Reporting Guide: School Segregation

Segregation may no longer be explicitly sanctioned by law, but it remains entrenched in many public school systems. At the Education Writers Association’s 2025 National Seminar in May, a panel of journalists shared how they investigated modern-day school segregation, navigating sensitive interviews, historical nuance and common framing pitfalls along the way.

Participants

• Lily Altavena, educational equity reporter, Detroit Free Press. Altavena revisited the Milliken v. Bradley decision 50 years later, exploring how district boundaries have shaped racial divides in Michigan’s schools.
• Catherine Carrera, Newark bureau chief, Chalkbeat. As part of a consortium of media outlets that worked together to cover school segregation in New Jersey, Carrera and her team contributed reporting on a lawsuit alleging statewide segregation in New Jersey schools, despite years of equity-focused funding.
• Marianna McMurdock, freelance journalist. Her series marking the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education examined how segregation endures through zoning laws and address-based enrollment prosecutions.
• Amber Payne, publisher, The Emancipator. Payne helped produce a multimedia series marking 50 years since Boston’s busing-focused desegregation efforts , weaving archival materials and community voices together with contemporary analysis.

Top Takeaways

Unequal access can hide behind “neutral” policies. McMurdock emphasized that zoning boundaries and address-based enrollment rules often allow school segregation to flourish. “You can’t be turned away from a school because of race, but if all the Black people live on one side of the line and all the white people live on the other, it’s OK to draw that line and assign kids to schools based on it,” she said. 

McMurdock noted that in at least 24 states, families can be prosecuted for using another address to get into better schools. Some districts even hire private investigators to track them down.

Turning assumptions into evidence is worth the time and effort. Altavena encouraged reporters to interrogate what people think they know about segregation in their communities, then back it up with data. In Detroit, the widely held belief that schools remain segregated decades after the Milliken decision was, in her words, “the thing that people always assume is true but never really investigate to find out is true.” Her data analysis showed schools are more segregated now than 50 years ago.

Language and framing should be thoughtful and deliberate. Payne urged reporters to think critically about the language they inherit, from terms like “forced busing” to “parental rights.” She noted such language is shaped by a lens of whiteness and influences public understanding. Framing isn’t neutral, she said — it “impacts how you interpret events, how you understand them, and how communities and societies act upon them.”

Centering the people living the story is essential. Panelists underscored the importance of talking directly to students, families, teachers and activists who are often closer to the issues than policymakers.

McMurdock urged reporters to ask, “Who witnesses the exclusion play out?” and to turn to youth organizations, civil rights attorneys and educators for sources. 

Carrera highlighted how students’ perspectives can illuminate overlooked stories. When Chalkbeat’s team asked New Jersey students what mattered most to them, their focus on teacher diversity shifted the scope of the newsroom’s reporting.

Story Ideas

• School closures: Closures can exacerbate inequities if districts consolidate in ways that steer marginalized students into underresourced or overcrowded schools. McMurdock recommended exploring where and how students from shuttered schools will be reassigned, and who’s involved in those decisions.
• Declining enrollment:
Shrinking enrollment often results in less state and federal funding, frequently hitting lower-income communities hardest.
• Impact of past decisions: Education reporters often cover policies as they’re proposed or voted on, but there are opportunities to revisit those decisions later to understand their real-world effects.
• School choice policies:
Open enrollment and charter expansions can expand access but may also reinforce existing inequities. Investigate who is opting in, who is left out and why.

Reporting Tips

• Treat vulnerable sources with care. Work to build trust with people who have experienced trauma, and be intentional about how you end interviews. Then, “write about dignity, resiliency, solutions — not just the pain and trauma,” McMurdock said.
• Lean on scholars and librarians. “Desegregation and segregation are topics that are heavily covered and heavily researched by scholars,” Altavena said, encouraging reporters to use their work, cite it and interview them. She also urged reporters to connect with state and university librarians who can help uncover overlooked archival documents and historical context.
• Be transparent with comparisons. Data across decades may not align perfectly, but it can still reveal meaningful trends. Just be transparent and add appropriate context, Altavena said.
• Set ground rules for collaborations. Both Carrera and Payne stressed the importance of formalizing newsroom partnerships aimed at expanding the reach and impact of reporting. Outlining editorial roles, publishing rights and expectations upfront can prevent confusion and conflict down the line.

Mistakes to Avoid

• Failing to scrutinize your language: Terms like “busing crisis,” “forced busing,” or even “school choice” carry decades of framing rooted in white comfort, Payne said. Understand their origins and implications. When writing, ask: Who does this terminology serve? Whose perspective does it reflect?
• Erasing community advocacy: Coverage has too often overlooked or downplayed decades of organizing by Black and brown families fighting for equitable education, Payne said.
• Assuming funding equals integration: Carrera’s team’s reporting shows that even significant investment in school equity funding doesn’t automatically lead to desegregation. Without policy change, structural exclusion may persist.
• Forgetting what fueled the fight: In places like Detroit, the push for desegregation was primarily driven not by a desire for racial integration, but for fair access to educational resources. That nuance often gets lost, Altavena noted.
• Confusing mobility with equity: Too many programs treat success as something that requires removing students from their communities, Payne said. Question why investments aren’t being made in the schools those students are leaving behind.

Resources

• New America map: Analyzes nearly 25,000 neighboring school district borders to reveal where borders create the deepest racial and economic divides. 
• Available to All: Nonpartisan watchdog group that defends equal access to public schools.
• Kicked Out: Series exploring the impact of school districts removing students for “residency fraud.”
• Segregation Tracking Project: An interactive tool from the University of Southern California and Stanford that maps school and neighborhood segregation by race, ethnicity and income across over several decades.
• Books: 
  • “The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North” (Michelle Adams)
  • “The Detroit School Busing Case: Milliken v. Bradley and the Controversy Over Desegregation” (Joyce Baugh)
  • “Silver Rights: The story of the Carter family’s brave decision to send their children to an all-white school and claim their civil rights” (Constance Curry)
  • “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America” (Richard Rothstein)