In a 2007 ruling, the Roberts Court struck down voluntary school desegregation efforts in Louisville and Seattle. The Supreme Court, once a strong supporter of school desegregation, grew increasingly skeptical of government programs that use race in decision-making. Layered on top of political concerns was a new legal challenge. Simultaneously, an equally durable political consensus developed holding that nothing can be done to achieve it.
Families rebelled.Īnd so for years, we have been stuck with a tragic paradox: building on Coleman’s findings, a growing body of research produced a social science consensus that school integration-by race and by socioeconomic status-is good for children. Federal judges ordered school children to travel across town to attend schools to achieve racial balance, giving parents no say in the matter. But when racial school desegregation began to be seriously pursued in the early 1970s, the implementation was often clumsy. Fifty years ago, the evidence in the congressionally authorized Coleman Report put a twist on Brown, suggesting that socioeconomic school integration could increase academic achievement more than any other school strategy. Board of Education held that separate schools for black and white students are inherently unequal. After decades in the political wilderness, school integration seems poised to make a serious comeback as an education reform strategy.
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