The Kansas City, Missouri School District (KCMSD) avoided federal oversight to comply with the desegregation ruling for nearly 30 years after "Brown v. Board of Education" by establishing a neighborhood concept for school attendance boundaries. "Jenkins v. Missouri" ended in 1995 with a U.S. Supreme Court decision to…

In the wake of political and legal challenges facing race-based integration, districts have turned to socioeconomic integration initiatives in an attempt to achieve greater racial balance across schools. Empirically, the extent to which these initiatives generate such balance is an open question. In this article, we leverage the school assignment…

Public schools have always been meant to provide all children with the skills and knowledge to become successful participants in the economy. But currently, a second important purpose of public education has become more salient: to promote social cohesion in a diverse and fractured democracy. As ugly and naked racism in America is further…

Following the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans public schools underwent a variety of changes including a mass influx of charter schools as well as a demographic shift in the racial composition of the district. Using school-level data from the Louisiana Department of Education, this study examines the extent that New Orleans public schools…

This research is an ethnography (Murchison, 2010) that describes the lived experiences of a university professor and former public school superintendent. The work explores racial integration and desegregation of America's public school system. Through a series of seven semi-structured interviews, background information has been collected about the…

The question of how school choice programs affect the racial stratification of schools is highly salient in the field of education policy. We use a student-level panel data set to analyze the impacts of the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) on racial segregation in public and private schools. This targeted school voucher program provides funding…

There is considerable evidence that greater socioeconomic and racial diversity in schools results in better academic and social outcomes for students. But Duval County is often geographically separated by race and income level. While exploring Duval County school enrollment patterns, it was found that African-American students are much more likely…

After decades in the political wilderness, school integration seems poised to make a serious comeback as an education reform strategy. A growing number of parents, university officials, and employers want elementary and secondary schools to better prepare students for the increasingly racially and ethnically diverse society and the global economy.…

"From the Courtroom to the Classroom" examines recent developments pertaining to school desegregation in the United States. As the editors note, it comes at a time marked by a "general downplaying of race and ethnicity as criteria for the allocation of public resources, as well as a weakening of the political forces that support…

The 50th anniversary of the "Brown v. Board of Education" decision provides a critical opportunity to reflect on "Brown's" importance, impact, and the lessons it provides on achieving racial desegregation and its relationship to the progressive inclusion of students with disabilities into public schools across the United…

Massive white resistance to the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown decision encouraged educational administrators and leaders who supported school integration to ally themselves with progressive civic activists. Desegregation thus catalyzed the development of a new, more openly political vision of educational leadership. If schools of education were to…

Adapted from his memoirs, this article offers a view of the school desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, from the perspective of the Supreme Court chief justice. (LBH)

Revisits the Supreme Court's school desegregation jurisprudence, examining the typical analysis applied to this issue by recent lower federal court decisions. Discusses Supreme Court cases applying constitutional provisions to the public education context, suggesting that the constitutional analysis of the use of racial classifications to further…

Stories of school desegregation are ultimately about people--teachers who work in the schools and the students who are there to learn. This book focuses on the front line teachers and their recollections of the effort to desegregate faculty in the Austin (TX) Independent School District during 1964-1971 in compliance with the "Brown v. Board…

Explores public school desegregation and the consequences of a "facilities" emphasis on children. The author illustrates this issue through personal observations and comments from two black teachers regarding the cultural and social psychological effects of forced public school integration. These observations reveal that the benefits of…