Based on the firm conviction that integrated schools are vital to our efforts to provide quality education for all children, the New York City Board of Education has continued to assume a leadership role in developing and supporting programs aimed at reducing minority group isolation. A variety of techniques has been employed: selection of sites for new schools, zoning of new schools and rezoning of existing schools to improve ethnic balance, transfer programs that enabled thousands of students from racially isolated districts to attend better-integrated schools in other districts. The decentralization of the city school system in 1970 has placed the responsibility for many programs in the hands of the community school boards, but the central Board of Education has retained the responsibility for furthering integration wherever feasible, including pupil movement across school district lines. Those factors which are beyond the control of the school system have had the greatest impact on the programs for school desegregation and the reduction of minority group isolation. These include segregated housing; unemployment rates, especially among unskilled workers; growth of the population on welfare; influx of minority group poor from other areas; and others. (Author/JM)