New Brunswick High School, which had been racially integrated for decades, became majority-minority (and soon, all minority) in the 1970s, after years of legal wrangling led hundreds of its students to depart for a new, nearly all-white high school in the adjacent suburb of North Brunswick. White suburbanites invoked "local control" to…

Maryland, as one of 17 states that had de jure segregation, has an intense history of school segregation. Following the 1954 Brown decision, school districts across the state employed various methods to desegregate their schools, including mandatory busing in Prince George's County, magnet schools in Montgomery County, and a freedom of choice plan…

Studies of when youth classify academic achievement in racial terms have focused on the racial classification of behaviors and individuals. However, institutions--including schools--may also be racially classified. Drawing on a comparative interview study, we examine the school contexts that prompt urban black students to classify schools in…

This article examines the experiences of 20 students of color who voluntarily attend a racially integrated school. The study draws from the Socio-Cultural dimension of schooling as a framework to understand how the students of color fared on a social, cultural, and environmental level within a predominantly White school. Through a questionnaire,…

In a recent ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court in "Parents v. Seattle" (Parents Involved, 2007) determined that race cannot be the sole factor in the assignment of children to public schools. The court also identified the conditions which would justify the use of race in assigning children to schools. In this article we (a) provide a…

"From the Courtroom to the Classroom" examines recent developments pertaining to school desegregation in the United States. As the editors note, it comes at a time marked by a "general downplaying of race and ethnicity as criteria for the allocation of public resources, as well as a weakening of the political forces that support…

School desegregation efforts in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, can serve as a model for other systems with similar Black and White population ratios. Milwaukee school desegregation has combined limited busing, improved conditions in all-Blacks schools, and a limit of no more than 50 percent of Black students in integrated schools. (AOS)

A brief debate on the effectiveness of busing. (CM)

This research supports the conceptualization of staff racial composition, busing, and classroom resegregation as control-relevant variables in schools, finding that each interacts with school racial composition in the prediction of White intergroup relations. (Author/RM)

Discusses research on possible resegregation effects that busing has had on the Norfolk (Virginia) schools due to "White flight" since desegregation began. Studies of enrollment from 1981 to 1988 show that ending busing after a court decision in 1986 has increased resegregation in Norfolk. (JS)

A close examination of Memphis, Tennessee, public school desegregation since Brown vs. Board of Education demonstrates how successful many southern communities have been in circumventing the decision. By 1981 White flight to the suburbs and increased enrollment in private schools left a public school system 76 percent Black and 24 percent White.…

This paper studies the impact of the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunities (METCO), a desegregation program that sends mostly black students out of the Boston public school district to attend schools in more affluent suburban districts. It examines METCO's impact on the test scores of third, fifth, and seventh graders in a large…

Presents a partial transcript of a Congressional committee hearing at which Representative Bobbi Fiedler of California testified in favor of voluntary desegregation methods rather than mandatory busing in order to implement the goals of school desegregation and equal education in Los Angeles, California. (MJL)

When the Norfolk, VA, school board voted to end mandatory busing to achieve racial integration, questions on the following issues were raised: (1) civil rights; (2) the property-based school tax system; and (3) impact on educational quality. (LHW)

On 15 April 2002, the Dayton Board of Education, the Ohio State Department of Education, and the NAACP reached an agreement ending busing for racial balance in the city schools. Participants agreed that the era for litigated desegregation was over because busing had failed to raise academic achievement of African American children and court…