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NEW BEDFORD — Beyond rocking sailboats and the coastline’s gentle curve, three elementary schools huddle on the northern edge of Clark’s Cove. Though physically near each other, the three schools on Massachusetts’ South Coast serve vastly different students.
Nearest to the lapping waves is DeValles Elementary, built in 1912 and among New Bedford’s oldest schools. The mighty brick building stands like a fortress just one block from the waterfront. The neighborhood is old Portuguese, full of bakeries and shops with dancing red and green flags and tenement-style triple-deckers. More than half of DeValles’ students speak a first language other than English.
One mile inland and north as the gull flies, Winslow Elementary resides in a neighborhood of single-family homes and tree-lined streets. Another of New Bedford’s aging schools, Winslow, opened in 1920, offers sweeping lawns that differ from DeValles’ asphalt streetscape. Of the students who pass through Winslow’s doors, only 7% are enrolled in English language learner (ELL) courses — six times fewer than DeValles’ 42%.
But if the gull had turned south, flying the same distance from DeValles into neighboring Dartmouth, it would have come to DeMello Elementary. Less than 3% of students at DeMello are English learners — roughly 20 times fewer than in New Bedford’s DeValles.
That traveling gull, flying among the three schools with barely a flap of its wings, would pass over a complex landscape of social, economic, and racial disparity.
New Bedford, a city proud of its abolitionism, is today still marked by racial and economic segregation. As the nation looks back on the 70 years since the federal desegregation order in Brown vs. Board of Education, new research shows that segregation has returned after solutions were allowed to slip away.
Ten district and charter schools in New Bedford received a label of “segregated” in a report from the Racial Imbalance Advisory Council (RIAC) this year, a group within the state’s department of education. The city’s borders with its suburbs also mark sharp differences in racial, ethnic, and economic composition — which reproduce divisions in the schools and may affect the resources and opportunities available to children.
Scores on third grade English Language Arts tests, often used as a benchmark for literacy, can differ significantly — including among the three schools near Clark’s Cove. At DeValles, the poorest school of the three, less than one in four students met or exceeded expectations on a state test. In Dartmouth, the DeMello school had twice as many students hit the same threshold, which was more than the state average.
“Residential segregation is everything,” said New Bedford Superintendent Andrew O’Leary in an interview with The Light. The 10 New Bedford public and charter schools that the RIAC labeled “segregated” all belong to neighborhoods with high rates of poverty, especially youth poverty.
Superintendent O’Leary said he was wary of the new report from the RIAC: “Labeling and demands for change are nothing new,” he said. “The conversation is certainly welcome, but that’s not a solution.”
“Penalties and labels reinforce bias. That’s what RIAC blew right past,” O’Leary said. “They don’t look at causes; that’s what disappointing.”
Nearby schools can have vast differences
At DeValles, more than 90% of the students are “high needs,” a measurement that includes low-income, language learning, and special needs students. The area around DeValles reports a youth poverty rate of over 30% and a median income of around $40,000, according to census data. But the RIAC made its designations based on racial composition alone: 75% of DeValles’ students identify as students of color. Segregated.
Just a mile down the road in Dartmouth, DeMello has less than half the “high needs” students as DeValles. Even though more students have learning disabilities at the Dartmouth school, significantly fewer are learning English or qualify as low-income. Census numbers say the area around DeMello has a youth poverty rate of 0% and a median income of over $100,000. The RIAC gave DeMello a label based on its more than 80% white students. Segregated.
Winslow, the third school near Clark’s Cove, falls between the other two on most metrics. But even this New Bedford neighborhood has stark differences with its neighbors in the DeValles’ area, including a youth poverty rate of just 2%. Winslow was called “racially diverse” by the RIAC, because many Hispanic and Latino students and Black students go to school alongside non-Hispanic white students, the largest category in the school. There are also smaller populations of Asian, Native American, and multi-racial students at Winslow, according to department of education statistics. Not segregated.
Research shows that integrated, diverse schools benefit all students, including white students. The state official who oversaw Massachusetts’ desegregation efforts in the 1970s and 1980s says schools need to focus on how to provide those benefits to all students.
“The reason we were doing desegregation was concern about every kid having an adequate education,” said Charles Glenn, the now-retired state official and professor who oversaw New Bedford’s and the commonwealth’s integration efforts from 1971 to 1991. As the director of the state’s Bureau of Equal Educational Opportunity, Glenn said that he saw his work as ensuring good outcomes. Desegregation was simply an effective tool to reach that outcome.
For instance, Carney Elementary, the New Bedford school that was one of four “racially imbalanced” schools, according to a 1971 statewide report, is still categorized as segregated today. But that alone doesn’t perturb Glenn, who said, “It doesn’t break my heart … if Carney has outcomes that help kids make a success of their lives,” Glenn said. “I believe in integration, but it doesn’t break my heart that there are excellent Black schools.”
But the outcomes at Carney, DeValles and nearly all of New Bedford’s segregated schools do lag behind the city’s more racially diverse schools — and further behind the overwhelmingly white schools in nearby suburbs. New Bedford’s segregated schools are also home to large concentrations of the city’s impoverished students, making it hard to disentangle the root causes.
“Schools with poorer kids having lower achievement is not news,” Glenn said. The home life of students has huge effects on their preparedness and attitudes about school. “Unless you take children away from parents when they’re born, you can’t eliminate the effects of parents,” said Glenn.
“That doesn’t mean we accept that any kid can’t receive an adequate education,” Glenn continued. “There can be different outcomes as long as no kids have bad outcomes.”
The Light asked Superintendent O’Leary about the scores in New Bedford. “There’s nothing wrong with holding schools in New Bedford to account,” he said. But he pointed out that schools and programs in New Bedford — including the district’s alternative school, Whaling City — could be classified as segregated or low-performing, but that they offered valuable services to deserving students.
“We’ve learned that strict accountability, without an understanding of need, and without seeing success beyond the scores … that doesn’t work.”
Segregation then and now
New Bedford today experiences racial segregation both within its city neighborhoods and across its borders with nearby towns. The phenomenon isn’t new. In 1971, New Bedford was one of four school districts found in violation of the Massachusetts’ Racial Imbalance Act, a now-inactive 1965 law that required the state to intervene into segregated schools.
“A number of these things haven’t persisted as they have relapsed,” said Charles Glenn, during a recent interview with The Light from his Jamaica Plain home. “The state took its eye off the ball.”
The department Glenn oversaw and its work were abandoned in 1991, the same year the U.S. Supreme Court decided that federal desegregation orders could end, even if such retreat would knowingly re-introduce racial isolation. In the three decades since, the nation has seen a reversion toward segregated schools in every region — the South, West, and Northeast alike — including an almost tripling of “intensely” segregated schools.
Urban districts like New Bedford are most likely to experience segregation. And more schools within the city limits are segregated than in 1971, according to this year’s RIAC report. A growing number of Hispanic and Latino immigrants have changed the face of segregation — both in the city and across the country — since the 1960s and ’70s. As a result, schools today are “doubly segregated” by race and poverty. In New Bedford, the 10 public and charter schools categorized as segregated were on average 55% Hispanic or Latino and 86% low income.
The general population of New Bedford, in contrast, is about 24% Hispanic or Latino and about 20% low income.
The reality of segregation stands in contrast to what most Americans say, which is that they support civil rights and think children should attend diverse schools. The policies they write say something else. “In a third of a century of school resegregation there have been no significant new policies or court decisions supporting even voluntary desegregation,” says a 2024 report from The Civil Rights Project at UCLA.
The 66% students of color in New Bedford Public Schools is almost 50 percentage points more than in neighboring Fairhaven, Dartmouth, and Acushnet — for example, 66% students of color in New Bedford versus 17% in Fairhaven. The disparity reflects the unequal housing opportunity that underlies most school assignments: nearly one third of Black and Latino Americans say they experienced discrimination while looking to buy a home. “White resistance to families of color growing up and living in racially and economically diverse neighborhoods” is among the most significant obstacles to integration, according to the UCLA authors.
Admission policies at some local public and charter schools can also contribute to segregation. Superintendent O’Leary said schools like Greater New Bedford Voc-Tech and the public charters “don’t reflect the makeup of the city,” and therefore contribute to unbalanced demographics.
Alma del Mar and Global Learning, the city’s two charter schools, have admissions processes known to exclude some low-income students, especially those experiencing homelessness, school officials recently told The Light. Alma del Mar’s executive director, Taylor DeLoach, said the school was supporting state legislation that would change the admissions process to be more inclusive. Both schools say they strive for inclusivity in their mission statements. For now, lower rates of low-income students attend both Alma del Mar and Global Learning than New Bedford Public Schools.
Some of the starkest disparities come from GNB Voc-Tech. To this day, no school in New Bedford has a lower percentage of English learners than Voc-Tech’s 4%. Voc-Tech also has a lower percentage of low-income students than any other New Bedford school. Though Voc-Tech draws from surrounding towns, its admissions policies are under continued scrutiny from elected officials for failing to admit representative portions of students from all of its sending districts.
What’s different about New Bedford’s segregated schools?
A spokesperson for the mayor said New Bedford Public Schools are already inclusive. “We educate students who live in our city regardless of race, gender, etc. The only qualification is you live in New Bedford,” wrote Jonathan Darling, the mayor’s spokesperson, in an email. “That sounds pretty inclusive.”
But under the hood of the city’s public schools, there are differences in opportunities and experiences, especially between the schools categorized as segregated and diverse.
For example, Black teachers are known to greatly improve the outcomes of Black students, showing the importance of a teaching workforce that’s representative of the student body. In New Bedford, schools categorized as segregated employ slightly more teachers of color, but gaps between students and teachers of color are much larger — making those schools less representative.
For example, Gomes, which the RIAC called segregated, has a large gap between its 88% students of color and 29% teachers of color. That’s much larger than the gap between the 37% students and 6% teachers of color at Pulaski — a racially diverse school.
Across all New Bedford’s schools, the average gap between students and teachers of color is 48%. In the 10 segregated schools, it’s larger, with an average gap of 57% between students and teachers of color.
Superintendent O’Leary said his district is making efforts to hire a diverse workforce. But he said there are forces at work beyond the scope of one district or city. “It’s difficult if you’re not starting from a base of diverse applicants,” he said. “It’s also gotten increasingly more expensive for all candidates — including diverse candidates — to attain credentials and stay in the profession.”
Getting teachers to stay on the job is a challenge. “Educators deserve to be well paid,” said O’Leary. But districts like New Bedford rely on state funding formulas for most of their budgets. As a result, educators have fewer incentives to build their careers in low-income schools. Even within New Bedford, segregated schools have a lower retention rate, at 69%, than the city’s remaining racially diverse schools, where teacher retention is 77%. These rates include the city’s public and charter schools. But New Bedford’s teacher retention rate does not compare favorably to neighboring Dartmouth (92%) or Fairhaven (81%), even when eliminating charter and vocational schools from the comparison.
The local teacher’s union, the New Bedford Educators Alliance, did not respond to outreach from The Light to provide comment.
In addition, rates of English language learners are very different between New Bedford Public Schools’ segregated and diverse schools. As new immigrant students come to New Bedford, many receive legally-required translation and instruction.
Those English learners settle in specific neighborhoods and attend specific schools. As a result, pockets of the city have much higher need for ELL teachers and classes.
The public schools revamped their offerings for English learners after the U.S. Department of Justice mandated improved services for them and their families, especially for speakers of K’iché, the indigenous Guatemalan language that was frequently looked over by district officials in favor of Spanish.
Superintendent O’Leary said, “The work we’ve done as a result of the Department of Justice is a great example” of productive solutions to changing demographics. “It forced the district to look inward, and now New Bedford Public Schools have a model, the DOJ said, a model approach to integrate newcomer students.” That approach includes better translation services and instruction that honors students’ home languages.
And as the anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education has resurfaced research into segregation, O’Leary said, “Districts like New Bedford shouldn’t be immune to conversations like this.”
Email Colin Hogan at chogan@newbedfordlight.org
