Over sixty years following Brown vs. Board of Education, racial and socioeconomic segregation and lack of equal access to educational opportunities persist. Across the country, voluntary desegregation busing programs aim to ameliorate these imbalances and disparities. A longstanding Massachusetts program, METCO, buses K-12 students of color from…

The widespread assumption in the United States today is that traditional urban public schools are failing. Market-based solutions, particularly charter schools, are seen as the way to improve urban education. How then can we understand a large urban district where educational actors have furthered a locally popular alternative vision? This article…

The state of North Carolina is one of few states in the South in which two large districts committed to desegregating schools in the early 1970s. However, the state's two largest districts, Charlotte-Mecklenberg Schools (CMS) and Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) have experienced ups and downs in their policy commitment to desegregated…

The Supreme Court declared in 1954 that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." Into the 1970s, urban education reform focused predominantly on making sure that African American students had the opportunity to attend school with their white peers. Now, however, most reformers take as a given that the typical low-income minority…

Two innovative programs in Belgium promote both educational equity and quality as they reach out to ethnically diverse families. The Bridge Person project in Ghent addresses Belgium's immigrant achievement gap by creating meaningful relationships between schools and socially disadvantaged families. The School in Sight project in Antwerp seeks to…

Problems related to school desegregation are identified in this document. The use of the desegregation case study has fallen short of identifying problems common to the desegregation effort. This failure to isolate commonalities is in itself, a major problem. However, before a useful taxonomy can be developed, a list of the most frequently…

In this update of the integration efforts of the Riverside Unified School District, it is shown that the district continues to be committed to the integration of the staff. It is also committed to search for minority heritage staff. Along with staffing changes, there have been major program developments such as finding and using ethnic oriented…

The public schools in Flint (Michigan) offer a good example of how magnet schools can help desegregate a school system effectively and voluntarily. (Author)

The Supreme Court's ruling in "Missouri versus Jenkins" signalled a further retrenchment in the struggle to end racial segregation in the schools. The majority held that the federal district court exceeded the bounds of its broad discretion in its mandated desegregation remedy. Reviews the Court's holding in detail and reflects on the…

A number of research studies document the effectiveness of magnet schools--both in breaking down racial isolation and in providing high-quality education programs. However, according to Kimberly West, writing in the "Yale Law Journal,""many magnet schools are rife with racially segregated classrooms." (MLF)

Reviews 73 research studies on the effect of school desegregation on the achievement of Black students. Examines the effect of age of student, region of the country, and voluntary v mandatory pupil reassignment on that achievement. Available from Duke University Press, Box 6697 College Station, Durham, NC 27708. (Author/IRT)

This paper provides background information on school desegregation in Springfield, Massachusetts, and describes a study that compared the academic achievement of two groups of black elementary school students: one group who was mandatorily bused to a previously white school, and the other who walked to their neighborhood school which was…

Wichita, Kansas maintained a dual black and white school system from 1906 to 1952. Segregation continued, however, between 1952 and 1971. The board of education appointed a blue-ribbon, low economic area problems committee which made recommendations for desegregation of the schools along both racial and socioeconomic lines. Recommendations for…