Thursday, December 6, 2012

Was 'Brown v. Board' a Failure? - Sarah Garland - The Atlantic

Was 'Brown v. Board' a Failure? - Sarah Garland - The Atlantic:


Was 'Brown v. Board' a Failure?


A new study shows a steady but significant return of racial isolation to America's schools.
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Students at Barnard Elementary School in Washington, D.C., one of the first schools to desegregate after Brown. (Library of Congress)


After half a century, America's efforts to end segregation seem to be winding down. In the years after Brown v. Board of Education, 755 school districts were under desegregation orders. A new Stanford study reports that as of 2009, that number had dropped to as few as 268.
The study is the first to take a comprehensive look at whether court-ordered busing successfully ended the legacy of Jim Crow in public education, and it suggests a mission that is far from accomplished. On average, those districts that stopped forcing schools to mix students by race have seen a gradual but steady--and significant--return of racial isolation, especially at the elementary level.
It's unclear what effect school "re-segregation" will have on minority achievement, though a large body of research suggests it certainly won't help efforts to improve test scores, graduation rates, and college entry levels for blacks and Hispanics, a growing share of the U.S. population. But the