The efforts of the National Institute of Education (NIE) in the area of school desegregation are located within the Desegregation Studies Staff. This staff is directing research and development activities aimed at answering three broad questions of knowledge, policy, and practice. The staff has focused its efforts on an understanding of the social processes involved in the desegregation effort. It has done so with a desire to provide answers to those questions most central to achieving stable and humane integrated education. The following are suggested as factors that, in fact, are contributing to the present unsettled situation: (1) the problem of the apparent random policy of desegregation in the North; (2) the problem that segregated metropolitan housing patterns has made desegregation nigh unto impossible in some large cities; (3) the problem of de jure segregation; (4) the problem of resistance to Federal control; and (5) the problem of many remaining unconvinced of the educational merits of desegregation. There are a variety of both short and long run policies available and which relate to effective and viable integrated education. A discussion is presented of the alternative both at the Federal and state/local levels. (Author/JM)