ProPublica report looks at how private schools help institutionalize racial segregation

Mississippi’s school integration history is well known: In response to federally court-ordered desegregation, which came about in 1970, then-all white private schools proliferated. Though many public schools successfully integrated, over time white students increasingly fled to those largely segregated private schools.

Now, in large swaths of the state, public and private schools are largely segregated by race. A new report by ProPublica highlights this dynamic and considers how the push for public support for private schools will play into it.

Opponents of efforts to use school vouchers and charter schools, and to enable parents to use public funds to pay private school tuition, say such moves would reduce funding for cash-strapped public schools while promoting majority-white private schools, leading to further racial segregation.

The ProPublica report focuses on one example, Amite County, near the Louisiana line in southwest Mississippi.