Boston needs to reexamine its school assignment system

When Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. ordered the desegregation of Boston’s public schools in 1974, the ruling sparked protests that made national headlines. The decision — which mandated busing for 18,000 students — was intended to address inequities in Boston’s school system. But fifty years later, with the 2024 school year underway, education gaps persist.

The data paints a grim picture. White and Asian students in Boston score significantly higher than their black and Hispanic peers on state standardized tests, and graduation rates for black and Hispanic students remain below those of other students in the district — just 78 percent of black and Hispanic students graduated in 2023, compared to 87 percent of white students and 93 percent of Asian students. Additionally, 69 percent of whites will graduate in 2022 went to collegewhile only 57 percent of black graduates and 39 percent of Hispanic graduates did the same.

Boston’s school assignment system has changed significantly since the 1970s. Nowadays, bus use is voluntary: students can choose to go to schools far from their hometown, or to a number of neighborhood schools. This choice allows historically disadvantaged students to attend schools with more peers from diverse backgrounds, an option that many choose. About three-quarters of students chose to enroll in non-neighborhood schools in the 2000s and 2010s. A recent study by our organization, MIT Blueprint Labsshows that the current allocation system works in the sense that it facilitates integration.

However, the costs of the current system are high. Under 100 US school districts with the highest enrollment, Boston claims the highest transport costs per student in the country. As of 2021, the city spent more than $2,000 per student on travel, equivalent to 8 percent of school spending per student.

Moreover, the educational gains that a district-wide choice produces are less clear than the integration gains. Our research, which uses credible, randomized methods designed by Blueprint Labs to measure the causal effect of enrolling in different types of schools, paints a nuanced picture of the benefits of traveling to non-neighborhood schools. Black and Hispanic students who travel to a school outside their neighborhood have more white and Asian peers than would otherwise be the case. But travel doesn’t impact learning, as measured by MCAS scores, high school graduation rates, or college applications. We argue that this is because in the current BPS choice system – unlike the separate and unequal system of 1974 – the schools that students travel to are no better than the schools nearby.

Attorney Theodore Landsmark, who rose to national fame in 1976 as the victim of a racially motivated attack by anti-busing protesters in front of City Hall, foresaw this dilemma. In a 2009 Globe op-ed: Landsmark wrote, “It’s time to end busing in Boston. The city’s demographics have changed. … Bus transit does not address the complexities of strengthening urban education for all of our diverse residents.”

In the fifteen years since Landsmark’s op-ed, the need to rethink the city’s transportation policy has only grown greater. The enormous sums that now go to cross-border transport could perhaps be better spent. The city could instead invest in programs with proven educational benefits. The effective high dose tutoring program from Saga Educationfor example, will cost only $1,800 per student in 2023. These expenditures may do more to close racial achievement gaps than out-of-area assignments.

Some might object that choice is intrinsically valuable and that neighborhood schools are likely to be more segregated than the schools that many historically disadvantaged families choose to attend today. However, these undeniable benefits must be weighed against alternative uses for the money flowing into bus transportation. Boston’s schools have improved dramatically since 1974, with dropout rates among all students declining, and racial disparities, while still present, have narrowed. School assignment plans from 1974 may therefore be less useful today. It is time to consider changing transportation policies in light of these changes in the city’s educational landscape.

Joshua Angrist and Parag Pathak are professors of economics at MIT and co-founders of Blueprint Labs And Avela Education. Amanda Schmidt is a senior policy and communications officer at Blueprint Labs. Angrist won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2021 and Pathak received the John Bates Clark Medal in 2018 as the best American economist under 40.