School assignment policies are a key lever to increase access to high performing schools and to promote racial and socioeconomic integration. For over 50 years, the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO) has bussed students of color from Boston, Massachusetts to relatively wealthier and predominantly White suburbs. Using a…

School assignment in Boston and New York City came to national attention in the 1970s as courts across the country tried to integrate schools. Today, district-wide choice allows Boston and New York students to enroll far from home, perhaps enhancing integration. Urban school transportation is increasingly costly, however, and has unclear…

The aim of this paper is to investigate the 'equalising effect of schools' in general and two concrete interventions that have been carried out recently in Sweden in particular. The first of these interventions is the closing down of schools in deprived neighbourhoods and moving pupils to other schools. The second is 'empowerment'--i.e., creating…

School assignment in Boston and New York City came to national attention in the 1970s as courts across the country tried to integrate schools. Today, district-wide choice allows Boston and New York students to enroll far from home. Although 1970s desegregation efforts likely benefited minority students, urban school transportation is increasingly…

This is the policy brief for the discussion paper, "Still Worth the Trip? School Busing Effects in Boston and New York." While choice systems offer students in segregated neighborhoods access to schools that may be more integrated and of higher quality, does busing lead to improved academic performance as measured by higher test scores…

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…

Background/Context: In "Milliken v. Bradley" (1974), the U.S. Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional a metropolitan-wide desegregation plan in Detroit that sought to achieve racial balance in part by busing white suburban students to the city's majority black schools. In a stark departure from "Brown v. Board of Education of…

Background: School desegregation and resegregation in the Mountain West remain understudied despite the substantial impact the region's growth and demographic change have had on racial balance and diversity in schools. Home to the largest school district in the Mountain West and fifth largest school district in the country, Las Vegas's…

This report misrepresents and then criticizes recommendations from the Minnesota Department of Education, a think tank and two independent study groups, each of which recently encouraged particular voluntary efforts to reduce concentrated poverty and achieve racial and socioeconomic integration in schools and housing in Minnesota. In building its…

We evaluate the integrating and segregating effects of three distinct school choice programs in San Diego. We go beyond the traditional question of racial integration and examine the integration of students by test scores, parental education levels, and language status. In addition to measuring the net integrative effects of school choice, we also…

The author discusses his experiences teaching in a newly integrated Boston middle school. He relates his encounters with interracial conflicts and various crises in his classroom, and explains methods he used to improve the human relationships in his classroom and to explore racial differences in a constructive manner.

A grievance not resolved at a lower level will seek redress at a higher one and the effect of a resolution imposed from above will be more painful than would have been the case had the matter been settled at the lower level in the first place. (Author/IRT)

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

"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…

This booklet describes the process of desegregation in the Cleveland Public School System. It begins with chronological history of the case of Reed v. Rhodes and other milestones in the desegregation struggle in Cleveland. This is followed by a section describing the Constitutional violations that were cited as causing segregated schools, the…