Communities that break away from countywide districts to form their own school systems typically serve more white students than the “left-behind” districts, according to a new study examining the trend of district secession in Alabama, Louisiana and Tennessee.
Focusing on East Baton Rouge in Louisiana, Shelby County in Tennessee and five counties in Alabama, the researchers write that secession is “eroding what has historically been one of the cornerstones of school desegregation in the South: the one-county, one-school-system jurisdiction.”
