Integration: Testing Is the Payoff

In 1964, White Plains, N.Y. (pop. 55,000) became the nation's first city to abolish de facto segregation in its public school system by setting a 10% minimum and 30% maximum limit on Negro enrollment in any of its schools, and by bussing Negro pupils to previously all-white or mostly white schools. Scholastically, White Plains' campaign has paid off. Negro pupils who attended integrated schools since first grade score from 5% to 15% higher on reading and arithmetic achievement tests than third-graders who took the same tests when integration began. Both these groups are doing better than Negro students who had completed sixth grade before 1964. White students at schools integrated since 1964 also had higher scores on most tests than did their predecessors in predominantly white neighborhood schools. Integration, moreover, has not provoked any flight of white students from public to private schools.