Education segregation in Indiana

Indiana became a state in 1816. In 1843 the Legislature stated that "colored students" could not study in the public schools (see Union Literary Institute). In 1869, the legislature authorized separate but equal public schools for black children. In 1877, the legislature revised the law to allow black attendance at a white school if a black school was not nearby. Home rule for municipalities meant that application was uneven. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) legitimized separate but equal as policy. In 1946, the Gary School Board issued a non-discriminatory policy. Because neighborhoods had different demographic characteristics, the schools there remained effectively segregated. In 1949, the state adopted language that was unambiguously in favor of integration. It was the last of the northern (non-Confederate) states to do so.

After Brown v. Board of Education, the state still needed a legal push. Bell v. School City of Gary (1963) was the first. Three years later came Copeland v. South Bend Community School Corporation (1967). Three years after that came Banks v. Muncie Community Schools (1970). National policy came the next year in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971), which relied on the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In the 1970s, the federal answer was court-ordered busing. In Indianapolis, busing began in 1981.[2] Busing in Indianapolis ended in 2016.

Hoosiers describe themselves as being more white than much of the rest of the country. In the 2010 Census, 84.4% reported being white, compared with 73.8 for the nation as a whole.

Indiana had never been a big slave state. The 1840 Census reported three slaves and 11,262 “free colored” persons out of a population of 685,866. By 1850, no slaves were reported. That is not to say that the state was welcoming to blacks. The 1851 state constitution said, "No Negro or mulatto shall come into or settle in the State, after the adoption of this Constitution.” In the early 20th century, mechanization of agriculture in the South stimulated immigration of blacks to large cities like Indianapolis. Migration accelerated in World War II, slowing only in the 1970s. Simultaneously, whites began to move out of the downtown areas to suburbs.

Latinos were a small portion of Indiana's population prior to 1970. In any case the Census did not reliably track Latinos before the 1970 Census. The 2000 Census described 3.5% of Indiana's population as Latino. In the next decade, the state's Latino population grew at twice the national rate. In 2010, the state was 6.0% Latino. They have settled more-or-less evenly distributed across the state.

The demographics of schools in Indiana reflect the composition of the communities in which they are located. The average white student in Indiana is likely to attend a school where 81% of the students are white. The average black student is likely to attend a school where 68% of the students are non-white.[1]

Since 1996, the relative segregation of classrooms across the United States has been studied by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard until 2007 and subsequently at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. In 2017, the Project cooperated to with Indiana University to study the conditions in the state.[1]

A 2012 UCLA study showed that Indiana had the sixth most segregated classrooms in America.[3]

Indiana has one of the largest school voucher programs in the United States.[4] Critics contend that vouchers contribute to school segreation. Analysis of two recent studies on vouchers show that, in one case they do contribute to more segreation, and in the second, they have little effect, with black recipeients who had been in a majority-black public school used the vouchers to attend a majority-black private school.[5]