When unified status was granted to numerous school districts, school boards developed redistricting plans to implement neighborhood schools. Social justice advocates decried these plans as they reversed over 40 years of progress, as many of these efforts resulted in resegregating schools homogenously grouped by race and wealth. Using piecewise and…

In this historical examination, Amato Nocera, Kyle P. Steele, and John Hensley argue that the development of Black rural high schools in the decades leading up to the "Brown v. Board of Education" decision represented the dynamic between standardization, white supremacy, and Black self-definition that has shaped US education reform.…

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…

School choice policies and the movement to privatize education have become the currently preferred school reform methods on both the state and federal levels under the guise they will provide equal educational opportunities and access for all students. The 1954 school desegregation decision in "Brown v. Board of Education" arguably paved…

Tenure is under fire. Conservatives have long attacked such policies as tenure that constrain the ability of managers to fire whomever they want, but the latest assaults on tenure have invoked liberal egalitarian ideals. With all the problems in education, why are we so fixated on teacher tenure? What is really going on? How did tenure get its…

What accounts for the variation in southern state colleges and universities responses to initial desegregation? This article analyzes southern state university responses to qualified Black students' applications to historically white public colleges. Furthermore, the study tests V.O. Key's hypothesis in Southern Politics in State and Nation--that…

This study uses a North Carolina administrative data set to analyze racial segregation and student achievement in Wake County during race-based and income-based school assignment plans. We find a modest increase in the level of racial segregation in Wake schools during the income-based plan, but compared with other large districts in the state,…

Many school districts have recently revised, or tried to revise, their policies for assigning students to schools, because the legal and political status of racial and other kinds of diversity is uncertain, and the districts are facing fiscal austerity. This article presents case studies of politics and student assignment policy in three large…

Purpose: This article examines factors that affect school board policy making about student diversity within two southern urban-suburban school districts experiencing changing demographics: Jefferson County Public Schools and the Wake County Public School System. Both districts have a history of voluntary integration efforts, and research shows…

Public education in America continues to be viewed as being worthy of major investments to improve the county's economic position in the world. But quality education for many Americans is still not within their reach. Fifty years after the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in "Brown v. Board of Education" eliminating legal segregation of…

Using Mississippi and North Carolina as cases, the author examines progress made toward the desegregation of enrollments in public colleges and universities. Enrollment trends are analyzed in the context of contemporary social, legal, and educational policy initiatives intended to desegregate dual systems of public higher education. Despite more…

May 17, 2004 marked the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in the historic school desegregation case, "Oliver L. Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka (KS) et al." After concluding a survey of elementary school teachers about the struggle for school desegregation in the 1950s and 60s, this author found that, in most…

Summarizes court cases and opinions affecting North Carolina schools. Cases involve supervision of desegregating districts; sexual harassment charges; employee dismissal; constitutionality of a African-American-only scholarship program; contract renewals for community college employees; equal pay, sex, and racial discrimination lawsuits; air…

The North Carolina Supreme Court considered the Federal separate-but-equal mandate as manifesting the law of nature. Separation of Black and White children was justified on grounds that their differences were so great that any attempt to educate them together would be dangerous to the State's welfare. (CMG)