Amicus Curiae Brief — Freeman v. Pitts

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QUESTIONS PRESENTED

1. Whether the failure of a school district, which was

segregated by law, to implement an effective desegregation

plan in the face of increasing residential segregation can be

excused on the ground that such residential segregation has

complicated the task of desegregating the schools.

2. Whether a court supervising compliance of a former de jure

segregated school district with a desegregation decree

designed to eliminate the vestiges of a long history of

segregation is barred from retaining ongoing jurisdiction to

enforce the decree over one area of school district

Operations as to which the school district has been in

compliance despite the school district’s perpetuation of a

racially discriminatory system in other, related areas of its

operations.

(i)

(ii)

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

QUESTIONS PRESENTED .............ccccee. i

TABLE OF AUTHIORITIES ..... ccc cccccccccces v

INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE ..............00.. 1

REED bes ccccecccseccccces seevoeewe 3

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT ................... 6

CRUE Eee ebb 66 ee cessscccceces 8

I. DCSS’S OWN INABILITY TO IMPLEMENT AN

EFFECTIVE PLAN OF SCHOOL DESEGREGATION

DURING A PERIOD OF INCREASING

RESIDENTIAL SEGREGATION CANNOT BE

INVOKED TO REMOVE JUDICIAL SUPERVISION

OVER DCSS TO ENSURE THAT IT FULFILLS ITS

CONSTITUTIONAL DUTY TO DESEGREGATE IN

THE AREA OF STUDENT ASSIGNMENT ...... 8

Il. EFFECTIVE DESEGREGATION MUST BE

ACCOMPLISHED SIMULTANEOUSLY FOR A

SUBSTANTIAL PERIOD OF YEARS IN ALL

MAJOR AREAS OF SCHOOL SYSTEM

OPERATIONS BEFORE A FORMER DE JURE

SEGREGATED SCHOOL SYSTEM SUCH AS DCSS

SHOULD BE RELEASED FROM JUDICIAL

CCC cCG uw b ees Gecevecessvececs 20

CUCU Geta Wawa ceccecccccecces 27

APPENDIX: School Desegregation:

A Social Science Statement ......... la

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

Cases Page

Alexander v. Holmes County Bd. of Educ., 396 U.S. 19

DNs +s6400 Deena ea edeene eek aaesenserek 21

Armour v. Nix, No. 16,708 (N.D. Ga. Sept. 24, 1979),

aff'd mem., 446 U.S. 930 (1980) ............... 12, 17

Armstrong v. O'Connell, 463 F. Supp. 1295

Mr 17

Board of Educ. of Oklahoma City v. Dowell,

Se ss a ds neEsdnunwoesn ease 22, 23

Bradley v. School Bd. of the City of Richmond,

338 F. Supp. 67 (E.D. Va. 1972), rev'd,

462 F.2d 1058 (4th Cir. 1972). aff'd sub nom.

School Bd. of Richmond, Va. v. State Bd. of

Gaeec. of Ve., 412 UZ. GB CIGTS) ow wc cccccccccccs 17

Bradley v. School Bd. of the City of Richmond,

AE Se eee 22

Brown v. Board of Educ., 347 U.S. 483

foo gg Fe re passim

Brown v. Board of Educ., 349 U.S. 294

Se ED oS o's 6640556664000 0008% 6, 14, 21

Columbus Bd. of Educ. v. Penick, 443 U.S. 449

BO PTT OEE CTT OTe CCT CC TCT TE TT TT 19

Page

Davis v. Board of School Comm'rs of Mobile County,

PE ED heads eedeeuceduvueeneecéack 13

Dayton Bd. of Educ. v. Brinkman, 443 U.S. 526

SPT ere eT Tee Cer ee Tree ere 19, 22

Evans v. Buchanan, 393 F. Supp. 428 (D. Del.), aff'd,

TED: Ka.w'e deeb cuuauckaedockctex 17

Green v. County School Bd., 391 U.S. 430

re te er re ne passim

Hart v. Community School Bd. of Brooklyn, 383

F. Supp. 699 (E.D.N.Y. 1974), aff'd,

Pe We OF CP Ge BFE oo ccc ncccccvccctecccs 17

Keyes v. School Dist. No. 1, Denver, Colo.,

Se a ED pk ck ue eee eucesecces 16, 19, 21

Keyes v. School Dist. No. 1, Denver, Colo.,

895 F.2d 659 (10th Cir. 1990), cert. denied,

oe a 23

Little Rock School Dist. v. Pulaski City Special

School Dist., 716 F. Supp. 1162 (E.D. Ark. 1989) .. 23

Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U.S. 267

fog |, ee 16, 21, 22

Monroe v. Board of Comm'rs of the City of Jackson,

BOO Ui GIGI oc cc ccc ctcccccccccccces 12-13

Morgan v. Burke, 926 F.2d 86 (1st Cir. 1991) .......... 24

vii

Page

Morgan v. Hennigan, 379 F. Supp. 410

(D. Mass.), aff'd sub nom. Morgan v. Kerrigan,

509 F.2d 580 (1st Cir. 1974), cert. denied,

We OE GOs b's c'nk KU ae 6 6660 sn-0’ 17

Maman v. Nucci, 831 F.2d 313 (1st Cir. 1987) ....... 24, 26

NAACP v. Lansing Bd. of Educ., 559 F.2d 1042

(6th Cir.), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 997 (1977) ........ 17

Pasadena City Bd. of Educ. v. Spangler,

ee Te | 18, 19, 24, 25

Penick v. Columbus Bd. of Educ., 429 F. Supp. 229

(S.D. Ohio 1977), aff'd in part and remanded

me part, 443 US. 449 (1979)... ccc cece ccccccces 17

Raney v. Board of Educ., 391 U.S. 443 (1968) ....... 21, 26

Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. of Educ.,

ee ee EE 5 60s nee oko bees 13, 14, 16, 20, 21

United States v. Bd. of School Comm’ners, 573 F.2d 400

oo 8 ee rae 17

United States v. Charleston County School Dist.,

738 F. Supp. 1513 (D.S.C. 1990) ................ 23

United States v. Montogomery County Bd. of Educ.,

eee 22

United States v. Cverton, 834 F.2d 1171

SPM UTD 0Nne Ue ends 64d0 4b dba wk ewen cde 24

United States v. State of Mississippi,

725 F. Supp. 307 (D. Miss. 1989) ................ 23

United States v. Yonkers Bd. of Educ., 624

F. Supp. 1276 (S.D.N.Y. 1985), aff'd,

837 F.2d 1181 (2d Cir. 1987), cert. denied,

ET ET Te 17

Vaughns v. Board of Educ. of Prince George’s County,

742 F. Supp. 1275 (D. Md. 1990)................ 23

Vetterli v. United States District Court,

435 U.S. 1304 (Rehnquist, Circuit Justice 1978) ..... 18

Constitutional Provision

U.S. CONST., AMEND. XIV

(Equal Protection Clause) .................. passim

Miscellaneous

ASSESSMENT OF CURRENT KNOWLEDGE ABOUT

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SCHOOL DESEGREGATION

STRATEGIES (Hawley, et al., ed. 1981) .......... 15, 25

Bryk, Lee & Smith, High School Organization and its

Effects on Teachers and Students, in

1 CHOICE AND CONTROL IN AMERICAN EDUCATION

ee 20

Coleman, New Incentives for Desegregation,

7 HUMAN RIGHTS 10 (1978) ..............00005 19

Elam, The 22nd Annual Gallup Poll of the Public’s

Attitudes Toward the Public Schools, PHI DELTA

KAPPAN, September 1990, at 44 ................ 15

Epps, The Impact of School Desegregation

on the Self-Evaluation and Achievement

Onentation of Minority Children,

42 LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS 57

es EE ee ae 19

FOREHAND & RAGOSTA, A HANDBOOK FOR INTEGRATED

SCHOOLING (Washington, D.C.: Dep’t of Health,

Education and Welfare 1976) .................. 21

GALLUP, THE GALLUP POLL: 1935-1971 (1972) ....... 15

GALLUP, THE GALLUP POLL: PUBLIC OPINION, 1978

era ee ok 15

HELPER, RACIAL POLICIES AND PRACTICES OF

REAL ESTATE BROKERS (1969) .............05- 15

ORFIELD, MUST WE BUS? SEGREGATED SCHOOLS

AND NATIONAL POLICY (1978) ..........2..005: 16

Orfield, School Segregation and Residential

Segregation: A Social Science Statement,

in SCHOOL DESEGREGATION: PAST, PRESENT

SE 4. 606 hb Sb eres ceeeeeecs 15, 16

ORFIELD, TOWARD A STRATEGY FOR URBAN

INTEGRATION (1981) .........cccceeececceucs 15

Page

PEARCE, BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS: NEW EVIDENCE

ON THE IMPACT OF METROPOLITAN

DESEGREGATION IN HOUSING PATTERNS (1980) ... 15

Pearce, Deciphering the Dynamics of Segregation:

The Role of Schools in the Housing Choice Process,

13 THE URBAN REVIEW 85 (1981) .............. 15

PEARCE, CRAIN & FARLEY, LESSONS NOT LOsT:

THE IMPACT OF SCHOOL DESEGREGATION

ON THE RACIAL ECOLOGY OF LARGE

AMERICAN CENTRAL CITIES (1990) ............. 16

Pettigrew, Useem, Normand & Smith, Busing: A Review

of the Evidence, in THE GREAT SCHOOL BUS

CONTROVERSY (N. Mills ed. 1973) .............. 21

Purkey & Smith, Effective Schools: A Review,

83(4) ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 7VURNAL 440 (1986)... 20

Scott & McPartland, Desegregation as National Policy:

Correlates of Racial Attitudes, 19 AMERICAN

EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH JOURNAL 397 (1986) ... 21

Sheehan, A Study of Attitude Changes in Desegregated

Intermediate Schools, 53 SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION

f= PPP OTTT TTT TITS eee Te TTL TTT Tee 21

Taeuber, Housing, Schools and Incremental Segregative

Effects, in 441 ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF

POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 157 (1979) .... 15, 16

UNITED STATES COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS,

RACIAL ISOLATION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS (1967) 16

IN THE

Supreme Court of the Gnited States

OCTOBER TERM, 1990

No. 89-1290

ROBERT R. FREEMAN, et ai.,

Petitioners,

Vv.

WILLIE EUGENE PITTS, et al.,

Respondents.

On Writ of Certiorari to the United States

Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit

BRIEF OF THE NAACP, DEKALB COUNTY, GEORGIA,

BRANCH OF THE NAACP, AMERICAN JEWISH

COMMITTEE, CHILDREN’S DEFENSE FUND, FUND

FOR AN OPEN SOCIETY, MEXICAN AMERICAN LEGAL

DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, PUERTO RICAN

LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATION FUND, AND

SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE

AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF RESPONDENTS

INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE

Amici curiae are organizations representing individuals

throughout the nation who share a critical interest in

desegregation of public school] systems.’

' The parties have consented to the filing of this brief. Copies of the

letters of consent from the parties have been filed with the Clerk of the

Court.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored

People ("NAACP") is a non-profit membership corporation with

substantial numbers of members nationwide. One of the

principal goals of the NAACP is to insure the educational, social

and economic equality of minority group citizens. The NAACP

has been at the forefront of school desegregation litigation since

Brown v. Board of Educ., 347 U.S. 483 (1954). The NAACP has

chartered affiliates in the State of Georgia, including amicus

DeKalb County, Georgia, Branch of the NAACP, and in all other

states.

The American Jewish Committee ("AJC"), founded in 1906,

seeks to protect the security and constitutional rights of Jews in

America through the preservation of the rights of all Americans.

AJC has been concerned with the inequities of segregated

schooling since the late 1940s, when it sponsored research on

the effects of de jure segregation that was relied upon by the

Brown Court. See Brown, 347 U.S. at 411 n.11.

The Children’s Defense Fund conducts research, public

education and advocacy for America’s children, especially its

poor, minority and handicapped children. Quality of education

is one of its primary concerns.

The Fund for an Open Society, founded in 1975, is a non-

profit mortgage fund which seeks to promote integrated housing

through lower cost mortgages to whites and minorities, and to

help solve the problems of segregated schools by breaking down

walls of residential segregation.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund

("MALDEF’’) is a national civil rights organization established in

1967 to secure, through litigation and education, the civil rights

of Hispanics living in the United States. MALDEF currently

represents Hispanics in 20 desegregation cases.

The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, which

represents Latinos in several school desegregation cases, is a

national civil rights organization dedicated to protecting and

furthering the rights of Puerto Ricans and Latinos.

The Souther Christian Leadership Conference ("SCLC") is a

national non-profit civil and human rights organization founded

by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. SCLC has chartered

chapters and affiliates nationwide and long has been concerned

with the inequities of all aspects of school segregation.

INTRODUCTION

Schools in the DeKalb County School System ("DCSs") are

segregated by race and have been segregated by race since

Reconstruction. Through at least the first 15 years following

Brown v. Board of Educ., 347 U.S. 483 (1954) ("Brown I"), DCSS

intentionally maintained, under color of law, a segregated school

system in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the

Fourteenth Amendment.

Notwithstanding judicial supervision and repeated orders

directing DCSS to implement an effective plan to desegregate its

schools, DCSS’s schools have remained segregated to this day.

The most recent record evidence reveals that more than half of

all black students in the DeKalb County schools attend schools

with black populations exceeding 90 percent (Pet. App. 4a). It

is undisputed that DCSS continues to segregate its faculty and

staff by race, with assignments reflecting the racial identification

of its schools;’ that it expends substantially more money and

* Both courts below found that the DCSS has violated judicial

desegregation orders by assigning black principals, teachers and staff to

predominantly black schools (J.A. 226-231; Pet. App. 4a-Sa, 17a; id. at 48a-

59a; see J.A. 425, 530-35; 543-44; 745-48; 751-52; 837). Although blacks

comprise approximately 30 percent of administrators systemwide, the

percentage of black administrators in schools in which black student

populations exceed 80 percent is 60 to 63 percent (J.A. 483, 530-35).

resources on educating white students than black students;’ and

that it places its more experienced and better educated teachers

in identifiably white schools to a greater degree than in iden-

tifiably black schools.‘

Recognizing that "[a]fter twenty years of court supervision,

the DCSs continues to operate racially identifiable schools" (Pet.

App. 24a), the court of appeals required DCSS to take

meaningful steps to achieve the result mandated by the Equal

Protection Clause — a desegregated school] system. The court

held that DCSs had a continuing constitutional duty "to gain and

maintain a desegregated student popuiation" (id. at 19a), and

that it "may not shirk its constitutional duties by pointing to

demographic shifts occurring prior to unitary status" (id. at 20a).

The court further held that a school district such as DCSS, the

schools of which were once segregated de jure, may not be

released from judicial supervision until it has effectively

desegregated its system by simultaneously maintaining racial

equality for three consecutive years in the areas of operations

identified in Green v. County School Bd., 391 U.S. 430 (1968) —

student assignment, faculty and staff assignment, transportation,

extracurricular activities, and facilities (Pet. App. 24a).

> The DCSS spends, on average, $341.00 more per student in

predominantly white schools than in predominantly black schools (Pet. App.

6a; id. at 70a). This is, in the aggregate, a substantial sum considering that

DCSS is populated by almost 80,000 students, 47 percent of whom are black.

‘ In majority white elementary schools, teachers have an average of 9.79

years of teaching experience: in majority black elementary schools, teachers

have an average of 5.19 years of teaching experience. In majority white high

schools, teachers have an average of 8.9 years of teaching experience; in

majority black high schools, teachers have an average of 4.91 years of

teaching experience. In majority white elementary schools, 75.76 percent of

teachers have graduate degrees; in majority black elementary schools, 52.63

percent of teachers have graduate degrees. In majority white high schools,

76.05 percent of teachers have graduate degrees; in majority black high

schools, 64.32 percent of teachers have graduate degrees (Pet. App. 5a-6a;

id. at 65a-66a).

DCSS contends that, because the increasing segregation of its

students occurred at about the same time that DeKalb County

was experiencing a large increase in population, including an

increase in black population centered in one part of the county,

it cannot be required, under the Equal Protection Clause, to

desegregate its schools unless it can be shown to have caused

the demographic shift. DCSS further contends that desegrega-

tion in one of the six areas of schooi operations identified in

Green would entitle it to removal of judicial supervision over

that area even if its school system as a whole has remained

segregated.

The proper resolution of these questions turns on ap-

plication of the fundamental principles articulated in this

Court’s seminal desegregation decisions. In Brown I, the Court

declared that segregation of black children "generates a feeling

of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect

their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone,"

347 U.S. at 494, and that "in the field of public education the

doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place" because

"[s]eparate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” id.

at 495. The Brown Court was influenced by preliminary studies

demonstrating that segregated education provides inferior

opportunities to black students. See id. at 494 n.11. Extensive

study of desegregation in the 37 years since Brown has produced

a stable consensus among social scientists of the overwhelming

value of desegregation and the danger of resegregation implicit

in narrowing the ambit of judicial supervision of school systems

such as DCSS. A Social Science Statement signed by more than

50 leading researchers demonstrating this consensus is appended

to this Brief.

The constitutional offense identified in Brown] was a

systematic exclusion of black students from the educational

mainstream. In Brown II, the Court authorized the exercise of

far-ranging equity powers to remedy that systematic discrimi-

nation and to dismantle de jure segregated school systems. See

Brown v. Board of Educ., 349 U.S. 294, 296 (1955). The Court

did not suggest that residential segregation — a condition

prevalent in American society then as well as now — would

excuse a failure of a school system to rid itself of the

segregation of students by race. Nor did the Court contemplate

that a schoo] district with a long history of legally-enforced

segregation could sidestep judicial supervision prior to complete

elimination of all aspects of racial discrimination from its

schools. The positions advocated by DCSS are at odds with the

principles underlying the Brown decisions that have guided this

Court’s equal protection jurisprudence for decades.

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

Contrary to the premise underlying its argument, DCSS has

never "implemented an effective plan to disestablish the former

de jure dual] school system" (Pet. Br. 20). The closing of DCSS’s

former de jure black schools in 1969 did not put an end to

segregation in the DeKalb County schools. Moreover, the

closure was accompanied by a "neighborhood" attendance plan

and by other DCSS actions that, when demographics changed as

they quickly did, invited the perpetuation of a blatantly

segregated school system.

As this Court and other courts have noted, and as leading

social scientists have found, residential segregation is often

inextricably intertwined with school board actions that have the

effect of establishing racially identifiable schools. Accordingly,

as the Solicitor General has acknowledged, it may be difficult,

if not impossible, in a given case to sort out precise causal

elements from the interaction of residential segregation and

school segregation. In any event, DCSS cannot point to

demographic changes as an excuse for failing to fulfill its

affirmative duty of implementing an effective desegregation

plan. To the contrary, DCSS was required to take such changes

into account in fashioning a plan to eradicate racial segregation

from its schools.

II.

Effective desegregation in each of the six areas of school

operations identified in Green must be accomplished simul-

taneously for a period of at least three years before a former de

jure segregated school system such as DCSS should be released

from judicial supervision over any aspect of desegregation.

DCSS’s argument that a supervising court must relinquish

jurisdiction one area at a time — with a renewed inquiry into a

school district’s compliance in any such area permitted only

upon proof by the plaintiffs of a new act of intentional discrimi-

nation — has no support in the decisions of this Court.

The maintenance of a de jure segregated system is a

constitutional wrong that infects the school system as a whole.

Accordingly, this Court’s desegregation decisions have properly

structured relief on a systemwide basis. Moreover, as this Court

and jower courts supervising desegregation plans have noted,

the different areas of school system operations are interrelated,

so that aspects of a desegregation plan addressed to one area

may well affect the ability of the school district to achieve

desegregation in other areas and in the system as a whole.

Under the approach espoused by DCSS and the district

court, a schoo! district could attain compliance in certain areas

for relatively brief spans of time in the course of administration

of a desegregation decree, and ultimately be discharged from

court supervision despite its overall failure to achieve

desegregation throughout the school system. This result is

contrary to the central] goal of remedying the systemwide harms

caused by institutional segregation.

ARGUMENT

I. DCSS’S OWN INABILITY TO IMPLEMENT AN EFFEC-

TIVE PLAN OF SCHOOL DESEGREGATION DURING A

PERIOD OF INCREASING RESIDENTIAL

SEGREGATION CANNOT BE INVOKED TO REMOVE

JUDICIAL SUPERVISION OVER DCSS TO ENSURE

THAT IT FULFILLS ITS CONSTITUTIONAL DUTY TO

DESEGREGATE IN THE AREA OF STUDENT AS-

SIGNMENT.

The principal argument of DCSS proceeds from the faulty

premise that it "already has implemented an effective plan to

disestablish the former de jure dual school system" (Pet. Br. 20).

The court of appeals expressly rejected this premise in

concluding that "[a]fter twenty years of court supervision, the

DCSS continues to operate racially identifiable schools" (Pet.

App. 24a). Because this case thus involves a school district,

formerly segregated de jure, that has never implemented an

effective plan of desegregation, the argument that DCSS

constructs on its flawed premise has no bearing on the Court’s

decision here.

The premise is flawed, to begin with, because the simple

step of closing former de jure black schools in 1969 did not

constitute an effective desegregation plan. As the court of

appeals observed, "[f]or many years, the DCSS planned,

contributed to, and directly caused racial segregation in its

schools" (Pet. App. 23a). It would be naive to think that such

an entrenched system could be uprooted overnight. This Court

has recognized that the challenge of overcoming the long-term

effects of de jure segregation is not one that can be satisfied by

instant solutions. Thus, in Green v. County School Bd., 391 U.S.

430 (1968), the Court described Brown II] as "a call for the

dismantling of well-entrenched dual systems," a call "tempered

by an awareness that complex and multifaceted problems would

arise which would require time and flexibility for a successful

resolution." 391 U.S. at 437. The Court went on:

School boards ... then operating state-compelled dual

systems were nevertheless clearly charged with the affir-

mative duty to take whatever steps might be necessary to

convert to a unitary system in which racial] discrimination

would be eliminated root and branch.

Id. at 437-38. Here, DCSS failed to resolve the “complex and

multifaceted problems" that arose upon implementation of its

initial desegregation plan in 1969. More specifically, the closing

of the former de jure black schools did not effectively abolish

the dual system because it was accompanied by the institution

of a "neighborhood" attendance policy that permitted the

development and perpetuation of the "segregated school system"

that, as the court of appeals said, DCSS operates today (Pet.

App. 4a).’

DCSS instituted its "neighborhood" attendance policy in

September 1969. At that time, only 5.6 percent of the overall

student population was black. Nevertheless, two schools had a

majority of black students in 1969 and three other schools were

racially identifiable as black schools.* Even in the initial year

* The facts set forth in the text that follows demonstrate that segregation

in the DeKalb County schools continued from the very outset of the

neighborhood plan in 1969. Whether segregation continued at that time or

reemerged within one or two years following institution of the plan is,

however, irrelevant. The court of appeals held that effective desegregation

for "a period of not less than three years” is necessary in each area of school

system operations (Pet. App. 14a), and no one contends that anything less

than three years should constitute the minimum period of compliance. Even

DCSS does not appear to assert that it achieved effective desegregation in

the area of student assignment for a continuous three-year period at any

point during the period it has been subject to judicial supervision.

* The student population of Terry Mill Elementary was 76.4 percent

black and that of Stoneview Elementary was 51.2 percent black. In addition,

35 percent of the students at Lithonia High School and 28 percent of the

of the "neighborhood" attendance plan, the racial identity of

these schools was virtually guaranteed by the substantial

concentration of black faculty and staff in those schools —

despite the overall paucity of black faculty and staff in DCss.’

After DCSS had identified its schools by race using

discriminatory faculty and staff assignments, segregation of

student assignments by race quickly followed. In the first five

years of the "neighborhood" attendance plan, racial segregation

of students grew markedly in DeKalb County schools. By 1974,

the overall student population was only 15 percent black, but in

12 elementary schools and two high schools the majority of

students were black.* The trend of increasing segregation has

continued to the point where 50 percent of all black students

attend schools in which more than 90 percent of the students

are black (Pet. App. 3a-4a). Five of the 22 DCSS high schools

have student bodies that are more than 92 percent black

(J.A. 505-08).

The first five years under the "neighborhood" attendance

plan were characterized by actions on the part of DCSS that

contributed to the perpetuation and exacerbation of the

students at both Hooper Alexander Elementary and Jim Cherry Elementary

were black (J.A. 505-08).

"In 1969, 6 percent of DCSS teachers were black. At Hooper Alexander

Elementary, however, where 28 percent of the student body was black, 22

percent of the teachers were black. At Terry Mill Elementary — where 76.4

percent of studenis were black — 32 percent of teachers were black. In

numerous schools where the student body was almost exclusively white, there

were no black teachers (J.A. 548).

* These schools included Tilson (98.9 percent); Leslie J. Steele (98.7

percent); Gordon (97.4 percent); Terry Mill (97.2 percent); Toney (92.1

percent); Sky Haven (79.8 percent); Gresham Park (79.2 percent); Hooper

Alexander (77.5 percent); Clifton (76.7 percent); Kelly Lane (75.5 percent);

Flat Shoals (67.5 percent); Walker (60.3 percent); and Meadowview (57.9

percent) (J.A. 505-08).

segregation of students by race in the DeKalb County schools.’

Thus, in 1976, the district court found that DCSS had drawn

attendance zone lines in such a way as to increase segregation

in some of its schools.” Between 1976 and 1985, DCSs

cemented the segregated status of its schools: the number of

schools in which at least 90 percent of the students were black

increased from eight in 1976 to 18 in 1985 and the number of

schools in which at least 50 percent of the students were black

increased from 25 in 1976 to 47 in 1985 (J.A. 260-380).

Quite clearly, then, the "neighborhood" attendance plan

never effectively desegregated DCSS schools. To the contrary,

the plan had the effect of increasing racial segregation in the

system over time to a startling degree.”

* The claim by DCSS that the plaintiff class is somehow responsible for

the segregative actions taken by DCSS because "respondents themselves took

little or no initiative to insist on additional remedial efforts" (Pet. Br. 35),

is consistent with DCSS’s efforts to avoid taking responsibility for its

discriminatory actions. The duty to obey the law rests with DCSS indepen-

dent of any actions taken by respondents.

The district court found that "the redrawing of elementary school lines

in southwest DeKalb had some effect upon the perpetuation of a dual

system in the county” (J.A. 89). The court further found that DCSS could

not adequately explain certain attendance zone changes that had the effect

of increasing segregation (J.A. 90-91). DCSS did not challenge these

findings on appeal.

In addition, between 1969 and 1975, DCSS opened five of the eight

elementary schools where currently at least 95 percent of the students are

white; in 1975, these five schools had a total of four black students (J.A. 272,

311, 316, 337, 353). During that period, DCSS opened three of the 18

schools in which more than 90 percent of the students are black (J.A. 274,

282, 333). Of 14 elementary schools opened by DCSS during that period,

eight have students bodies that are either a'most completely white or almost

completely black.

" Other programs instituted by DCSS, including its magnet school

program and its "majority to minority” ("M-to-M") transfer program, have

not succeeded in effectively desegregating student assignments. The magnet

The effect of the neighborhood attendance plan in per-

petuating segregation was exacerbated by demographic changes

in DeKalb County, particularly the growth in the number of

black residents, who were increasingly concentrated in one end

of the county. DCSS, proceeding on its flawed premise that it

eliminated all the effects of decades of de jure segregation by a

single blow in 1969, would make of the resulting increase in

residential segregation in the county a reason for the continued

segregation of the county schools for which it is not accountable.

But that argument falls with the flawed premise. DCSS, never

having achieved desegregation, is no different from any school

district that has had to confront the unhappy fact of residential

racial segregation in moving from a school] system in which by

legal command students were segregated by race to a unitary

school system.”

Certainly it is beyond question that a school district whose

students were previously segregated by law does not create a

uni‘ary school system merely by providing for a neighborhood

attendance plan when it knows that the neighborhoods from

which its several schools wil] draw students are identifiably black

or white. In Monroe v. Board of Comm'rs of the City of Jackson,

school program is ineffective, involving few students (J.A. 594). The M-to-

M program results in black students transferring to schools where white

Students are in the majority, white students do not transfer to schools where

they are in the minority. Cf. Monroe v. Board of Comm'rs of the City of

Jackson, 391 U.S. 450, 459 (1968). Only 4 percent of elementary students

and 9 percent of high school students utilize the M-to-M program, and those

Students are almost exclusively black (J.A. 593).

? DeKalb County is, and has been, residentially segregated by race. As

Judge O’Kelly, the district judge below, observed in a case involving the

Atlanta metropolitan area as a whole, “it is obvious to the most casual

observer that integrated housing patterns do not prevail in the Atlanta

metropolitan area. It is also patently obvious that there is an interface

between housing patterns and school populations." Armour v. Nix, No.

16,708, slip op. at 32 (N.D. Ga. Sept. 24, 1979) (three-judge court), aff'd

mem., 446 U.S. 930 (1980).

391 U.S. 450, 455-57 (1968), a majority of black residents lived

in one area and the Court held that a plan based on "natural

boundaries" was "plainly inadequate”:

Because the homes of Negro children are concentrated in

certain areas of the city, a plan of unitary zoning, even if

prepared without consideration of race, will result in a

concentration of Negro children in the zones of heretofore

"Negro" schools and white children in the zones of hereto-

fore "white" schools.

Id. at 458 (quoting lower court); see Davis v. Board of School

Comm'rs of Mobile County, 402 U.S. 33, 37 (1971) (“neigh-

borhood school zoning’. . . is not the only constitutionally

permissible remedy; nor is it per se adecnate to meet the

remedial responsibilities of local boards"); Swann v. Charlotte-

Mecklenburg Bd. of Educ., 402 US. 1, 30 (1971)

("[djesegregation plans cannot be limited to the walk-in school").

The simple expedient of a "neighborhood" attendance plan, like

a "freedom-of-choice” plan, is not a sacred talisman; "if it fails

to undo segregation, other means must be used to achieve this

end." Green, 391 U.S. at 440 (citation omitted).”

Moreover, this Court has recognized from the outset that

changes in demographic patterns are factors that an effective

desegregation plan must contend with, not an excuse for

continued segregation. In Swann, the Court pointed out that

[the] process [of converting from the state-enforced

discrimination of racially separate school systems] has been

rendered more difficult by changes since 1954 in the

structure and patterns of communities, the growth of student

populations, movement of families, and other changes, some

° The mere fact that a plan may be racially neutral does not establish

that it is effective; more race-conscious remedial plans may be required.

Swann, 402 U.S. at 22-25.

of which had marked impact on school planning, sometimes

neutralizing or negating remedial action before it was fully

implemented.

402 U.S. at 14 (footnote omitted). The Court thus made clear

that the desegregating school district must deal not just with

demographics as they were when it began to desegregate but

also with changing demographics such as those the DeKalb

County district and other districts have experienced. The

changing demographics do not absolve a school board of its

obligation to dismantle a racially discriminatory school system;

on the contrary, such changes must be taken into consideration

in fashioning an effective desegregation plan.

The mere fact that demographic changes may, on one level,

be attributabie to voluntary decisions on the part of families is

of no moment. In Green, the perpetuation of the dual system

resulted from parents’ voluntary enrollment decisions under the

school board’s "freedom-of-choice" plan. Nevertheless, the

Court refused to relieve the school board of its constitutional

duty, noting that "[rjather than further the dismantling of the

dual system, the plan has operated simply to burden children

and their parents with a responsibility which Brown I] placed

squarely on the School Board.” 391 U.S. at 441-42.

As this Court has recognized, school board actions and

residential segregation are often inextricably intertwined. Thus,

the Court noted in Swann that school board actions that

influence the racial composition of the student body may

themselves "promote segregated residential patterns which .. .

lock the school system into the mold of separation of the races."

402 U.S. at 21. This is the case because "a family looking for

housing is concerned with the schools that its children will

attend [and for] many families the racial composition of a

school is among its most important qualities or character-

istics."" A Gallup poll taken in 1990 revealed that almost half

the population views racial composition of the student body of

prospective schools to be "very important” or "fairly important"

in the choice of a local school.” "Segregated schools . . . make

it possible for agents and consumers to sort out neighborhoods

in terms of race, and guide housing decisions accordingly."”

Taeuber, Housing, Schools and Incremental Segregative Effects, in 441

ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE

157 (1979).

* Elam, The 22nd Annual Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the

Public Schools, PH! DELTA KAPPAN, September 1990, ai 44-45. Gallup

opinion polls consistently show that high numbers of white Southern parents

object to sending their children to schools with student bodies that are 50

percent black. See GALLUP, THE GALLUP POLL: PUBLIC OPINION, 1978 at

217 (1979); GALLUP, THE GALLUP POLL: 1935-1971 at 2248 (1972).

* Pearce, Deciphering the Dynamics of Segregation: The Role cf Schools

in the Housing Choice Process, 13 THE URBAN REVIEW 85, 86 (1981); see

HELPER, RACIAL POLICIES AND PRACTICES OF REAL ESTATE BROKERS 80

(1969) ("People fear that the schools will become undesirable — this, say

respondents, is the main reason white people do not want Negroes to come

.J their area") (emphasis in original). On the other hand, a stable desegre-

gated school system can diminish residential segregation over time. When

a school district is desegregated, there is no pressure for whites with young

children to move out of racially mixed neighborhoods and it is less likely

that real estate agents will engage in racial steering to segregate neighbor-

hoods. See I ASSESSMENT OF CURRENT KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE

EFFECTIVENESS OF SCHOOL DESEGREGATION STRATEGIES 51-60 (Hawley,

et al., ed. 1981). Once schools are no longer identified as white or black,

racial barriers in housing are lowered. See PEARCE, BREAKING DOWN

BARRIERS: NEW EVIDENCE ON THE IMPACT OF METROPOLITAN

DESEGREGATION IN HOUSING PATTERNS (1980); ORFIELD, TOWARD

A STRATEGY FOR URBAN INTEGRATION (1981); PEARCE, CRAIN & FARLEY,

LESSONS NOT LOST: THE IMPACT OF SCHOOL DESEGREGATION ON THE

RACIAL ECOLOGY OF LARGE AMERICAN CENTRAL CITIES (1990) (study

appended to Brief of the American Jewish Committee, et al., as Amici Curiae

in Board of Educ. v. Dowell, 111 S. Ct. 630 (1990)).

Residential segregation can be exacerbated not only by

segregation in student assignment but also by other school

board actions, such as racial segregation in faculty and staff

assignment, that have the effect of establishing racially iden-

tifiable schools:

[T]he use of mobile classrooms, the drafting of student

transfer policies, the transportation of students, and the

assignment of faculty and staff, on racially identifiable bases,

have the clear effect of earmarking schools according to

their racial composition, and this, in turn, together with the

elements of student assignment and school construction, may

have a profound reciprocal effect on the racial composition

of residential neighborhoods within a metropolitan area,

thereby causing further racial concentration within the

schools.

Keyes v. School Dist. No. 1, Denver, Colo., 413 U.S. 189, 202

(1973).”

Many of the lower courts that have administered

desegregation di :rees have agreed with these observations.”

As one such court has noted: "[e]mployment, education and

housing discrimination foster each other in the United States;

” Social scientists agree that such actions by a school district cause

residential segregation. See, e.g., Orfield, School Segregation and Residential

Segregation: A Social Science Statement, in SCHOOL DESEGREGATION: PAST,

PRESENT AND FUTURE 235-36 (1980); ORFIELD, MUST WE Bus?

SEGREGATED SCHOOLS AND NATIONAL POLICY 322, 369 (1978) (schools in

Indianapolis and Cleveland “racially labeled" by faculty assignments); UNITED

STATES COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS, RACIAL ISOLATION IN THE PUBLIC

SCHOOLS 67 (1967); Taeuber, Housing, Schools, and Incremental Segregative

Effects, 441 ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF POLITICAL AND

SOCIAL SCIENCE 157, 164 (1979).

* The Court has often taken into account the practical experience of tue

lower courts in this area. See, e.g., Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U.S. 267, 283-87

(1977) ("Milliken IT"); Swann, 402 US. at 6.

the effects of one are causative of the others; they are inter-

dependent phenomena."” For this reason, as the Solicitor

General has pointed out, attempting to parse precise causal

elements from the interaction of residential segregation and

school segregation would likely prove to be a futile exercise.”

In any event, the question whether particular actions by DCSS

"caused" residential segregation in DeKalb County is not before

the Court for the simple reason that DCSS has never

implemented an effective desegregation plan.

This case is therefore functionally identical to one in which

a school board must dismantle a former de jure segregated

"° Bradley v. School Bd. of the City of Richmond, 338 F. Supp. 67, 195

(E.D. Va. 1972), rev'd on other grounds, 462 F.2d 1058 (4th Cir. 1972), affd

by an equally divided Court sub nom. School Bd. of Richmond, Va. v. State Bd.

of Educ. of Va., 412 U.S. 92 (1973); Armour v. Nix, No. 16,708, slip op. at 15

(Sept. 24, 1979) ("[i]t need not be reiterated that racial designation of the

school in a given area tends to designate the race of the neighborhood”),

aff'd mem., 446 U.S. 930 (1980); Penick v. Columbus Bd. of Educ., 429

F. Supp. 229, 259 (S.D. Ohio 1977) (the interaction of student assignments

and residential choice is a "segregative snowball”), aff'd in part and remanded

in part, 443 U.S. 449 (1979); United States v. Yonkers Bd. of Educ.,

624 F. Supp. 1276, 1526 (S.D.N.Y. 1985), aff'd, 837 F.2d 1181 (2d Cir. 1987),

cert. denied, 486 U.S. 1055 (1988); United States v. Board of School

Comm ‘ners, 573 F.2d 400, 408-09 n.20 (7th Cir. 1978); NAACP v. Lansing

Bd. of Educ., 559 F.2d 1042, 1049 n.9 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 997

(1977); Evans v. Buchanan, 393 F. Supp. 428, 436-37 (D. Del.), aff'd, 423

U.S. 963 (1975); Hart v. Community School Bd. of Brooklyn, 383 F. Supp.

699, 706 (E.D.N.Y. 1974) (Weinstein, J.), aff'd, 512 F.2d 37 (2d Cir. 1975);

Morgan v. Hennigan, 379 F. Supp. 410, 470 (D. Mass.), affd sub nom.

Morgan v. Kerrigan, 509 F.2d 580 (1st Cir. 1974), cert. denied, 421 U.S. 963

(1975); Armstrong v. O'Connell, 463 F. Supp. 1295, 1308 (E.D. Wisc. 1979).

*® See U.S. Brief 14 n.7 (citation omitted) (‘an inquiry in every

desegregation case into the ‘unknown and perhaps unknowable factors’ that

cause residential imbalances promises the daunting, often unedifying, and —

for many school districts — prohibitively expensive spectacle of a parade of

social science experts"). Although the United States seems to be concerned

only with the costs of such an inquiry to school districts, amici submit that

the burden of such an inquiry on plaintiffs would be even more unbearable.

system in a community that is, from the outset, characterized by

residential segregation. And as we have seen and as must be

apparent, segregation of neighborhoods is a problem to be

confronted, not a justification for continued segregation of the

schools.”

The decision in Pasadena City Bd. of Educ. v. Spangler,

427 U.S. 424 (1976), is not to the contrary. In Spangler, the

Court struck down a condition imposed by the district court that

"at least during my lifetime there would be no majority of any

minority in any school in Pasadena," id. at 433, a condition that

required "annual readjustment of attendance zones," id. at 435.

Chief Justice Rehnquist, the author of the Court’s opinion in

Spangler, subsequently noted that the essential objection of the

Court to the district court’s order was its "obligation to annually

reassign students." Vetterli v. United States Dist. Court, 435 U.S.

1304, 1308 (1978) (Rehnquist, Circuit Justice). Here, of course,

neither the court of appeals nor plaintiffs seek to impose any

such obligation on DCSS. Rather, plzintiffs here seek merely the

implementation of an effective desegregation plan, a step that

DCSS, more than 37 years after Brown, has not yet proved

willing or able to take. Spangler, condemning a judicially

mandated kind of fine-tuning that is remote from the facts of

this case, does not relieve DCSS of its affirmative duty finally to

implement an effective plan to eliminate racial segregation in its

schools.”

1 The Solicitor General agrees with this proposition. See U.S. Br. 14 n.7

(citation omitted) (“existing residential disparities should be taken into

account ‘in fashioning a remedy’ at the outset of a case to desegregate a

school system”).

Year-by-year adjustment of racial composition is not warranted "once

the affirmative duty to desegregate has been accomplished and racial

discrimination through official action is eliminated from the system."

Spangler, 427 U.S. at 436 (citation omitted). Here, however, the DCSS has

never “implemented a racially neutral attendance pattern,” as Spangler

requires, and the affirmative duty to desegregate has not been discharged.

At bottom, the harms sought to be remedied by Brown are

identical whether existing segregation results from direct opera:

tion of law or from the continued failure of a school system to

overcome past discrimination. See Columbus Bd. of Educ. v.

Penick, 443 U.S. 449, 456-57 (1979); Keyes, 413 U.S. at 210-11;

Dayton Bd. of Educ. v. Brinkman, 433 U.S. 406, 420 (1977). In

either case, black students are stigmatized by racially separate

and thus inferior education.” The fact that substantial time

has passed since Brown should heighten, rather than lessen, the

duties placed upon DCSS to comply with the Constitution. The

obligation of DCSS, "which ha{s] not been satisfied, [is] to “come

forward with a plan that promises realistically to work . . . now

. until it is clear that state-imposed segregation has been

completely removed.” Penick, 443 U.S. at 459 (emphasis in

original; citation omitted); see Green, 391 U.S. at 437-38.”

See id. at 437.

* See generally WEINBERG, MINORITY STUDENTS: A RESEARCH

APPRAISAL 159 (1977); Epps, The Impact of School Desegregation on the Self-

Evaluation and Achievement Orientation of Minority Children, 42 LAW AND

CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS 57 (1978); Coleman, New Incentives for

Desegregation, 7 HUMAN RIGHTS 10, 15 (1978) (critical of desegregation

remedies but recognizing that it is “essential” that "if a child is in an all-black

school, it should be because he wants to be there and his parents want him

to be there, nor because it is the only school that he has a reasonable chance

to attend”) (emphasis in original).

* Of course, compliance with the Constitution could require DCSS to

take difficult actions that "may be administratively awkward, inconvenient,

and even bizarre in some situations and may impose burdens on some."

Swann, 402 U.S. at 28. The Court should not be reluctant to insist upon full

compliance with Brown merely because of the difficulties inherent in some

remedies that may be appropriate. See generally Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S.

1 (1958).

Il. EFFECTIVE DESEGREGATION MUST BE ACCOMP-

LISHED SIMULTANEOUSLY FOR A SUBSTANTIAL

PERIOD OF YEARS IN ALL MAJOR AREAS OF

SCHOOL SYSTEM OPERATIONS BEFORE A FORMER

DE JURE SEGREGATED SCHOOL SYSTEM SUCH AS

DCSS SHOULD BE RELEASED FROM JUDICIAL

SUPERVISION.

DCSS argues that it should be permitted to dismantle its

segregated school system one piece at a time over more than

two decades, sequentially foreclosing judicial supervision,

without regard to whether it is implementing an effective plan

for desegregating the school system as a whole. If the Court

correctly resolves the first question presented, DCSS’s claim will

be inessential to an affirmance of the court of appeals and need

not be resolved. For what we have tried to demonstrate in our

discussion of the first question is that DCSS has never achieved

desegregation in respect of student assignments — far from it.

And despite DCSS’s contrary suggestion (Pet. Br. 20), the court

of appeals did not believe that it had. There is thus no néed to

rely on DCSS’s admitted continuation of discriminatory faculty

and staff assignments and allocation of resources as a reason for

continuing judicial supervision of student assignments. But, if

there were any such need, it is clear from this Court’s decisions

in Green and other cases that a school system is subject to

judicial supervision until it completes the desegregation of its

schools in all the respects listed in Green.

The modern school system is “made up of inter-

related factors."* Recognizing this fact, the Court in Green

identified at least six major areas of school system operations —

* Purkey & Smith, Effective Schools: A Review, 83(4) ELEMENTARY

SCHOOL JOURNAL 440, 441 (1986); see Bryk, Lee & Smith, High School

Organization and Its Effects on Teachers and Students, in 1 CHOICE AND

CONTROL IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 139 (Clune & Witte eds. 1990).

assignment of students, of faculty and of staff, transportation,

extracurricular activities, and facilities — that serve as important

indicia of a segregated system. See Swann, 402 USS. at 18.

Because of the interplay of these factors, the Court’s focus, in

reviewing efforts by school boards to overcome past segregation,

has been on whether the school board in question has satisfied

its "affirmative duty to desegregate the entire system." Keyes,

413 U.S. at 213 (emphasis added), to produce a "public school

system wholly free from racial discrimination." Milliken II,

433 U.S. at 283 (emphasis added).”

This systemwide focus is critical to the success of the

desegregation process.” A systemwide focus is also important

to righting the systemwide wrong of illegal discrimination.

"[W]here, as here, a constitutional violation has been found, the

remedy does not exceed the violation if the remedy is tailored

to cure the condition that offends the Constitution." Milliken I],

433 U.S. at 282 (emphasis in original citation omitted). Here,

* The emphasis on establishing a desegregated system has pervaded this

Court’s desegregation decisions from the outset. See Brown II, 349 U.S. at

301 (district must “effectuate a transition to a racially nondiscriminatory

school system") (emphasis added); Green, 391 U.S. at 436 (“transition to a

unitary, non-racial system of public educatica was and is the ultimate end”)

(emphasis added); Raney v. Board of Educ., 391 U.S. 443, 449 (1968) (goal

is a “non-facially operated school system™) (emphasis added, citation

omitted); Alexander v. Holmes County Bd. of Educ., 396 U.S. 19, 21 (1969)

(goal must be “a totally unitary school system") (emphasis added); Swann,

402 U.S. at 22 ("remedy commanded was to dismantle dual schoo! systems")

(emphasis added). |

*” See, ¢.g., FOREHAND & RAGOSTA, A HANDBOOK FOR INTEGRATED

SCHOOLING 11-12 (Washington, D.C.: Dep't of Health, Education and

Welfare 1976); Sheehan, A Study of Attitude Changes in Desegregated

Intermediate Schools, 53 SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION 51, 59 (1980); Scott &

McPartland, Desegregation as National Policy: Correlates of Racial Attitudes,

19 AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH JOURNAL 397-414 (1986);

Pettigrew, Useem, Normand & Smith, Busing: A Review of the Evidence, in

THE GREAT SCHOOL BUS CONTROVERSY 148 (N. Mills ed. 1973).

as in Milliken II, the "condition" offending the Constitution is

DCSS’s system of de jure segregation, which infected the school

system as a whole. It is thus essential that, in fashioning a

remedy and evaluating its effectiveness, the supervising court

must focus on the school system in its entirety and on all its

constituent elements. See Dayton Bd. of Educ. v. Brinkman, 433

U.S. at 420; Milliken IT, 433 U.S. at 282-83.

The Court’s decisions demonstrate that the Constitution

demands attainment of a desegregated school system as a

whole, and maintenance of that desegregated system for a

substantial period of years,” before a school district may be

released from judicial supervision. For example, in United

States v. Montgomery County Bd. of Educ., 395 U.S. 225, 231-32

(1969), the Court noted that desegregation of faculty and staff

is "a goal that we have recognized to be an important aspect of

the basic task of achieving a public school system wholly free

from racial discrimination." In Milliken IJ, the Court stressed

that "discriminatory student assignment policies can themselves

manifest and breed other inequalities built into a dual system

founded on racial discrimination." 433 U.S. at 283. Similarly,

the court in Bradley v. School Bd. of the City of Richmond,

Virginia, 382 U.S. 103, 105 (1965), rejected the suggestion that

there was no connection "between faculty allocation on an

alleged racial basis and the adequacy of the desegregation

plans."

Recently, in Board of Educ. of Oklahoma City Public Schools

v. Dowell, 111 S. Ct. 630 (1991), this Court remanded the case

to the district court for a determination whether the school

board had made a sufficient showing of good faith compliance

* It is common ground that, in order to assure that a school district's

compliance with the Constitution promises to be permanent, the six Green

factors must be satisfied for a substantial period of time — at least three

years — before a supervising court may relinquish jurisdiction over the

school district (Pet. App. 14a; U.S. Brief 11 n.6 (three-year period "is the

minimum necessary to ensure the schoo! district's rehabilitation")).

with the desegregation decree. In so doing, the Court directed

the district court, "[i]n considering whether the vestiges of de

jure segregation had been eliminated as far as practicable .. .

[to] look not only at student assignments, but ‘to every facet of

school operations — faculty, staff, transportation, extracurricular

activities and facilities.” Jd. at 638, quoting Green, 391 US. at

435. In short, this Court’s cases recognize that effective

desegregation must take place within a school system as a whole

and that this goal cannot be accomplished if judicial supervision

is foreclosed in an incremental manner with respect to each

specific Green factor.

The district co hich have gained immeasurable

practical experien the course of administering desegrega-

tion decrees, have accordingly recognized that it would be

nonsensical] to permit isolated seriatim satisfaction of the Green

factors. "[T]he components of a school desegregation plan are

interdependent upon, and interact with, one another, so that

changes with respect to one component may impinge upon the

success or failure of another."” Even those lower courts that

have remarked that school districts should be permitted to

obtain gradual release from judicial supervision have themselves

been unable to structure relief in an incremental manner.”

” Vaughns v. Board of Educ. of Prince George's County, 742 F. Sup,.

1275, 1291 (D. Md. 1990); see United States v. Charleston County School

Dist., 738 F. Supp. 1513, 1537 (D.S.C. 1990); United States v. State of

Mississippi, 725 F. Supp. 307, 312 (N.D. Miss. 1989); Little Rock School Dist.

v. Pulaski City Special School Dist., 716 F. Supp. 1162, 1171 (E.D. Ark.

1989).

* The decision of the Fifth Circuit in United States v. Overton, 834 F.2d

1171 (1987), contains dicta approving an “incremental” approach, but the

question in that case was whether judicial supervision may be maintained

when all Green factors were satisfied but future intentional discrimination

could occur, an entirely different question that was resolved by this Court

in Dowell. See Overton, 834 F.2d at 1177. In Keyes v. School Dist. No. 1,

Denver, Colo., 895 F.2d 659 (10th Cir. 1990), cert. denied, 111 S. Ct. 951

(1991), the court stated in dicta that a school district "may be declared

DCSS’s reliance on Spangler is misplaced. In Spangler, it was

undisputed that the school board’s initial implementation of a

court-approved plan had attained the objective of a racially-

neutral attendance pattern. In these circumstances, the Court

held that the district court could not engage in fine-tuning the

remedy by requiring the school board "to rearrange its atten-

dance zones each year so as to ensure that the social mix

desired by the court was maintained in perpetuity." 427 U.S.

at 436. Here, on the other hand, the court of appeals has not

tinkered with the details of an effective plan; rather, it has

ordered DCSS, which we submit never effectively desegregated

student assignments and which undisputedly has adhered to

segregative policies in related areas of school system operations,

to take steps to remedy the pervasive segregation that still exists

in its schools.”

unitary in some respects but not others” but the court did not apply that

Standard because the school district in question was not “unitary” in any

respect. See id. at 667. In Morgan v. Nucci, 831 F.2d 313 (1st Cir. 1987), the

court similarly noted its approval of the "incremental unitariness” concept

but was unable, on the record before it, to make a finding of “unitariness"

as to any element of the school district’s operations. See id. at 333; see also

Morgan v. Burke, 926 F.2d 86, 92 (ist Cir. 1991). So far as we are aware,

therefore, no court of appeals has actually upheld an “incremental

unitariness” determination. This strongly suggests that the "incremental

unitariness" approach is unworkable as a tool to guide the supervision of

desegregation remedies by the lower courts.

The district court in this case realized the unworkability of the theory

advanced by DCSS at a point in time when DCSS framed a related argument

in a jess subtle manner (Pet. App. 54a):

Defendants argue that they achieved [desegregation in the area of

faculty assignment] in every school at some point in time over the

course of this case; therefore, it has been relieved of its

constitutional burden. It would be ludicrous for this court to accept

such an argument.

* The Court in Spangler does not appear to have considered the

interrelationship, noted in other cases, between the various areas of school

system operations. See supra, pp. 22-24. Nonetheless, there is a fun-

Amici submit that addressing the interrelated factors on a

systemwide basis is the only effective means of curing the

constitutional violation. In this case, for example, while DCSS

contends that supervision over student assignments should be

terminated, it is undisputed that the schools that are identifiably

black are educationally inferior to identifiably white schools in

several objective manifestations — black schools are staffed by

teachers with less experience and less graduate education than

identifiably white schools, and DCSS spends substantially less

money to educate black students than white students.” As the

court of appeals correctly pointed out, once DCSS finally

complies with its responsibility of desegregating student as-

damental distinction between a court’s open-ended intrusion on the

prerogatives of local school authorities after the successful implementation

of a desegregation remedy in one area, as in Spangler, and a court's

continuing supervision over all aspects of a school system in which blatant

segregation concededly persists, which is the situation here.

* In a disclosure that is telling and distressing in equal measure, the

DCSS defends the fact that it routinely spends substantially less money

educating black students by claiming that the larger schools in which it

places black students are "more efficient" — fewer teachers, administrators,

and other staff are required to educate a greater number of biack students

— and by the fact that it permits assignment of more experienced teachers

earning higher salaries to predominantly white schools (Pet. Br. 34 n.27).

Amici are dismayed that a governmental entity entrusted with educating

children would advocate higher faculty-student ratios and assignment of less

experienced teachers in identifiably black schools on the basis of efficiency”

— a criterion that DCSS apparently finds relevant for its black students but

not for its white students. Schools are society’s primary means of providing

a generation with the basic skills necessary to negotiate an increasingly

complex world. See Brown I, 347 U.S. at 493. Efficiencies of scale provide

no justification for a racially discriminatory allocation of educational

resources. See | ASSESSMENT OF CURRENT KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE

EFFECTIVENESS OF SCHOOL DESEGREGATION STRATEGIES 85 (Hawley, et

al., eds. 1981).

signments, "most schools will no longer be racially identifiable

and the DCSS will be unable to distribute resources in a racially

imbalanced fashion" (Pet. App. 23a).

On the other hand, acceptance of DCSS’s argument that a

supervising court must relinquish jurisdiction one area at a time

would impede effective supervision of desegregation decrees.

Under that approach, as DCSS itself recognizes (Pet. Br. 29-30

n.24), the supervising court could not inquire into a school

district’s compliance in any area found to be "unitary" unless the

plaintiffs were able to satisfy the difficult burden of proving a

new event of intentional discrimination. As shown above, this

result has no support in the decisions of this Court.”

The promise of Brown is an integrated school system, not

merely a schoo! district that has complied with the Constitution

for a brief moment as to a single element of its operations. The

continuing constitutional violation that mandates judicial

supervision of DCSS is systemwide and pervasive in nature. The

systemwide nature of the violation requires that the remedy be

implemented on a systemwide basis. As courts supervising

schoo] systems have recognized, all elements of a school system

* At all events, there is no support for DCSS’s assertion that judicial

Supervision over a particular area that has been found to have been

desegregated must cease completely, as if the entire school system had

been found to be desegregated. If the Court decides not to require simul-

taneous satisfaction of all Green factors, it should hold that a showing less

than a new incident of intentional discrimination in the particular area

found to have been desegregated would suffice to reopen active judicial

supervision in that area. In its decision containing dicta in favor of

DCSS’s approach, the First Circuit suggested that it may be inappropriate

for all judicial supervision to cease over the area found to be “unitary.”

Morgan, 831 F.2d at 326 n.19 ("if unforeseen circumstances should ever

necessitate a return trip to federal court by school plaintiffs, we note

without deciding the possibility that the history of this litigation might

militate for some modification of plaintiffs’ evidentiary burden"); see also

Raney, 391 U.S. at 449 ("the better course would be to retain jurisdiction

until it is Clear that disestablishment has been achieved").

— elements that are reflected in the Green factors — are

inescapably intertwined and cannot be meaningfully separated.

Narrowing the focus of permissible judicial intervention in the

manner proposed by DCSS would provide insufficient assurance

that effective desegregation has been achieved and would

provide insufficient protection against resegregation. The Court

should resist the efforts of DCSS to shift the burden from those

found responsible for past discrimination to the innocent parties

attempting to end segregation in public education.

CONCLUSION

The judgment of the court of appeals should be affirmed.

Respectfully submitted,

WILLIAM H. ALLEN

ELLIOTT SCHULDER*

KURT A. WIMMER

COVINGTON & BURLING

1201 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Post Office Box 7566

Washington, D.C. 20044

(202) 662-6000

DENNIS COURTLAND HAYES

General Counsel

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION

THE ADVANCEMENT OF

COLORED PEOPLE

4805 Mount Hope Drive

Baltimore, Maryland 21215

(301) 358-8900

Counsel for Amici Curae

June 21, 1991 * Counsel of Record

APPENDIX

SCHOOL DESEGREGATION:

A SOCIAL SCIENCE STATEMENT

June 1991

When Brown v. Board of Education was decided in 1954,

research on the effects of school desegregation was in its

infancy. Segregation had been so rigidly enforced in schools

throughout the country that the evidence which existed could

speak only to its harmfulness.' Since so few children had

experienced integrated education, little about its effects could

be known. In the thirty-seven years since Brown, the landscape

of American education has changed dramatically. The

insistence of this court on equal protection of the laws,

combined with principles of federalism, has allowed for the

adoption of a multitude of desegregation plans tailored to local

conditions. Children across the United States have been given

the chance to attend a variety of desegregated schools, and the

effects upon them and their communities have been the subject

of careful study. By and large, however, the results of these

studies have not entered the public debate over the merits of

desegregation. Thus, findings which could be of use to judicial

' See Brown v. Board of Education, quoting the Kansas lower court:

Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a

detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater

when it has the sanction of the law; for the policy of separating the

races is usually interpreted as Cenoting the inferiority of the negro

group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn.

Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to

[retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and

to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a [racially]

integrated school system.

347 U.S. at 494. See also infra n.8 for citations to social science literature

documenting the effects of segregation.

and political deliberation are often overlooked. This statement

reflects the judgment of the undersigned researchers.

Social science findings cannot substitute for an informed

understanding of the legal and philosophical principles upon

which this nation is built. No study can "settle" the great

debates on equity and fairness that should and do take place in

our democracy. However, much of what is now known by social

science can establish a factual basis for those debates. This

Statement reports findings upon which there is substantial

scholarly evidence.

Our overall conclusion reaffirms an observation first made

in Gunnar Myrdal’s seminal study of race in the United States:

the separate threads of social life are bound together by a

process of cumulative causation.’ Whether the subject is the

relationship between housing and school segregation, the

conditions of successful desegregation, or the encouragement of

educational reform, all findings point to the sensitivity of one

factor to changes in another. Thus, desegregation in student

assignment cannot be understood in isolation from changes in

the curriculum, the adjustments of teachers and administrators,

the reaction in the con.munity, the changes in housing patterns,

or the consequences of past segregation. Segregation of schools

is reinforced by mariy other aspects of society and the process

of desegregation has many ramifications outside the

schoolhouse.

Our statement is divided into four parts. Part I describes

some of the linkages between school segregation, housing

segregation, and demographic change. Part II describes what is

known about the overall effects of desegregation. Part III

discusses some of the elements of successful desegregation, both

. * G. MYRDAL, AN AMERICAN DILEMMA (New York: Harper, 1944), p.

on the school and the district level. Part IV considers the

linkages between educational reform and desegregation.

I: School Desegregation and Demographic Change

School segregation is closely related to residential

segregation. Where one lives will often determine where one’s

children go to school. In discussions of school desegregation

patterns there is often a perception that housing patterns

radically limit schoo] desegregation; that desegregation is

hostage to demographic change. This view argues that housing

choices are somehow independent of school choice,

governmental actions, or school district policies; and that

therefore housing choices affect schools and limit desegregation

policies, but schools cannot affect housing. If it were impossible

for school plans to cope with inexorable demographic changes,

there would be little hope for lasting desegregation.

Scholars have known for some time, however, that the

relationship between housing choice and school choice is

actually interdependent.’ While school district policy is

certainly not the only cause of changes in the housing market,

choices that school districts make about segregation or

desegregation are significant. Not only do they affect the level

of segregation within the district, they can also affect housing

choices. School desegregation plans may either accelerate

existing patterns of demographic change or may increase

Stability.

Three recent studies have found that the level of

desegregation in school districts is strongly related to the level

> See "Appendix to Brief for Respondents -- School Segregation and

Residential Segregation: A Social Science Statement,” Columbus Bd. of Educ.

v. Penick, 443 U.S. 449 (1979), for a more detailed treatment of this

relationship. This section of our statement summarizes the earlier statement

but deals mostly with new research from the years after 1979.

of segregation in housing. Researchers in a 1984 study found

that school desegregation between 1968-1973 doubled the rate

of housing desegregation in the 1970's in 25 central cities with

at least 100,000 blacks in 1980. Apart from school

desegregation, only growth in the size of the city contributed

significantly to housing desegregation. Interestingly enough,

declines in housing segregation in the sixties did not result in

declines in school segregation in the seventies.‘ That study

suggested, in other words, that the effects of schools on

demography might be greater than the impact of demographic

changes on schools.

A more recent study of 960 school districts found that

segregation measures for school districts usually dropped by

more than 50 points when desegregation plans were

implemented. Segregation scores for metropolitan areas in the

United States dropped by about 10 points on average during the

1970's. During the decade that urban school integration

increased the national levels of urban residential segregation

fell.” A third study found that cities with metropolitan-wide

school desegregation experienced substantially increased housing

integration, an effect that was evident in districts of all sizes and

in all regions of the country. Moreover, the desegregative

effects on housing continued over time; that is, the districts with

“ D. PEARCE, R. CRAIN, & R. FARLEY, LESSONS NOT Lust: THE

IMPACT OF SCHOOL DESEGREGATION ON THE RACIAL ECOLOGY OF LARGE

AMERICAN CENTRAL CITIES (paper presented at the American Educational

Research Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, April 1984; at the

American Sociological Association Meetings, San Antonio, Texas, August

1984; and appended to the Brief of the American Jewish Committee as

Amicus Curiae in Board of Educ. v. Dowell, 111 S. Ct. 630 (1990)).

* K. Taeuber, Desegregation of Public School Districts: Persistence and

Change, PH! DELTA KAPPAN (September 1990), p. 18-24. Segregation levels

here were measured by the dissimilarity index, a commonly used measure of

desegregation, with 0 representing no segregation and 100 representing

complete segregation.

the most years of desegregated schools had the lowest levels of

housing segregation as well.*

The influence of school segregation on housing comes about

through the effect of segregated schools on the housing choice

process. Districts with and without school desegregation have

very different dynamics in their patterns of housing choice.

Schools can influence housing choice by their decisions to create

or to eliminate racially identifiable schools. Such schools, which

can be identified by student or by faculty-staff racial

composition, are created by policies such as school closing and

construction, busing exemptions for racially mixed schools, and

assignment that either increases or decreases the link between

residential jocation and school assignment.’ Racially

identifiable schools play an important role in real estate

advertisements and racial steering by realtors. Schools, for

instance, are prominently mentioned in ads for homes in

neighborhoods where the racial composition of the schools may

be in doubt; schools that are so mentioned are typically 99% to

100% white.t Conversely, the closing of neighborhood schools

in racially mixed neighborhoods can lessen the attractiveness of

such neighborhoods by depriving them of their "own"

neighborhood _ schools. This is especially true when

neighborhoods which are racially identifiable are allowed to

maintain their own, racially identifiable schools.

* D. PEARCE, BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS: NEW EVIDENCE ON THE

IMPACT OF METROPOLITAN SCHOOL DESEGREGATION ON HOUSING

PATTERNS, (Washington: National Institute of Education, 1980).

’ D. PEARCE, FINAL REPORT TO THE POTOMAC INSTITUTE ON THE

CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUES AND IMPLICATIONS OF SCHOOL CLOSINGS (1984).

® D. Pearce, Deciphering the Dynamics of Segregation: The Role of

Schools in the Housing Choice Process, THE URBAN REVIEW 13 (2):85-101

(1981).

By contrast, communities with desegregated schools foster a

different dynamic with respect to housing choice. Since school

assignment is not coterminous with the neighborhood,

homeseekers and housing agents use other criteria to determine

housing location, including convenience to employment,

recreation and shopping. Moreover, some school districts, by

exempting racially mixed neighborhoods from busing plans,

promote the creation and maintenance of stably integrated

neighborhoods. Cities such as Denver, Shaker Heights, Ohio,

Louisville, Kentucky, and Oak Park, Illinois, have worked

aggressively to minimize construction of segregated housing or

to use desegregated schools as a tool to minimize racial

transition and segregation.’ Thus, far from being helpless in the

face of racial change, school districts have considerable power

to help shape and maintain housing patterns, either for the

purpose of encouraging desegregation, or for the purpose of

reinforcing segregation in both schools and housing.

Although there has been an intense and ongoing debate in

social science research on the issue of “white flight" from

desegregation plans, there is considerable agreement on several

proposition of real importance for desegregation policy. First,

basic demographic trends of increasing minority proportions in

school districts exist in many cities with no desegregation plans

or even with dismantled busing orders. In Atlanta, for example,

an agreement to drop litigation for mandatory busing in 1973

* W. HAWLEY, ET AL, STRATEGIES FOR EFFECTIVE DESEGREGATION:

LESSONS FROM RESEARCH (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath 1983); M.

Weinberg, Housing and School Desegregation: Citizen Initiatives and

Government Responses, INTEGRATED EDUCATION, 18:2-11 (July-August

1980); G. CUNNINGHAM & W. HUSK, THE IMPACT OF COURT-ORDERED

DESEGREGATION ON STUDENT ENROLLMENT AND RESIDENTIAL PATTERNS

IN THE JEFFERSON COUNTY KENTUCKY PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT, FINAL

REPORT (Louisville, Ky.: Jefferson County Education Consortium, June 30,

1979); KENTUCKY COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS, HOUSING AND SCHOOL

DESEGREGATION INCREASED BY SECTION 8 MOVES, (Frankfort, Ky.:

Kentucky Commission on Human Rights, April 1980).

was followed by rapid and almost total resegregation of the

school district. Second, plans can produce long-lasting

integration. Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, the first

district to implement large scale city-suburban mandatory

desegregation, remained highly integrated a generation after its

1971 court order. Among the nation’s largest school districts

half of the ten reporting the smallest decline in the proportion

of white students from 1968-1986 had mandatory county-wide

desegregation plans.” Some of the most extensive court-

ordered plans may actually foster demographic stability. Long

lasting desegregation has been achieved in many districts.

II: Desegregation’s Impact on Students

Research on the effects of desegregation on students has

concentrated on two areas: the effects of desegregation upon

students, and the lasting effects of desegregation upon the race

relations in society. Of this research, no topic has been given

more attention than the evaluation of the achievement of white

and black students in desegregated settings. Because of the

wide variety of desegregated settings and the limitations of most

studies to a single year at the beginning of desegregation, there

is no general consensus on the size of achievement test score

gains by students. However, there is wide agreement on the

basic conclusion: "Desegregation is generally associated with

moderate gains in the achievement of black students and the

achievement of white students is typically unaffected. . . . The

most comprehensive synthesis of case studies, which includes 93

inquiries and uses the statistical techniques employed by the

University of North Carolina Press, 1988); G. ORFIELD & F. MONFORT,

RACIAL CHANGE AND DESEGREGATION IN LARGE SCHOOL DISTRICTS:

TRENDS THROUGH THE 1986-1987 SCHOOL YEAR (Alexandria, Va.: National

School Boards Association, 1988); G. Orfield and L. Peskin, Metropolitan

High Schools: Incornie, Race and Inequality, in D. MITCHELL AND M.

GOERTZ (EDS.), EDUCATION POLITICS FOR THE NEW CENTURY (London:

Falmer Press, 1990) pp. 27-53.

most sophisticated researchers on this topic, concluded that the

[positive] effect is significant."”

A number of factors contribute to the gains for minority

Students. Experience in a desegregated class may motivate

minority students, giving them hope that they will have an

opportunity as adults to escape segregated job markets, that

successfully competing in an interracial school can lead to later

life success.” Educators and community leaders may hold

higher expectations for achievement for students in integrated

" W. Hawley & M. Smylie, The Contribution of School Desegregation to

Academic Achievement and Racial Integration, in P. KATZ AND D. TAYLOR

(EDS.), ELIMINATING RACISM: PROFILES IN CONTROVERSY (New York:

Plenum, 1988), pp. 284-85. See also J.S. Coleman et al., EQUALITY OF

EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing

Office, 1966); N.H. ST. JOHN, SCHOOL DESEGREGATION: OUTCOMES FOR

CHILDREN (New York: Wiley, 1975); C. Jencks and M. Brown, The Effects

of Desegregation of Student Achievement: Some New Evidence from the

Equality of Educational Opportunity Survey, SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION

48:136-137 (Winter 1975); R. Crain and R. Mahard, Desegregation and Black

Achievement: A Review of the Research, LAW AND CONTEMPORARY

PROBLEMS, 42:17-56 (1978); R. Crain and R. Mahard, Some Policy

Implications of the Desegregation-Minority Achievement Literature, in W.

HAWLEY (ED.), EFFECTIVE SCHOOL DESEGREGATION: EQUITY, QUALITY

AND FEASIBILITY (Beverly Hills, Cal.: Sage, 1981); R. Mahard and R. Crain,

The Effect of Research Methodology on Desegregation-Achievement Studies: A

Meta-Analysis, AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, 88(5): 839-854 (1983);

P.M. Wortman and F.B. Bryant, School Desegregation and Black

Achievement: An Integrative Review, SOCIOLOGICAL METHODS AND

RESEARCH 13(3):289-324 (1985); S. Mayer and C. Jencks, Growing Up in

ont Neighborhoods: How Much Does It Matter?, SCIENCE 243:1441-1445

” R. CRAIN, R. MAHARD, & R. NAROT, MAKING DESEGREGATION

WORK: HOW SCHOOLS CREATE SOCIAL CLIMATES (Cambridge: Ballinger,

1982); D. Longshore and J. Praeger, The Impact of School Desegregation: A

Situational Analysis, ANNUAL REVIEW OF SOCIOLOGY, 11:75-91 (1985); J.

Ogbu, Structural Constraints in School Desegregation, in J. PRAEGER, D.

LONGSHORE AND M. SEEMAN (EDS.), SCHOOL DESEGREGATION RESEARCH

(New York: Plenum, 1986).

—

schools, compared to low expectations of minority schools with

many low income students.” The new access of minority

students to quality facilities, learning materials, and teaching

techniques, along with the teacher in-service training and the

community pressures for achievement that often accompany

desegregation, is often significant in raising achievement

levels.“ Research in this area is still ongoing; scholars, for

instance, are still investigating exactly why the combination of

students of different socioeconomic status tends to increase the

achievement of students with lower socioeconomic status.”

However, it is likely that the combination of several factors,

rather than any one in isolation, accounts for the increase in

achievement.

In addition, studies on the potential impact of racial and

socioeconomic desegregation on Hispanic students show that it

improves their chances of completing school and reduces their

odds of becoming teen parents. More specifically, a recent

study found that Hispanic students who attend high-

“DJ. Veldman & J. P. Sanford, The Influence of Class Ability Level on

Student Achievement and Classroom Behavior, AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL

RESEARCH JOURNAL 21:629-644 (1984); R. L. Crain, Desegregated Schools

and the Non-Academic Side of College Survival (paper presented at the

American Educational Research Association meeting, New Orleans, April

1984).

HAWLEY AND SMYLIE, 1988, op cit.; G. JAYNES AND R. WILLIAMS, A

COMMON DESTINY: BLACKS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY (Washington, D.C.:

National Academy Press, 1989); B. Hare, Self-Perception and Academic

Achievement Variation in the Desegregated Setting, AMERICAN JOURNAL OF

PSYCHIATRY, 137:(6) 683-89 (June 1980).

'S K_B. CARSUD, DOES PAIRING HURT CHAPTER 1 STUDENTS? (Austin,

Texas: Office of Research and Evaluation, Austin Independent School

District, 1984); D. Walsh, SES, Academic Achievement, and Reorganization

of Metropolitan Area Schools: Preliminary Implication of the Milwaukee Area

Study, METROPOLITAN EDUCATION 1:78-91 (1986); M.B. ARIAS,

COMPLIANCE MONITOR’S FIFTH SEMI-ANNUAL REPORT: VASQUEZ V. SAN

JosE (CA) UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT (Submitted to Hon. Robert F.

Peckham, Chief U.S. District Judge, San Francisco, Cal., 1989); JENCKS AND

MAYER, 1989, op cit.

10a

socioeconomic status ("SES") schools are less likely to drop out

of high school between the tenth and twelfth grades and that

girls who attend high-SI'S schools are less likely to have a child

between the tenth and twelfth grades than students with the

same family background who attend lower SES-schools."

It is particularly important to note that white students have

not suffered from desegregation. Not only have studies of

achievement shown no drop in white achievement scores

because of desegregation, white students benefit from the school

reforms, teacher training, and intergroup cooperation that can

follow desegregation.” White students, moreover, continue to

participate in their accustomed extracurricular activities after

black classmates arrive in school, activities such as sports, music,

'* L. GREBLER, ET AL, THE MEXICAN-AMERICAN PEOPLE: SECOND

LARGEST MINORITY (New York: Free Press, 1970); H. MANUEL, THE

SPANISH-SPEAKING CHILDREN OF THE SOUTHWEST: THEIR EDUCATION AND

PUBLIC WELFARE (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1965); J.

Samora, The Education of the Spanish-Speaking People in the Southwest: An

Analysis of 1960 Data, in SUMMARY OF THE MEXICAN-AMERICAN SEMINAR

PRESENTED BY CAREERS FOR YOUTH AND THE MEXICAN-AMERICAN

COMMUNITY OF PHOENIX (Phoenix, Ariz., 1963); UNITED STATES COMM’N

ON CIVIL RIGHTS, MEXICAN-AMERICAN EDUCATION STUDY, REPORTS I-VI

(April 1971-February 1974); Mexicano/Chicano Concerns in School

Desegregation in Los Angeles, Monograph No. 9 (Los Angeles: University of

California at Los Angeles, Chicano Studies Center Publication, 1977); S.E.

Meyer, How Much Does a High School's Racial and Socioeconomic Mix Affect

Graduation and Teenage Fertility Rates?, in C. JENCKS & P. PETERSON

ag THE URBAN UNDERCLASS (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institute,

" M. WEINBERG, SEARCH FOR QUALITY INTEGRATED EDUCATION

(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1983); J. SCHOFIELD, REVIEW OF SCHOOL

DESEGREGATION’S IMPACT ON ELEMENTARY *ND SECONDARY SCHOOL

STUDENTS (Hartford, Conn.: State Department of Education, 1989).

lla

academic interest clubs, and school-support activities." And as

is discussed in later sections, desegregation can serve as the

occasion for students of different races to learn to work

together in our increasingly multi-ethnic society.

White students benefit from learning to function in a racially

diverse setting that can prepare them for the workforce of the

future. In the United States between 1980 and 1990 the growth

of white population was half as rapid as that of black

population and about one-seventh the rate of Hispanic increase.

A major report to the U.S. Department of Labor, WORKFORCE

2000, shows that only a small minority of the added workers in

the next generation will be white males. The public school

population of the nation’s largest state, California, already has

a large non-white majority. The U.S. Equal Employment

Opportunities Commission’s 1984 report, PROJECT 2000: JOB

AND TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES FOR MINORITIES AND

WOMEN, concludes that demographic changes within the

workforce, the changing structure of jobs, and the increasing

need for "access to training and education" will be critical to our

future economy. Whites who know how to function effectively

in a multiracial setting will have substantial advantages in the

job settings of the future.”

The benefits of desegregation for minorities as well as whites

extend beyond the school experience. Education is important

in large part because of the opportunities and life chances a

good school gives to its students. Historic discrimination against

% VY. Wilson, The Relationship Between Racial Composition of

Desegregated High Schools and Membership in Co-Curricular Programs in

Baltimore City (doctoral dissertation, Temple University, 1978).

WORKFORCE 2000: WORK AND WORKERS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

(Indianapolis: Hudson Institute, 1987); U.S. EQUAL EMPLOYMENT

OPPORTUNITIES COMMISSION, PROJECT 2000: JOB AND TRAINING

OPPORTUNITIES FOR MINORITIES AND WOMEN (Washington, D.C.:

Government Printing Office, 1984).

12a

blacks in the labor market resulted in structural barriers which

close off opportunities to blacks. Attending desegregated

schools seems to help to break down these barriers. Black

Students who go to desegregated schools tend to have more

friends of other races, work in higher-status jobs, live in

integrated neighborhoods, attend and graduate from multiracial

colleges and evaluate their own skills and education in more

realistic ways when choosing an occupation.” This is extremely

® W.W. Falk, School Desegregation and the Educational Attainment

Process: Some Results from Rural Texas Schools, SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION

51:282-288 (1978); K.L. Wilson, The Effects of Integration and Class on Black

Educational Attainment, SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION 52:84-98 (1979); J.

Braddock, The Perpetuation of Segregation Across Levels of Educusion: A

Behavioral Assessment of the Contact Hypothesis, SOCIOLOGY OF

EDUCATION, 53:178-186 (1980); J. Braddock & J. McPartland, Going to

College and Getting a Good Job: The Impac: of Desegregation, in HAWLEY

(ED.), 1981, op cit.; G. Orfield, Housing Patterns and Desegregation Policy, in

HAWLEY (ED.), 19%1, op cit.; J.W. Hoelter, Segreganon and Rationality in

Black Status Aspiration Processes, SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION, 55:31-39

(1982); R.K. GABLE, D.L. THOMPSON, & E.F.IWANICKI, THE EFFECT OF

VOLUNTARY SCHOOL DESEGREGATION ON OCCUPATIONAL OUTCOMES

(American Educational Research Association Meeting, New York, 1982); J.

BRADDOCK AND J. MCPARTLAND, MORE EVIDENCE ON THE SOCIAL-

PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESSES THAT PERPETUATE MINORITY SEGREGATION:

THE RELATIONSHIP OF SCHOOL DESEGREGATION AND HOUSING

DESEGREGATION (REPORT 338) (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University,

Center for the Social Organization of Schools, 1983); W. Trent, Equity

Considerations in Higher Education: Race and Sex Differences in Degree

Attainment and Major Field from 1976-1981, AMERICAN JOURNAL OF

EDUCATION 41:280-305 (1984); R. CRAIN & J. STRAUSS, SCHOOL

DESEGREGATION AND BLACK OCCUPATIONAL ATTAINMENT: RESULTS

FROM A LONG-TERM EXPERIMENT (Baltimore: Center for Social

Organization of Schools, Johns Hopkins University, 1985); G. THOMAS, THE

ACCESS AND SUCCESS OF BLACKS AND HISPANICS IN US GRADUATE AND

PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of

Sciences, 1986); R. Johnson, Factors Related to the Postbaccalaureate Careers

of Black Graduates of Selected Four Year Institutions in Alabama, in A.

PRUITT (ED), IN PURSUIT OF EQUALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION (Dix Hills,

N.Y.: General Hall, 1987); J. Braddock & J. McPartland, Social Psychological

Processes that Perpetuate Racial Segregation: The Relationship Between School

13a

important in the light of new studies which show that the social

isolation of minorities in poor urban ghettos forms the greatest

barrier to their social and economic mobility.” In the largest

study to test these hypotheses to date, black students who were

randomly assigned to integrated suburban schools rather than

segregated city schools were less likely to have dropped out of

high school, gotten into trouble with the police, borne a child

before age 18, dropped out of college, or fee] discriminated

against in college, and were more likely to have white friends

and live in integrated neighborhoods.” All of these factors

point to the benefits of increasing racial integration in the

society at large, which can be fostered by desegregation.

To summarize, desegregation has clear benefits for black

students. It does not harm the academic achievement of white

students and may well be beneficial in their future work. Its

benefits extend beyond the classroom to the larger issues of

and Employment Desegregation, JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES, 19:267-289

(1989); E. Camburn, College Completion Among Students from High Schools

Located in Large Metropolitan Areas, in G. ORFIELD (ED). CHANGING

PATTERNS OF OPPORTUNITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION: AMERICAN JOURNAL

OF EDUCATION (Special Issue), 98(4):551 (August 1990).

2) W.J. WILSON, THE TRULY DISADVANTAGED (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1987).

= R. CRAIN, ET AL., A LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF A METROPOLITAN

VOLUNTARY SCHOOL DESEGREGATION PLAN (New York: Institute for

Urban and Minority Education, Teachers College, 1991); R. CRAIN & C.

WEISMAN, DISCRIMINATION, PERSONALITY, AND ACHIEVEMENT (New York:

Seminar Press, 1972); J. Braddock & J. McPartland, Assessing School

Desegregation Effects: New Directions in Research, in R. CORWIN (ED.),

RESEARCH IN SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION AND SOCIALIZATION (Greenwich,

Conn.: JAI, 1982); K.C. Green, Integration and Educational Attainment: A

Longitudinal Study of the Effects of Integration on Black Educational

Attainment and Occupational Outcomes (doctoral dissertation, University

of California, Los Angeles, 1982); E.F. Furstenberg, et al., Race Differences

in the Timing of Adolescent Intercourse, AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

52:511-518 (1987).

l4a

integration in employment, higher education, and housing.

Merely placing black and white children together in schuui,

however, does not achieve these goals. Desegregation is a

Process, not an event. ‘chere is nothing to suggest that brief

~€xposure to whites, in schools that do nothing else to produce

equal opportunity, will cure the harms created by a history of

segregation. Thus, it is to the conditions of successful

desegregation that we now turn.

Ili: Necessary Conditions for Effective Desegregation

Assigning minority and white students to the same school is

no panacea for educational inequality. The creation of

racially-mixed rather than racially-segregated schools is just the

beginning of the long-term process of interracial schooling. At

both the district level and within the school, Strategies to

promote rather than decrease racial tolerance and increase

rather than alienate community support can be put into place.

We summarize some of these Strategies here.

The wide variety of desegregation plans and school district

conditions in the United States has allowed researchers to

examine the merits of different desegregation plans. On the

istrict level, these studies suggest that successful plans: (1)

desegregate as many grades as possible at the same time,

concentrating especially on the youngest students; (2) cover as

large a geographic area as possible to include a broad spectrum

of socioeconomic classes as well as races; and (3) persevere with

the long-range goal of desegregation, despite opposition.

From the perspective of race relations, these findings have

several explanations. When a student’s entire school career will

be in a desegregated setting, everyone becomes motivated to

make the experience work. However, if desegregation will

affect a student for only a few years, it becomes feasible for

parents to skirt desegregation by sending their children to

15a

private school for those years.” Whites who attend segregated

elementary schools are also less accepting of desegregated

education in high school, thus providing an additional reason to

desegregate in the early grades.“ Moreover, when an entire

district is included, all socioeconomic groups have an interest in

the successful outcome of school desegregation; each group is

less likely to feel that they have been "burdened unfairly and

decide to leave the public school system.” For this reason,

evidence from Charlotte-Mecklenberg, Atlanta, Dallas, Boston,

Denver, Riverside, San Jose, and districts in Georgia and

Atlanta and many other cities show that area-wide

desegregation produces more enrollment stability than

desegregation limited to part of an urban community.

2 M.Giles, Racial Stability and Urban School Desegregation, URBAN

AFFAIRS QUARTERLY 12 (1977).

* COLEMAN, ET AL., 1986, op cit., W.D. Hawley, Equity and Quality in

Education: Characteristics of Effective Desegregated Schools, in HAWLEY

(ED.), 1981, op cit.; J. McConahay, Reducing Racial Prejudice in a

Schools, in HAWLEY (ED.), 1981, op cit.; J.H. Schweitzer and R.J. Griffore,

A Longitudinal Study of Attitudes of Students and Parents with Court-Ordered

School Desegregation, URBAN REVIEW 13:2 (1981); M. PATCHEN, BLACK-

WHITE CONTACT IN SCHOOLS: ITS SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC EFFECTS (West

Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1982); D.W. JOHNSON, ET AL.,

INTERDEPENDENCE AND INTERPERSONAL ATTRACTICN AMONG

HETEROGENEOUS AND HOMOGENOUS INDIVIDUALS: A THEORETICAL

FORMULATION AND A META-ANALYSIS OF THE RESEARCH (University of

Minnesota, unpublished manuscript, 1982); J. Raffel, PUBLIC OPINION

TOWARD THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF NORTHERN NEW CASTLE COUNTY

(University of Delaware, College of Urban Affairs and Public Policy,

unpublished manuscript, 1983).

2G. Orfield, Why It Worked in Dixie: Southern Schcol Desegregation and

Its Implications for the North, in A. YARMOLINSKY, ET AL., RACE AND

SCHOOLING IN THE CITY (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

1981).

i & B. WRIGHT,

% J.Finger, Why Busing Plans Work, in F. LEVINSON . WRiH

SCHOOL DESEGREGATION: SHADOW AND SUBSTANCE (Chicago: University

of Chicago, 1976); M. GILES, ET AL, DETERMINANTS OF RESEGREGATION:

16a

Students seem to achieve better academically when they are

desegregated at younger ages.” Minority achievement is higher

for students in classes with mixed socioeconomic status, which

undergirds the findings on the benefit of a broad desegregation

plan.* Academic tracking can produce segregated classes

within desegregated schools, which can undo the benefits of

classes where students are both racially and socioeconomically

integrated.”

COMPLIANCE/REJECTION BEHAVIOR AND POLICY ALTERNATIVES

(Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation, 1976); D. Lord and J.

Catau, School Desegregation Policy and Intra-School District Migration,

SOCIAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY, v. 57 (1977); C. Rossell and J. Ross, The

Long-term Effect of Court-Ordered Desegregation on Student Enrollment

in Central City Public School Systems: The Case of Boston, 1974-79

(Boston University, unpublished manuscript, 1979); C. CLOTFELTER,

PREPARED STATEMENT TO THE SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEPARATION OF POWERS, HEARINGS ON COURT-

ORDERED SCHOOL BUSING, 97TH CONGRESS, iST SESSION (1981).

7 CRAIN AND MAHARD, 1978, 1981, 1983, op cit.; N. St. John, The

Effects of School Desegregation on Children: A New Look at the Research

Evidence, in YARMOMLINSKY, ET AL. (EDS.), 1981, op cit.; R. Krol, A Meta-

Analysis of Comparative Research on the Effects of Desegregation on

— Achievement (doctoral dissertation, Western Michigan University,

1980).

*® COLEMAN, ET AL., 1966, op cit.; R. BRIDGE, C. JUDD, & P. MOOCK,

THE DETERMINANTS OF EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES: THE EFFECT OF

FAMILIES, PEERS, TEACHERS, AND SCHOOLS (New York: Teachers College

Press, 1979); Crain, et al., 1982, op cit.; R. Henderson, et al., Remedies for

Segregation: Some Lessons from Research, EDUCATIONAL EVALUATION AND

POLICY ANALYSIS (1981).

* NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION, COMPENSATORY EDUCATION

STUDY (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1980); C. Kulik

& J. Kulik, Effects of Ability Grouping on Secondary School Students: A Meta-

Analysis of Evaluation Findings, AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

JOURNAL 19:3 (1982); J. OAKES, KEEPING TRACK: HOW SCHOOLS

STRUCTURE INEQUALITY (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1985).

17a

The benefits of desegregation take place over the long-term.

When judicial requirements are unambiguous, and enforcement

agencies promulgate precise regulations, desegregation is much

more likely to succeed than when opposition leads judicial or

agency principles to be stated in ambiguous or unclear terms.”

Schools that allow their desegregative goals to be derailed will

often have paid the costs but not achieved the benefits of

desegregation.” Persistence allows schools to move past the

period of community opposition and white flight, which may be

strong within the first year of a plan but then decline rapidly.”

Successful desegregation takes place not only within the

district but within schools. The many studies on desegregation

show that the way in which desegregated schools are structured

is crucial in determining whether students of all racial and

ethnic groups have an equal opportunity to develop their full

potential and cooperate to produce social harmony. For

instance, carefully structured cooperation, whether it be in

extracurricular activities or in classroom cooperative learning

* C. Bullock, The Office For Civil Rights and Implementation of

Desegregation Programs in the Public Schools, POLICY STUDIES JOURNAL

8:606 (1980); Orfield, 1981, op cit. G. ORFIELD, PUBLIC SCHOOL

DESEGREGATION IN THE UNITED STATES, 1968-80 (Washington, D.C.: Joint

Center for Political Studies, 1983); M. REBELL & A. BLOCK, EQUALITY AND

EDUCATION: FEDERAL CIVIL RIGHTS ENFORCEMENT IN THE NEW YORK

CrTy SCHOOL SYSTEM (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uniersity Press, 1985).

*} G. FOREHAND, M. RaGosTa, & D. ROCK, CONDITIONS AND

PROCESSES OF EFFECTIVE SCHOOL DESEGREGATION (Princeton, N.J.:

Educational Testing Service, 1976); KROL, 1980, op cit.; D. MORGAN & R.

ENGLAND, ASSESSING THE PROGRESS OF LARGE CITY SCHOOL

DESEGREGATION: A CASE SURVEY APPROACH (University of Oklahoma,

Bureau of Government Research, Unpublished Report, 1981); J. BRADDOCK

AND J. MCPARTLAND, 1982, op cit.; C. Rossell, Desegregation Plans, Racial

Isolation, White Flight, and Community Response, in C. ROSSELL AND W.

HAWLEY (EDS.), THE CONSEQUENCES OF SCHOOL DESEGREGATION

(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983).

® ROSSELL, 1983, op cit.

18a .

groups, can have positive effecis on both academic achievement

and race relations.” Cooperative learning groups also increase

academic achievement, student-to-student help, cross-race

interactions outside the classroom, self-esteem, liking for

teachers, and ability to empathize.”

A second theme which emerges from this work is the

importance of finding ways to give the members of each group

a sense that they are influential and valued within the context

* E. ARONSON, ET AL., THE JIGSAW CLASSROOM (Beverly Hills, Cal.:

Sage, 1978); S. Sharan, Cooperative Learning In Teams: Recent Methods and

Effects on Achievement, Attitudes, and Ethnic Relations, REVIEW OF

EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 50:241-272 (1980); R. Slavin, Student Team

Learning: A Manual for Teachers, in S. SHARAN, ET AL. (EDS.),

COOPERATION IN EDUCATION (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University

Press, 1980); R. SLAVIN, COOPERATIVE LEARNING (New York: Longman,

1983); R. Slavin, When Does Cooperative Learning Increase Student

Achievement?, PSYCHOLOGICAL BULLETIN, 94:429-445 (1983); R. Slavin,

Cooperative Learning: Applying Contact Theory in Desegregated Schools,

JOURNAL OF SOCIAL ISSUES 41:45-62 (1985); Johnson & Johnson, 1982, op

cu., J. Schofield & A. Sagar, Desegregation, School Practices and Student Race

Relations, in ROSSELL & HAWLEY (EDS.), 1983, op cit.

™“ G. FOREHAND & M. RAGOSTA, A HANDBOOK FOR INTEGRATED

SCHOOLING (prepared for the U.S. Office of Education, Department of

Health, Education and Welfare) (Prinveton, NJ.: Educational Testing

Service, 1976); E. Cohen, Design and Redesign of the Desegregated School:

Problems of Status, Power, and Conflict, in W.G. STEPHAN AND J.R. FEAGIN

(EDS.), SCHOOL DESEGREGATION: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE (New

York: Plenum Press, 1980); SLAVIN, 1981, op cit.; W. HAWLEY, ET AL,

STRATEGIES FOR EFFECTIVE DESEGREGATION: A SYNTHESIS OF FINDINGS

(Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University, Institute for Public Policy Studies,

1981); J. Schofield, Desegregation, School Practices and Student Race

Relations Outcomes, in C. ROSSELL, ET AL., A REVIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL

RESEARCH ON DESEGREGATION (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University,

Institute for Public Policy Studies, 1981); D. JOHNSON & R. JOHNSON,

LEARNING TOGETHER AND ALONE: COOPERATION, COMPETITION, AND

INDIVIDUALIZATION (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1982); W. Lacey,

et al., Fostering Constructive Intergroup Contact in Desegregated Schools,

JOURNAL OF NEGRO EDUCATION 52:2 (1983).

se 8 AN pete tt ill lal

19a

of the school and school system. For example, community and

parental involvement in developing, implementing, and

monitoring the desegregation plan is very helpful in gaining

community acceptance and support.” There is also evidence

that utilizing multi-ethnic texts, avoiding unnecessary ability

grouping, applying disciplinary codes fairly to avoid punishing

students for cultural differences, changing symbols and customs

of the school to put “old and "new" on equal footing, and

incorporating detailed, practical, timely and empathetic human

relations programs for teachers and students also help to create

an inclusive school community and minimize racial and social

tensions.”

> W. HAWLEY, ET AL., STRATEGIES FOR EFFECTIVE DESEGREGATION,

(Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1983); B. Hare, Black and Whue Self Esteem

in Social Science: An Overview, JOURNAL OF NEGRO EDUCATION, 46(2):141-

156 (Spring 1977).

* HAWLEY, ET AL., 1983, op cit.; W.G. Stepan & C.W. —. - 4

of Ignorance in Intergroup Relations, in N. MILLER & M.B. BREWER (EDS.),

ar IN CONTACT: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DESEGREGATION (Orlando,

Florida: Academic Press, 1984); J.R. Mercer, et al., Building Effective Multi-

ethnic Schools: Evolving Models and Paradigms, in STEPHAN & FEAGIN

(EDS.), 1980, op cit., HENDERSON, ET AL., 1981, op cit., CRAIN, ET AL., 1982,

op cit., FOREHAND, ET AL., 1976, op cit., WJ. DOHERTY, ET AL, HUMAN

RELATIONS STUDY: INVESTIGATIONS OF EFFECTIVE HUMAN RELATIONS

STRATEGY, VOL. 2 (Santa Monica, Cal.: Systems Development Corporation,

1981); M. SMYLIE & W. HAWLEY, INCREASING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF IN-

SERVICE TRAINING FOR DESEGREGATION: A SYNTHESIS OF CURRENT

RESEARCH (Washington, D.C.: National Education Association, 1982); H.

Walberg, et al., The Quiet Revolution in Educational Research, PH! DELTA

KAPPAN, 1979; R. Slavin & N. Madden, School Practices That Improve Race

Relations, AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH JOURNAL, 1979; C.

Moony, ET AL., STUDENT RIGHTS AND DISCIPLINE: POLICIES, PROGRAMS,

AND PROCEDURES (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, School of

Education, 1978); B. BOSMA, PLANNING FOR AND IMPLEMENTING

EFFECTIVE SCHOOL DESEGREGATION: THE ROLE OF TEACHER

ASSOCIATIONS (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1980);

J. BROPHY & T. GOOD, TEACHER-STUDENT RELATIONSHIPS: CAUSES AND

CONSEQUENCES (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1974); J.

EPSTEIN, AFTER THE BUS ARRIVES: RESEGREGATION IN DESEGREGATED

20a

It is important that schools have minority faculty, i

coliege counselors, and that white ent ficm rete.

desegregation.” Historically, desegregation of teachers and

students has progressed together, since very little desegregation

occurred before Rogers v. Paul, 382 U.S. 198 ( 1964), the first

major decision on teacher desegregation. Adult role models of

both races working together in a school are important for

minority and white students. There is some evidence that

minority teachers may be less likely to use racially segregated

instructional groupings than white teachers, to be less likely to

place black and other minority students in lower instructional

tracks, and to be more likely to expect black students to enter

and complete college.” The presence of substantial numbers

of minority administrators and teachers serves as a symbol! of

the fact that expertise and power are shared. Leadership which

supports racial equality from the top of the school system on

down is necessary. Research on children indicates that when a

school or school district decides to take affirmative and

persistent action to ensure positive outcomes of uc

of ucsegregation

such benefits occur. ue )

SCHOOLS (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopki iversi

timore, : pkins University, Center for the

Social Organization of Schools, 1983); W. GENOVA AND H. WALBERG. A

PRACTITIONER'S GUIDE FOR ACHIEVING STUDENT INTEGRATION IN Crry

HIGH SCHOOLS (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1981).

* BRIDGE, ET AL., 1979, op cit.; CRAIN, ET AL., 1 cit.;

MAHARD, 1978, op cit.; DOHERTY, ET AL., 1981, op ae semen og

1983, op cit.; J. Epstein, After the Bus Arrives, JOURNAL OF SOCIAL ISSUES.

41(3): 23-43 (1985); R. MURNANE, THE IMPACT OF SCHOOL RESOURCES ON

THE LEARNING OF INNER CITY CHILDREN (Cambridge: Ballinger, 1975).

* BRIDGE, ET AL., 1979, op cit.; CRAIN & MAHARD, 1978 op cit.;

DOHERTY, ET AL., 1981, op cit.; C. Beady and S. Hansell, Teacher Race and

Expectations for Student Achievement, AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

JOURNAL, 18:191-206 (1983); J. Epstein, After the Bus Arrives:

Resegregation in Desegregated Schools (paper presented at the American

Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Boston, April 1980).

2la

Thus, desegregation is not just a matter of placing children

in the same schools; it is a process of developing techniques that

will further the goals of racial integration, including quality

education for all students and racial harmony. It is not

surprising, therefore, that desegregation has often led to

educational reforms within school districts.

IV: Educational Reform and Desegregation

Desegregation plans have been a leading source of

educational innovation during the past two decades. As one

researcher concludes, "There is probably more active

educational rethinking and searching for new approaches in

desegregated schools than in any other group of American

schools."* Almost all major desegregation orders since 1980

have included educational changes as part of the remedy.

The goal of achieving racial equity in a school system has

produced development of a wide array of new educational

approaches ranging from magnet schools to new instructional

strategies and curricular changes. New desegregation plans

often were occasions for creation of new grade structures and

usually involved some retraining of teachers. Sophisticated

school administrators have often used the advent of the major

reorganization involved in a desegregation plan to build public

support for reforms that they had been unable to accomplish

earlier. The experience shows that desegregation is not a

barrier to educational change but, to the contrary, often

provides the occasion for it. The federal Emergency School Aid

Act in the 1970s and the current magnct school program were

explicit congressional recognitions of these linkages, which have

become even more common since the Supreme Court’s decision

in Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U.S. 266 (1976) ("Milliken IT"). As

the preceding sections have demonstrated, a school district

% M. WEINBERG, MINORITY STUDENTS: A RESEARCH APPRAISAL

(Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Education, 1977), p. 329.

22a

determined to "eliminate segregation root and branch" will

consciously choose to implement innovative teaching techniques,

such as cooperative learning groups, to improve student

achievement and increase racial harmony. Magnet schooling, a

major educational reform of the last two decades, was first

developed as a desegregative tool.”

The largest review to date of published knowledge and

interviews with experts was commissioned by the Ford

-Foundation and carried out at Duke and Vanderbilt

Universities. One of the books which came out of that effort

noted that major educational] reforms commonly follow school

desegregation: "Based on reports from observers around the

country it appears that desegregation often leads to curricular

changes, more teacher training, and new programs that have

positive influences on student learning and academic

performance."" Reform may be easier after desegregation

because there is greater perceived need for change. Also, the

reassignment of teachers and students, in response to

desegregation decrees, can break up entrenched centers of

resistance to change. The National Research Council

concluded, in a study of the narrowing achievement gap

between black and white students, that the combined effects of

school desegregation and reforms opening educational

Opportunities to minority students presented "a challenge to

commentators who judge that these programs failed."" A

major study of long-term trends in achievement shows that the

national gap between black and white students fell following the

implementation of desegregation and federal compensatory

“ M.H. Metz, Magnet Schools and the Reform of Public Schooling, in

W.L. BoyD & H.J. WALBERG (EDS.), CHOICE IN EDUCATION: POTENTIAL

AND PROBLEMS (Berkeley, Cal.: McCutchan, 1990)

“ HAWLEY, ET AL., 1983, op cit., p. 12.

23a

education reforms in the 1960s. There were particularly striking

gains for black students in the South.“

Planning for educational reform without considering racial

issues can be self-defeating: "Avoiding discussion of race and of

how school policy may affect blacks differently than whites

results in blacks having severely restricted access to school

resources such as untracked remediation, enrichment activities,

advanced reading groups, and various privileges that make

school life enjoyable.“ Alert teachers and administrators in

desegregated schools, especially those serving students of varied

social classes or students entering with widely scattered skill

levels, will be pushed to look for innovative, reforming,

approaches to teaching. One study describes how frustrated

southern teachers in newly desegregated schools in one district

gradually learned to understand and then to teach children the

varied ways in which members of the different social groups

used language.“ Another study reports that teachers of

different races informally educated each other about culturally

based learning patterns among students and effective responses

to them.“

Many large urban districts, as well as smaller systems, have

used magnet schools as one component of desegregation,

emphasizing educational innovation, choice, and racial diversity

D.C.: Congressional Budget Office, 1986).

“ J. Goetz & E. Breneman, Desegregation and Black Students’ Experiences

in Two Rural Southern Elementary Schools, ELEMENTARY SCHOOL JOURNAL,

88:500 (1988).

“ $B. HEATH, WAYS WITH WORDS: LANGUAGE, WORK AND LIFE IN

COMMUNITIES AND CLASSROOMS (New York: Cambridge University Press,

1983).

“ M.H. METZ, DIFFERENT By DESIGN: THE CONTEXT AND CHARACTER

OF THREE MAGNET SCHOOLS (New York: Routledge, 1986).

24a

as basic goals. Magnet schools, which have often been designed

as part of a desegregation plan, have proven in some cases to

be both a successful desegregative tool (when used on a large

scale) and a significant source of educational enrichment for

their students.” Some magnets have been designed to

emphasize performing arts, non-traditional teaching methods

concentrating on individual instruction, open education and

resource centers, and instruction in specific subjects.“ If not

designed with integration as a basic part of the goals, magnets —

can deliver innovations primarily to the most privileged local

students and produce more stratified school districts.” It

seems clear from the magnet experience that, far from being

mutually exclusive, racia! integration, quality education, and

expanded educational choice, can actually be complementary.

What is clear from the research summarized above is that

desegregation is as much a school-district led process as a

judicially controlled one. Desegregation creates possibilities and

can provide the opportunity for reform and, sometimes, new

resources for reform, but school authorities must make decisions

to create a school system which promotes equal opportunities

for students of all races. By exploring possibilities for

educational innovation and racial harmony, they can further the

“ C. Rossell, What Is Attractive About Magnet Schools?, URBAN

EDUCATION 14 (April 1985); C. ROSSELL AND R. CLARKE, THE CARROT OR

THE STICK IN SCHOOL DESEGREGATION POLICY? (Washington, D.C.:

National Institute of Education, 1987); METZ, 1990, op cit.

“ METZ, 1986, op cit.; METZ, 1990, op cit.

” J. SCHOFIELD, BLACK AND WHITE IN SCHOOL: TRUST, TENSION, OR

TOLERANCE? (New York: Praeger, 1982); J. Rosenbaum and S. Presser,

Voluntary Racial Integration in a Magnet School, SCHOOL REVIEW 86(2):156-

186 (February 1978).

25a

process of desegregation; by failing to capitalize on possibilities

for positive change, they can derail or postpone the process.”

V: Conclusion

Desegregation orders change established patterns of

behavior and raise new expectations of a school district. Yet as

research of the past three decades has shown, school districts

can respond to these changes in a variety of ways. School

districts who adopt desegregation in good faith are able to use

it as an opportunity to increase the achievement of their

students, promote racial harmony in the classroom and the

community, experiment with innovative educational reforms, and

influence integrated housing patterns. On the other hand, a

weak or inadequate plan or local officials opposed to the

process of desegregation can resegregate students within the

schools, cling to established ways of teaching, speed

neighborhood resegregation, foster interracial tensions within a

desegregated school, or create racially identifiable schools that

lack key advantages of desegregation. With appropriate plans,

persistence over time in achieving complex and interdependent

changes, and recognition of the new opportunities for

educational improvements, desegregation can produce lasting

changes with benefits for all students and the community as a

whole.

LASCELLES F. ANDERSON

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

Center for Urban

Educational Research

and Development

Chicago, Illinois

” B. HARE & D.U. LEVINE, TOWARD EFFECTIVE DESEGREGATED

SCHOOLS: A MONOGRAPH PREPARED FOR THE UNITED STATES

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION (Washington, D.C.: National Institute of

Education, 1984).

26a

M. BEATRIZ ARIAS

ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY

Center for Bilingual Education

and Research

Tempe, Arizona

JAMES E. BLACKWELL

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS _

Professor Emeritus

Boston, Massachusetts

JOMILLS HENRY BRADDOCK II

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

Center for the Social Organization

of Schools

Baltimore, Maryland

KENNETH B. CLARK

CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

Professor Emeritus

New York, New York

PAUL N. COURANT

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Department of Economics

Ann Arbor, Michigan

ROBERT L. CRAIN

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Teachers College

New York, New York

EDGAR G. EPPS

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

Department of Education

Chicago, Illinois

27a

JOYCE EPSTEIN

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

Center on Families, Communities,

Schools, and Children’s Learning

Baltimore, Maryland

REYNOLDS FARLEY

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Population Studies Center

Ann Arbor, Michigan

RICARDO R. FERNANDEZ

CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

President, Lehman College

Bronx, New York

GORDON FOSTER

UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI

Department of Educational

Administration

Coral Gables, Florida

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN

DUKE UNIVERSITY

History Department

Durham, North Carolina

ADAM GAMORAN

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

Sociology Department

Madison, Wisconsin

ELI GINZBERG

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Eisenhower Center

for the Conservation of

Human Resources

New York, New York

28a

CARL GRANT

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

Curriculum and Instruction

Department

Madison, Wisconsin

TRACY GRAY

POINTS OF LIGHT FOUNDATION

Washington, D.C.

BRUCE R. HARE

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY .

Department of African-American

Studies and Sociology

Syracuse, New York

WILLIS D. HAWLEY

VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY

Vanderbilt Institute of Public

Policy Studies

Nashville, Tennessee

JENNIFER L. HOCHSCHILD

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

Woodrow Wilson School of Public

and International Affairs

Princeton, New Jersey

ANN CHIH LIN

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

Department of Political Science

Chicago, Illinois

29a

KOFI LOMOTEY

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

Department of Educational

Organization, Administration

and Policy

Buffalo, New York

MILBREY WALLIN MCLAUGHLIN

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

School of Education

Stanford, California

JAMES M. MCPARTLAND

JOHNS HOPKINS UNVERSITY

Center for the Social

Organization of Schools

Baltimore, Maryland

MARY HAYWOOD METZ

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

Department of Educational

Policy Studies

Madison, Wisconsin

RICHARD J. MURNANE

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Graduate School of Education

Cambridge, Massachusetts

GEORGE W. NOBLIT

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA

School of Education

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

30a

MICHAEL R. OLNECK

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

Departments of Educational Policy

Studies and Sociology

Madison, Wisconsin

GARY A. ORFIELD

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

Departments of Political Science

and Education

Chicago, Illinois

DIANA PEARCE

WIDER OPPORTUNITIES

FOR WOMEN;

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Washington, D.C.

THOMAS F. PETTIGREW

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Stevenson College

Santa Cruz, California

JUDITH PREISSLE-GOETZ

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

Department of Social

Science Education

Athens, Georgia

MARY ANNE RAYWID

HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY

Department of Administration and

Policy Studies

Hempstead, New York

3la

JAMES B. ROSENBAUM

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

Cemer for Urban Affairs and

Policy Research

Evanston, Illinois

JULIET SALTMAN

KENT STATE UNIVERSITY

Professor Emerita

Stark, Ohio

JANET W. SCHOFIELD

UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH

Learning Research and Development

Center

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

ROBERT SLAVIN

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

Center for Research on

Effective Schooling for

Disadvantaged Students

Baltimore, Maryland

M. BREWSTER SMITH

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Professor Emeritus

Santa Cruz, California

MARK A. SMYLIE

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

School of Education

Chicago, Illinois

32a

MARGARET BEALE SPENCER

EMORY UNIVERSITY

Division of Educational

Studies

Atlanta, Georgia

ALMA F. TAEUBER

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

Center for Demography & Ecology

Madison, Wisconsin

KARL TAEUBER

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

Center for Demography & Ecology

Madison, Wisconsin

D. GARTH TAYLOR

METRO CHICAGO INFORMATION

CENTER

Chicago, Illinois

MARYLEE C. TAYLOR

PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNVERSITY

Department of Sociology

University Park, Pennsylvania

HENRY T. TRUEBA

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

School of Education

Madison, Wisconsin

OSCAR URIBE, JR.

NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION

Program Specialist

Washington, D.C.

33a

PHYLLIS A. WALLACE

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE

OF TECHNOLOGY

Department of Economics

Cambridge, Massachusetts

MEYER WEINBERG

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS

Professor Emeritus

Amherst, Massachusetts

FRANKLIN D. WILSON

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

Department of Sociology

Madison, Wisconsin

JOHN F. WITTE

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

Political Science

Madison, Wisconsin

J. MILTON YINGER

OBERLIN COLLEGE

Professor Emeritus

Oberlin, Ohio

JOHN YINGER

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

Maxwell School of Citizenship

and Public Affairs

Syracuse, New York

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