer the only alternatives to failing neighborhood schools and the machinations of union leadership. When given the choice, many of these families prefer such options to union-run schools. Data indicate that a growing majority of black students in New York, for example, are exiting their zoned schools in favor of charter, magnet, and private schools. In fact, many charter schools are majority nonwhite. Some choice is better than none, but ending educational segregation will require more.
Black families’ rapid adoption of these options strongly suggests the desirability of freeing all families from the constraints of neighborhood zoning. Universal school choice would allow minority students to attend better-performing public and private schools in other communities. Neighborhood schools would not disappear, but they would coexist as one alternative among others in a new competitive environment. Groups like the Chicago Teachers Union make misleading claims that such policies divert needed funding from traditional public schools. But in Chicago, charter schools receive at least $8,600 less than traditional public schools in per-pupil funding, and get no facility support. Likewise, in New York City, charters receive $18,340 in per-pupil funding, about half of what the city spends on each student in traditional public schools.
Public charter schools are outperforming their traditional public counterparts—even as they serve similar and sometimes even more disadvantaged student populations. Urban black charter students annually receive the equivalent of roughly 40 additional days of learning in math beyond their traditional public school peers. The Stanford University Center for Research on Education Outcomes found that “In charter schools, Black and Hispanic students, as well as students in poverty, have stronger [academic] growth than their traditional public school peers.” Greater integration promises to build on this success by countering the effects of concentrated poverty.
For too long, the public education system has segregated and denied opportunity for minority kids. School choice would help to put these failures right.
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