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…

It has been over 12 years since the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in "Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1" (2007), which forced school districts to begin thinking of new ways to integrate their schools without relying on race as the sole factor in their assignment plans. While some school…

The longstanding overrepresentation of Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) students in United States K-12 exclusionary school discipline outcomes (i.e., suspension, expulsions, referrals to law enforcement and arrests) underscores the unrecognized concept that school discipline disparities are a purported outcome--rather than a…

According to a report by the UCLA Civil Rights Project (2017), New Jersey is the sixth most segregated state for Black students and the seventh most for Latino students. Black and Latino students in New Jersey also attend schools with large percentages of low-income students. Volumes of research on school segregation show that students attending…

In the Bible, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are said to usher in the end of the world. That is why, in 1964, Judge Ben Cameron gave four of his fellow judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit the derisive nickname "the Fifth Circuit Four"--because they were ending the segregationist world of the Deep…

At many U.S. universities, the tendency to self-segregate has become a familiar and accepted occurrence, evident in a wide array of college settings including housing and social gatherings, classes and training events, protests, and grievance sessions, and even separate commencement events. In many ways, this trend represents a return to the…

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…

Nearly 70 years after one of the most important U.S. Supreme Court rulings was handed down in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) declaring segregated schools unconstitutional, the promise of desegregation has remained unfulfilled. However, there are still actions that can be taken to address the extant disparities in schools that exist in large…

Polling data routinely indicate broad support for the concept of diverse schools, but integration initiatives--both racial and socioeconomic--regularly encounter significant opposition. We leverage a nationally representative survey experiment to provide novel evidence on public support for integration initiatives. Specifically, we present…

In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled schools in the United States needed to desegregate and begin integration. The decision was a radical departure from the facilities argument initially presented; it added the issue that the segregation of Black students was having a deleterious effect on their self-concept. Many scholars argue the integration has…

Reflecting on his own experiences attending integrated schools in the 1960s and 70s, scholar Pedro Noguera argues that, despite the challenges involved, school integration remains essential for providing better educational opportunities for students. At a time when our nation is becoming irreversibly more diverse, Noguera writes, the country's…

Over the past half century, law and policy have helped cement tremendous inequities into the structure of our cities. District boundary lines separating multiple, unequal school systems within a single metropolitan (metro) area play a central role in structuring racial and economic isolation. Using data from the National Center for Education…

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…

While some state and local education agencies may raise concerns over shifting legal principles and political apprehension in pursuing strategies that integrate students across race, socioeconomic status, and other factors, the changing demographics warrant serious inquiry into integration opportunities. This paper surveys the landscape of K-12…

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…