By Jude Wilkenfeld
Educational segregation in Prince George’s County has not disappeared, but instead evolved into a new form, according to former Board of Education Chair Alvin Thornton.
Thornton believes that changing how segregation is handled is integral to reshaping the county’s educational systems.
“For me, it is dealing with the residual effects of segregation. When you deal with the residual effects on children, then you have desegregation,” Thornton said. “You’re desegregating their compromised academic performance, psychologically, culturally and otherwise.”
The University of Maryland College of Education hosted a panel on April 13, where many prominent academics and officials came together to discuss the history and realities of school desegregation in Prince George’s County.
The talk centered on Deirdre Mayer Dougherty’s 2025 book titled “Race and Place: School Desegregation in Prince George’s County, Maryland.” A professor at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, Dougherty highlighted the relevance of “place” as a historic factor for resource inequity in Prince George’s County public schools.
“Civil rights legislation and economic prosperity helped nurture and grow a new Black middle class who sought residences outside of [Washington],” Dougherty said. “But these Black suburbanites often found themselves in older inner-ring suburbs with lagging municipal services, failing schools and a higher incidence of crime.”
Since the Civil Rights Movement, the county’s demographics have evolved dramatically. The student population is largely composed of students of color, with Black and Latino students making up 91.4% of all K-12 students. These trends are largely because of gradual urban expansion and “white flight” following the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.
The large minority population in the county still suffers from modern-day school segregation. UMD Associate Provost Tania Mitchell said localized class issues within different racial groups play a big role in education gaps in the county.
“People move into little enclaves that end up looking a lot of the same, and so our schools do not retain the diversity that we hope they would through the promise of integration,” Mitchell said, emphasizing the “costs associated with that effort to integrate” as another significant barrier.
Prince George’s County is also one of the highest-performing school districts in the state, with more than 85% of its students testing at or above statewide averages. Interim Prince George’s County Public Schools Superintendent Shawn Joseph said desegregation efforts in the county played a large part in academic improvements, and other areas should adopt similar models.
Joseph also emphasized that a recent $50 million budget cut has made these commitments much harder to achieve, while also increasing the quality divides between high schools in the county. This forces PGCPS to decide where to allocate its limited funds to bridge these divides.
This issue has been Joseph’s most difficult obstacle in his time as interim superintendent.
“The enemy of excellence in any school system is variance,” Joseph said. “It’s variance between your best teacher and your worst teacher within the same school, and then variance across schools. So look at it as a variance kind of chess game. The question becomes, where do you put resources in places that can have the greatest impact?”
For Thornton, the only way to fix these long-lasting issues is to “equitably and adequately fund the education for children.”
“We’ve got to figure out a way to move from pockets of excellence to excellence at scale,” Joseph said. “And to do that, we must remain unwavering in our commitment to equity, not just in word, but in resources, policy and practice.”
Featured Image: The title slide of the University of Maryland College of Education’s panel on April 13, which discussed lessons from school desegregation in Prince George’s County. Photo by Jude Wilkenfeld.