{"id":128966,"date":"2026-01-19T12:21:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T12:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/128966\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T12:21:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T12:21:08","slug":"garland-isd-could-be-released-from-desegregation-order-what-does-that-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/128966\/","title":{"rendered":"Garland ISD could be released from desegregation order. What does that mean?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If a federal judge agrees to lift the Garland<\/a> ISD desegregation order<\/a>, it would spell the end of a half century of court supervision that district leaders and civil rights advocates say has benefited students of all races.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Justice is seeking to dismiss the 56-year-old court order that requires the district to follow a plan to ensure a \u201cunitary, non-discriminatory school system.\u201d The district\u2019s board is expected to discuss their response to the move at a meeting Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Officials in Garland ISD said they\u2019re committed to making sure they offer a quality education to students of all backgrounds, no matter whether the order remains in place.<\/p>\n

Ryan Raybould, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, filed a motion last month seeking to have Garland ISD\u2019s decades-old desegregation order lifted<\/a>. In the motion, Raybould called the order outdated and asked the judge to rule that the district had eliminated segregation from its schools.<\/p>\n

The Education Lab<\/p>\n

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In an emailed statement, district spokesperson Typhani Braziel said the district \u201cremains committed to systems and practices grounded in its belief that all means all,\u201d no matter what the court decides.<\/p>\n

Over the past 30 years, school districts have generally become more racially segregated after being released from desegregation orders<\/a>, research suggests. But researchers say not every district re-segregates once court oversight ends.<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

\"FILE<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing that says just because you\u2019re released from court oversight that you can\u2019t still try to make sure that students of different racial or economic backgrounds have the same opportunities, and try to make sure that your schools are diverse,\u201d said Sean Reardon, a professor at Stanford University\u2019s Graduate School of Education.<\/p>\n

Academic impacts of segregation<\/p>\n

When it does happen, re-segregation doesn\u2019t happen quickly, and districts generally don\u2019t return to the levels of segregation they saw before court orders were enacted, said Reardon.<\/p>\n

In a study released in 2012 and updated in 2021, Reardon and a team of researchers looked at what happened in hundreds of districts that were released from desegregation orders between 1991-2008. In general, researchers found that segregation gradually returned after court oversight ended.<\/p>\n

A number of factors drove that re-segregation, Reardon said. Residential segregation played a big part, he said. School districts had to make active efforts to have diverse schools in neighborhoods that were racially segregated, he said, and when they stopped making those efforts, schools reverted to looking more like their neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a problem, Reardon said, because separate research indicates that segregation has academic impacts. Districts where schools are highly segregated tend to have wide achievement gaps between Black and Hispanic students and their white peers, he said, and those gaps get wider the longer students are in school. <\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

\"Cheryl<\/p>\n

The effects are even more pronounced in districts that are highly segregated both racially and economically, he said \u2014 Black and Hispanic students tend to perform especially poorly when they\u2019re segregated into schools with large concentrations of students in poverty.<\/p>\n

But the end of desegregation policies<\/a> wasn\u2019t the only factor driving re-segregation, Reardon said. Since the 1990s, many cities across the country have seen charter schools make up a bigger piece of their public education systems. <\/p>\n

The proliferation of charter schools seems to make a difference, he said: The districts where the most re-segregation has taken place tend to be the ones where charter school growth has been the strongest. In areas with few charter schools, districts that didn\u2019t see the end of a desegregation order \u2014 either because they were never under a court order, or because federal courts left those orders in place \u2014 tended to see little re-segregation, he said. <\/p>\n

Garland has six charter schools \u2014 two Harmony campuses, three IL Texas campuses and one Texas Can Academy campus.<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Reardon said the gradual nature of re-segregation most likely has to do with individual families making decisions about where to send their kids to school. If a student was bused to an elementary school in a different part of town as a part of a court-ordered desegregation plan, their parents might decide to keep them there even after the court order is lifted, he said. So the effects of the ends of those court orders might not show up until years later, when new cohorts of students are starting school.<\/p>\n

Reardon said it\u2019s also important to note that the effects of the end of desegregation orders don\u2019t look the same everywhere. While some schools became more segregated after the end of court oversight, others didn\u2019t. Researchers found that the re-segregation effects tended to be most pronounced in districts in the South, in elementary grades and in schools where segregation rates were lowest before court orders were lifted.<\/p>\n

How Garland approached desegregation<\/p>\n

Under Garland ISD\u2019s desegregation plan, any student may request to attend any neighborhood campus or magnet school<\/a> in the district. The policy limits the number of white students at any campus to within 20 percentage points of their representation in the district overall. Garland ISD officials said that plan will remain in place, no matter whether the court order is lifted.<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

\"Students<\/p>\n

An 11-member panel \u2014made up of three white members, three Black members, three Hispanic members and two Asian members \u2014 sends a report to a federal judge twice a year outlining the district\u2019s racial and ethnic demographics, and spearheads efforts to recruit teachers of color and find scholarship money for students of color.<\/p>\n

Garland ISD\u2019s desegregation plan has been in place since 1970, and was modified in 1987, when the Garland chapter of the NAACP joined as a plaintiff. Ricky McNeal<\/a>, the current president of the Garland NAACP, said the civil rights group\u2019s relationship with the district has changed dramatically since those days. Through the 1980s and \u201990s, the group\u2019s interactions with district leaders and board members were confrontational and marked with hostility, he said.<\/p>\n

More recently, McNeal said, district administrators and school board members have been more willing to look seriously at issues the organization has raised. That led to greater cooperation that benefited everyone in the district, not only Black students, he said. <\/p>\n

As an example, he pointed to the district\u2019s enrollment choice policy. That plan allows any student in the district \u2014 not just Black students \u2014 to take advantage of programs and activities at any campus, no matter where in the district they live. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere has not been one policy change that the district has implemented that\u2019s only benefited Black students,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Garland ISD has about 51,000 students and 67 campuses and magnet programs in the district. About 55% of its students are Hispanic, according to a December report, almost 18% are Black, almost 13% are white and 10% are Asian.<\/p>\n

The Garland NAACP<\/a> hasn\u2019t taken a position on the motion to end the district\u2019s desegregation order, and its general membership hasn\u2019t had a chance to discuss the issue, McNeal said. For more than half a century, the order provided crucial guardrails that ensured district leaders operated with the best interests of all students in mind. But he said he\u2019s confident that the district\u2019s current leadership will continue to do so, whether the court order remains in place or not.<\/p>\n

The Garland ISD school board is scheduled to meet at 5 p.m. Tuesday at the Harris Hill Administration Building, 601 S. Jupiter Road, Garland.<\/p>\n

The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.<\/p>\n

The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, Judy and Jim Gibbs, The Meadows Foundation, The Murrell Foundation, Ron and Phyllis Steinhart, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Sydney Smith Hicks, and the University of Texas at Dallas. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab\u2019s journalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If a federal judge agrees to lift the Garland ISD desegregation order, it would spell the end of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[9029,4179,163,166,291,1282,1283,160,162,161],"class_list":{"0":"post-128966","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-plano","8":"tag-ed-lab-local-school-news","9":"tag-ed-lab-politics-policy","10":"tag-education","11":"tag-education-lab","12":"tag-equity","13":"tag-garland","14":"tag-garland-school","15":"tag-plano","16":"tag-plano-headlines","17":"tag-plano-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}