The data paint a stark 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 — only 78 percent of Black and Hispanic students graduated in 2023, compared to 87 percent of white students and 93 percent of Asian students. Furthermore, 69 percent of white graduates in 2022 attended college , whereas only 57 percent of Black graduates and 39 percent of Hispanic graduates did the same.
When Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. ordered the desegregation of Boston’s public schools in 1974, the ruling sparked protests that made headlines nationwide. The decision — which mandated busing for 18,000 students — aimed to address inequity in Boston’s school system. Yet 50 years later, with the 2024 school year underway, education gaps persist.
Boston’s school assignment system has changed considerably since the 1970s. Busing today is voluntary: Students can choose to attend schools far from where they live as well as a range of neighborhood schools. This choice allows historically disadvantaged students to attend schools with more peers of different backgrounds, an option that many choose. Roughly three-quarters of students opted to enroll in non-neighborhood schools in the 2000s and 2010s. A recent study by our organization, MIT Blueprint Labs, shows that today’s assignment system works in the sense of facilitating integration.
However, the costs of the current system are high. Among the 100 US school districts with the highest enrollment, Boston maintains the greatest per-student transportation costs in the country. As of 2021, the city spent over $2,000 per student on travel, equivalent to 8 percent of per-pupil school spending.
Furthermore, the educational gains afforded by district-wide choice are less clear than the integration gains. Our research, which uses credible, randomized methods designed by Blueprint Labs to gauge the causal effect of enrollment at different types of schools, paints a nuanced picture of the benefits of travel to non-neighborhood schools. Black and Hispanic students who travel to a non-neighborhood school have more white and Asian peers than they otherwise would. But travel does not impact learning as measured by MCAS scores, high school graduation rates, or college enrollment. We argue that this is because in the current BPS choice system — unlike the separate and unequal system of 1974 — the schools students travel to are no better than those nearby.
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Attorney Theodore Landsmark, who came to national prominence 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. … Busing does not address the complexities of strengthening urban education for all our varied residents.”
In the 15 years since Landsmark’s op-ed, the need to rethink the city’s transportation policy has only grown. The vast sums that now go to cross-neighborhood transportation might be better spent. The city might instead invest in programs with proven educational benefits. Saga Education’s effective high-dosage tutoring program, for example, cost just $1,800 per student in 2023. This spending may do more to close racial achievement gaps than non-neighborhood assignment.
Some might counter that choice is intrinsically valuable and that neighborhood schools are likely to be more segregated than the schools that many historically disadvantaged families choose today. These undeniable benefits must be weighed, however, against alternative uses of the money that flows to busing. Boston schools have improved greatly since 1974: Dropout rates for all students have declined, and gaps by race, while still present, have narrowed. School assignment plans originating in 1974 may therefore be less useful today. It’s time to consider changing transportation policy in light of these changes in the city’s education landscape.
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Joshua Angrist and Parag Pathak are professors of economics at MIT and cofounders of Blueprint Labs and Avela Education. Amanda Schmidt is senior policy and communications associate at Blueprint Labs. Angrist won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2021, and Pathak was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal in 2018 as the best American economist under age 40.
Boston needs to reexamine school assignment system
