Abstract
Students are more racially segregated in schools today than they were in the late 1960s and prior to the enforcement of court-ordered desegregation in school districts across the country. This special issue addresses the overarching theme of policies, practices, or roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders that may directly or indirectly contribute to this new generation of school segregation commonly known as resegregation. I begin this special issue with a brief discussion of the legal milieu that helped set the stage for resegregation and explain why collecting social science evidence may be useful in addressing the resegregation problem in schools.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s plurality decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools et al. v. Seattle School District No. 1 et al. (2007) produced an overwhelming flurry of dread and uncertainty among legal, education, and other social science scholars regarding how the decision may potentially impact racial integration in America’s public schools. The Court’s determination that the voluntary race-based student assignment policies set forth in Seattle, Washington and Louisville, Kentucky school districts were unconstitutional has left scholars believing that school districts’ desegregation efforts may soon be a policy and practice of the past. Justice Breyer and three other justices echoed this sentiment in a dissenting opinion, which stated,
[the plurality opinion] announces legal rules that will obstruct efforts by state and local governments to deal effectively with the growing resegregation of public schools . . ., and it undermines Brown’s promise of integrated primary and secondary education that local communities have sought to make a reality. (Parents Involved in Community Schools et al., 2007, p. 2800)
Now that more than 5 years have passed since the Parents Involved decision, it is becoming more evident that Justice Breyer’s observation regarding the growing resegregation of public schools was not an overreaction to a disappointing decision or a mere premonition, but it is indeed a fact. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (2012), during the 1968-1969 school year, which was just 14 years after Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) and the beginning of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights enforcement of desegregation orders across the country, approximately 77% of Black students and 55% of Latino students attended public schools that were comprised of 50% to 100% racial minorities. 1 In 2009-2010, more than 55 years after the Brown decision, the country’s public schools reflected an overall school segregation with about 74% of Black students and 80% of Latino students attending schools that were 50% to 100% minority and, more specifically, more than 40% of Black and Latino students were attending schools that were 90% to 100% minority (NCES, 2012). Furthermore, approximately 15% of Black and Latino students attend schools that are 99% to 100% minority, which Orfield, Kucsera, and Siegel-Hawley (2012) have named “apartheid schools” (p. 19; see also NCES, Common Core of Data, 2012). In other words, Black and Latino students are more segregated today in the 21st century than they were in the late 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement and prior to the implementation of desegregation plans in school districts across the country. Given these sobering statistics, one may wonder how this happened and what can be done to halt school resegregation and revive school desegregation efforts?
This special issue of Education and Urban Society addresses the overarching theme of policies, practices, or roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders that may directly or indirectly contribute to the problems of school resegregation in urban school districts. School segregation has been defined in the legal context as the intentional and state-sponsored racial isolation of students (Powell, 2005), and in the social context as policies and customs producing student enrollment patterns that are racially unbalanced (Clotfelter, Ladd, & Vigdor, 2005). Recent research have attributed school resegregation to White private school enrollment (Clotfelter, 2004), residential segregation patterns (Frankenberg, 2009, Reardon & Yun, 2005), court decisions that ended federal oversight of segregated districts (Clotfelter, Vigdor, & Ladd, 2006; Darling-Hammond, 2010; Holley, 2005; Minow, 2010), and school choice (Minow, 2010). The articles collected for this special issue expand on this research, as they identify and explicate policies, practices, and in some cases, interested parties who are known for either manifestly influencing school resegregation or tangentially impacting it. From their perspectives, the authors offer insight regarding some present-day problems associated with school resegregation and provide ideas or solutions of how to confront these issues or lessen some of the negative effects linked to school resegregation.
Overview of the Articles
The Frankenberg article examines the relationship between housing patterns in urban communities and racial segregation in schools. Given the ongoing concern of White flight and school resegregation issues, Frankenberg analyzes data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Center of Education Statistics from 2000 to 2010 to determine if there is a reciprocal relationship between residential and school segregation. She concludes that there is an increasing link between school and residential segregation among Black and Hispanic students in metropolitan areas in the South and other regions of the country. Frankenberg suggests enforcing the Fair Housing Act, and supplanting low-density zoning policies will help diminish residential segregation and provide access for Black and Hispanic students to more integrated neighborhoods and schools.
Williams and Houck follow Frankenberg with an analysis of two well-known school districts whose desegregation efforts have received considerable publicity over the years. Williams and Houck analyze the history and outcomes of the desegregation policies of Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Wake County Public Schools from 1999-2009, during which time, both districts altered their desegregation plans. Williams and Houck conduct a cross-case policy analysis evaluating the two large urban districts’ plans with regard to local and federal contributions, transportation costs, levels of segregation, and student achievement. Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Wake school districts changed their desegregation policies, which considered either race, socioeconomic status (SES), or both, to controlled choice plans that promote neighborhood schools in 2002 and 2010, respectively. Williams and Houck found that per pupil expenditures of the two school districts were similar over the 10-year period; however, there were differences with regard to levels of segregation and student achievement. Specifically, Charlotte-Mecklenburg has resegregated since the federal court determined that the district achieved unitary status in 1999, and the district implemented its race- and SES-neutral student assignment plan in 2002. With regard to student achievement, Wake generally outperformed Charlotte-Mecklenburg across higher SES and lower SES schools throughout each county. Williams and Houck warn that Wake may experience a similar student achievement fate as Charlotte-Mecklenburg since it eliminated the consideration of socioeconomic class from its student assignment plan.
The Eckes and Plucker article addresses how resegregation has been bolstered by the increase in charter schools due to school choice, and the role university-based authorizers could play in encouraging student body diversity in charter schools. Eckes and Plucker focus on university authorizers because universities tend to have a social justice mission. Typically, an authorizers’ role is to review and approve or reject initial charter school applications and renew or revoke the charter of low performing schools after a period of time. In their article, Eckes and Plucker read the online applications and policies of 33 university authorizers in 9 states; 20 universities do not have charter school policies and applications available for online review. Eckes and Plucker found that only 5 universities in 5 different states used language in their policies that promote student body diversity. Eckes and Plucker recommend that all university authorizers use stronger language in the charter school applications to foster diversity and take bold action to inspire charter schools to incorporate diversity policies.
The final article delves into a major school segregation issue of this century, which is the segregation of English Language Learners (ELL). In their article, Vasquez Heilig and Holme investigate the triple segregation of ELL students, which is racial, economic, and linguistic segregation, and their connection to high-stakes accountability ratings in Texas schools. Through statistical analysis of publicly available 2011 school-level data, Vasquez Heilig and Holme find that a majority of ELL students in Texas are segregated in high-poverty and high-minority schools. In addition, ELL students are more likely to attend low-performing middle and high schools, and they have the highest dropout rates and the lowest test scores and graduation rates in high schools. Vasquez Heilig and Holme contribute much of these issues to housing segregation and state policies encouraging school choice.
In this special issue, the terms “segregation” and “resegregation” are used interchangeably; however, the articles in the issue support the argument that resegregation in the 21st century is simply a rebirth of a century-old tradition of educational inequality and racial disproportionality fortified by the national demise of legal enforcement of desegregation policies. This country is in a new generation of segregation, also known as resegregation, created by old policies and practices, which may be controlled and negated with some simple local, state and possibly federal intervention. Therefore, as a precursor to the above-mentioned articles, I begin this special issue with a brief discussion of the legal milieu that helped set the stage for resegregation and the policy, practices, and actors that are discussed in this special issue. In addition, I explain why social science research may be useful in addressing the resegregation problem in the schools, and why ignoring social science evidence is a threat to the U.S. educational system.
Analysis and Discussion
Analysis of the Legal Landscape
In the years preceding the groundbreaking 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision, school segregation was just another lawful and customary practice that sanctioned racial discrimination in compliance with the separate but equal doctrine. The separate but equal doctrine got its legal strength through the 1896 transportation case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which enforced the notion that White superiority required the separation of the dominant race from inferior races. The legal precedence set forth in Plessy successfully created a disproportionate level of social, educational, and economic resources and opportunities for Whites for more than half of the 20th century. And then the U.S. Supreme Court laid down the law in Brown I (1954), which deemed racially segregated schools unconstitutional and held that “[i]n the field of public education, the doctrine of separate but equal have no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” (p. 495). The Court immediately followed with Brown II (1955) and mandated that desegregation occur with “all deliberate speed” (p. 300). These decisions offered a glimmer of hope that the enduring reign of dual school systems would soon end. Unfortunately, the Brown decisions brought little movement but instead generated much resistance from school districts around the country, particularly in southern states. In the summer of 1963, before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, only 1% of Black students in the South attended schools with a predominantly White student population (Orfield, 2005).
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had a legislative and enforcement power behind it that the U.S. Supreme Court lacked. The Act prohibits organizations, such as school districts, from discriminating against individuals due to their race, color, religion, sex, or national origin (42 U.S.C.S 2000 et seq., 1964). More specifically, Title VI of the Act permits the U.S. Attorney General to investigate school districts that may be engaging in racial segregation and bring lawsuits on behalf of individual students. Title VI also allows the federal government to withhold financial assistance from districts that unlawfully discriminate (42 U.S.C.S 2000d et seq., 1964). The U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, which later became the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, helped lead the enforcement efforts by handing down desegregation orders throughout the late 1960s and 1970s. School districts scrambled to create and implement desegregation plans, particularly in the South, which led to additional lawsuits and the development of desegregation standards. The Green v. County School Board of New Kent County (1968) was one of those cases that began building the desegregation plan framework for school districts. In Green, the Supreme Court established six key areas, now known as the Green factors, which should be examined when determining whether a school system has eliminated its dual system. The six factors are (a) the composition of the student body, (b) faculty, (c) staff, (d) the transportation system, (e) extracurricular activities, and (f) facilities. With Green as a foundational yardstick, the Supreme Court soon followed with other cases that addressed parameters of acceptable court-ordered desegregation plans. For instance, in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971), the Court permitted the redrawing of school attendance zones and busing students to achieve racial balancing in the district. Conversely, in Millken v. Bradley (1974), the Court rejected the city of Detroit’s plan to impose an interdistrict desegregation remedy, which would have allowed students to cross urban and suburban district lines.
By the 1980s, most school districts that were once cases of de jure segregation had entered into desegregation plans (Hochschild & Scrovronick, 2003). The percentage of African American students attending majority White schools had reached above 43% by 1988 (Orfield & Lee, 2004). It seemed as if school districts had gotten into a rhythm of implementing its desegregation plans and dismantling dual systems; however, new legal questions regarding unitary status arose that became the impetus for additional lawsuits in the 1990s and resulted in a shift in desegregation policy. Unitary status has been described as a school system “within which no person is to be effectively excluded from any school because of race or color” (Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, 1969, p. 20). To reach this goal, the federal courts charged school boards with an affirmative duty “to take whatever steps might be necessary to convert to a unitary system in which racial discrimination would be eliminated root and branch” (Green, 1968, pp. 437-438). Salient issues stemming from this idea were how a school district would achieve this status and the district’s legal responsibility to sustain desegregation endeavors after being granted unitary status.
The Supreme Court first addressed this concern in Board of Education of Oklahoma City Public Schools, Independent School District No. 89 v. Dowell (1991). The Dowell Court considered the continuance of a desegregation order on Oklahoma City schools after a district court granted unitary status, and the school district later adopted a student reassignment plan that would likely lead to resegregation. The Court concluded that once a school district reached unitary status, it regained local control and the school district no longer had to continue under the active supervision of a district court. Thus the Court determined that a federal court’s appropriate standard of review of school systems granted unitary status is whether the “[b]oard had complied in good faith with the desegregation decree since it was entered, and whether the vestiges of past discrimination had been eliminated to the extent practicable” (Dowell, 1991, p. 250). The Supreme Court noted that federal courts should look to the six Green factors as guidance of whether the school district had eliminated the vestiges of de jure segregation.
The U.S. Supreme Court immediately followed Dowell with another decision, which addressed whether unitary status could be achieved in incremental phases (Freeman v. Pitts, 1992). In Freeman, the Court held that a federal court in Georgia had discretion to release a school district in incremental stages, even though the district met only four of the six Green factors. The federal court would continue to monitor only the remaining Green criteria, and an additional criteria created by the district court in Freeman, which was quality of education. In other words, a school district can achieve unitary status and regain local control without completely meeting all the criteria established as evidence that all vestiges of past de jure segregation has been eradicated. Through Dowell and Freeman, the Supreme Court set forth an analysis for ascertaining if a school district has achieved unitary status, which is (a) whether the vestiges of past discrimination has been eliminated to the extent practicable and (b) whether the school district acted in good faith fully and satisfactorily in complying with and committing to its desegregation plan as not to return to its former ways. However, the Court did not give a working definition of “good faith” in either case to determine whether a school system fully complied with, and was committed to, a desegregation plan to eliminate the vestiges of past discrimination, nor did the Court offer direction on how to legally address school districts that later develop policies or practices that result in resegregated schools, and thus, place into question whether the school district intended to return to its former ways.
Ironically, the Court of Appeals in the Tenth Circuit in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1992), otherwise known as Brown III, which is a case rarely analyzed in school desegregation history and precedence, proffered some persuasive legal guidance on determining good faith and the expectations of future commitment to desegregation by school districts. The court noted,
[d]epending on the definition of “good faith,” the possibility of immediate resegregation following a declaration of unitariness seems all too real. For this reason, we are convinced that evaluation of the “good faith” prong of the Dowell test must include consideration of a school system’s continued commitment to integration. A school system that views compliance with a school desegregation plan as a means by which to return to student assignment practices that produce numerous racially identifiable schools cannot be said to be acting in “good faith”. . . .[I]naction in the face of the affirmative duty to desegregate is not lawful conduct. A school system that does not take the required steps cannot be found in good faith and may not be discharged from continued supervision with respect to any facet of its operations. (Brown III, 1992, p. 592)
The Brown III court acknowledged that the lingering effects of legal racial segregation would not magically dissolve without school districts affirmatively exerting effort into doing so. Based on this reasoning, the court concluded that the Board of Education of Topeka must prove that “its policies form a consistent pattern of lawful conduct directed to eliminating earlier violations” (1992, p. 592 citing Freeman, 1992, p. 1446) to show good faith and achieve incremental or complete discharge from court supervision. The court found that the Topeka school district had not fulfilled its affirmative duty in two key areas set forth in Green, which were student assignment and faculty/staff assignment, because the school district did not actively affect these areas but instead tried to benefit from the organic residential integration that was occurring in Topeka neighborhoods. Thus the school as a whole had not achieved unitary status and court supervision would continue in spite of the decisions in Dowell and Freeman (Brown III, 1992). The court further opined that if the federal court maintained control over specific Green factors in which resegregation occurred, which also led to resegregation in other factors that had been previously released back to the school district, the federal court had the power to address the issues in the relinquished areas without a showing of discriminatory intent. In other words, a court could regain control and monitoring powers over every area of a school district if resegregation occurs, even if the district did not intend to resegregate.
The Brown III decision and analysis has not been challenged or overturned by the Supreme Court, so it remains good law and persuasive jurisprudence to district courts within the Tenth Circuit currently providing full or incremental court supervision for segregation. In this era of resegregation, it may be useful to heed the court when it noted that “[t]he Constitution does not permit the courts to ignore today’s reality because it is temporally distant from the initial finding that the school system was operated in violation of the constitutional right of its students” (Brown III, 1992, p. 590). Thus the courts should have a duty to maintain desegregated schools, if the segregation is interfering with students’ equal educational opportunities. Nevertheless, in spite of the Brown III rationale, the Dowell and Freeman decisions are the law of the land and control how courts interpret the unitariness of school districts. Consequently, the desegregation cases following Dowell and Freeman relaxed the legal standard of totally eliminating the vestiges of past discrimination, restored the minimization of racially integrated public schools, and released schools that achieved unitary status from future accountability requirements and desegregation initiatives. As such, it is no surprise that Black students attending majority White institutions decreased from its highest level of 43% in 1988 to 30% in 2001, the lowest since 1968. In the 2000-2001 school year, on average Black and Latino students were attending schools that were more than 50% minority, while on average White students were attending schools that were 79% White (Orfield & Lee, 2004).
It appears as though achieving unitary status is the key to permanently freeing school districts from all future desegregation shackles whether the districts want to be or not. A good example of this is in Cappachione et al. v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools et al. (1999). This case was brought by a parent who claimed his non-Black child was denied access to a magnet school based on race. In reviewing the parent’s claims, the district court examined Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district’s compliance with its desegregation order even though the school district had not requested a review for unitary status. In fact, the school board felt compelled to continue to address its problem with segregated schools, but the district court refused to allow the school district to do so, dissolved the desegregation order, and found it had dismantled a dual system and achieved unitary status. The then Associate Superintendent of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district expressed trepidation to the Cappachione court that the district would resegregate if it was granted unitary status at that time, yet the court found such a concern to be unconvincing. This fact is an interesting contradiction because since the Brown II decision there has been constant reference by the judiciary to defer to a school board’s knowledge of its district’s proclivities and to leave certain policy-making decisions to the district for that reason. One would think that the school officials in a district like Charlotte-Mecklenburg would be in the best position to know whether it will likely return to its former ways of a dual system, but obviously not in the Cappachione case. The district court concluded that Charlotte-Mecklenburg acted in good faith with remedying its constitutional violation of de jure segregation, so it was under no duty to address societal discrimination and socioeconomic issues that were contributing to the current segregated school system. This decision was later affirmed in 2001 by the appeals court in Belk et al. v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education et al. Within a year of the 2002 implementation of a new school choice plan, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district experienced resegregation with a higher percentage of students in schools racially identifiable by race and class than prior to the district achieving unitary status (Mickelson, 2005).
Importance of Social Science Research in the 21st Century
The aforementioned line of legal cases illustrates the leniency with regard to court oversight and granting unitary status to school districts, but the cases also demonstrate the lack of serious consideration of social science evidence and the impending globalization of this country. In Brown I (1954), the Supreme Court gave credence to the value of social science research and its meaning when analyzing school segregation issues, yet Dowell and its progeny seemed to forget that critical piece when conducting the two-prong analysis of whether a school district has achieved unitary status. The Brown Court averred that
[w]e must consider public education in the light of its full development and its present place in American life throughout the Nation. Only in this way can it be determined if segregation in public schools deprives these plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws. (1954, pp. 493-494).
With that in mind, the Court ruminated over the importance of education setting the groundwork for good citizenship, cultural values, professional training, and helping a student adjust to his or her environment. After contemplating those significant values and reading several psychological and sociological reports on Black students’ experiences in segregated schools, the Court found that segregated schools had a detrimental effect on Black children socially and emotionally and their motivation to learn; separate educational facilities were inherently unequal and no longer acceptable (Brown, 1954). The district court in Cappachione (1999) conducted an in-depth analysis of each of the six Green factors when assessing unitary status, which included questioning social scientists and school board members as well as reviewing reports on student achievement. However, the students were not interviewed or observed, and the historical or current community context played no part in the court’s decision. Similarly, the plurality in Parents Involved gave little weight to the social science research presented, even though such research was vital to understanding the benefits of racially diverse schools (Frankenberg & Garces, 2007-2008), while the four dissenters focused heavily on social science data (Armor & Duck O’Neill, 2010) when they warned of misapplying constitutional principles and the imminent harm of resegregation. Therefore, social science research may be critical for a court’s understanding of community context (Frankenberg & Garces, 2007-2008) when assessing unitary status and the constitutionality of race-based student assignment plans and for school district’s trying to develop narrowly tailored desegregation plans (Armor & Duck O’Neill, 2010).
Extant social science research has revealed the negative impact that segregated schools have on the academic achievement levels of Black students. Schools serving primarily poor, racial minority students tend to have larger class sizes, fewer teachers, and fewer and lower-quality course offerings (Darling-Hammond, 2004). Minority isolation in schools and neighborhoods are also significant predictors of low graduation rates (Orfield, Frankenberg, & Garces, 2008; Swanson, 2004; Swanson, 2005). In her 2007 study, Mickelson determined that even after controlling for individual and familial issues that may impact student achievement levels, Black students’ achievement was lower in middle and high school grades when they spent more time in segregated Black schools. Furthermore, regression analyses conducted on school achievement levels have shown that the more time Black and White students spend together in elementary schools, the higher their standardized test scores are in middle and high school and the higher their track placements are in secondary school (Coleman, 1966; Mickelson, 2005).
While test score outcomes and college graduation rates are important, it is just as crucial for public schools to fulfill their duty to educate its citizenry and to ensure that all students receive the necessary tools to function in an increasingly racially and ethnically diverse society (Kurlaender & Yun, 2005, 2007). Students who attended multiracial schools revealed more positive outcomes with regard to living, working, and interacting with people of different race and ethnicities than students who attended segregated schools. However, White students appeared to demonstrate the most negative attitudes toward other racial/ethnic groups when they attended schools with a very small percentage of minorities (Kurlaender & Yun, 2005, 2007). Other studies have suggested similar conclusions that Whites who attended desegregated schools were more likely to work in desegregated settings (Banks, 2008; Cashin, 2004). Thus integrated schools benefit all students of all races and ethnicities socially, emotionally, and academically.
Conclusion
Statistics from the 2010 U.S. Census Survey indicate that the United States is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. Overall, the White population is the largest racial group; however, the three largest racial or ethnic minority populations grew at a much faster rate between 2000 and 2010 2 (Humes, Jones, & Ramirez, 2011). Specifically, the total U.S. population increased by 9.7% between 2000 and 2010, but individuals who identified their racial or ethnic origin as non-Hispanic White alone had the slowest growth rate at 1% during that period. In comparison, individuals who identified their racial or ethnic origin as Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, or Asian grew by 12%, 43%, and 43%, respectively, between 2000 and 2010 (Humes et al., 2011). The growth of racial and ethnic minority populations is a trend expected to continue for decades to come. The changes in the racial and ethnic demography may mean to some that school resegregation is a foregone and acceptable conclusion, but to many others it serves as a cautionary tale that we, as stakeholders in this country, need to be more vigilant in ensuring our schools are an inclusive representation of our democratic society and not an exclusive racial apartheid system.
The use of social science research may be imperative in future desegregation litigation given the changing demographics of local school districts and the society at large. The Brown Court explained the necessity of considering education in the light of its full development and important purpose in American society when determining whether students are being deprived of equal protection of the laws. Children should not be learning in racially segregated schools when a racially and ethnically diverse world is looming outside their school window. Not only does that create a feeling of inferiority and inadequacy within the children sitting in the segregated schools but also it deprives those children, White, Black, and all children of color, of the educational opportunity to learn good citizenship, cultural values, and adjust to their ever-evolving global environment. Children cannot truly learn to compete in a diverse society if they are competing against the unknown; they need to learn alongside of their peers. The Brown (1954) decision clearly spoke on this matter when it held that “[s]eparate educational facilities are inherently unequal” (p. 495), and in the 21st century, we have even more reason to adhere to this legal principle as the U.S. embraces an increasingly racially and ethnically diverse society.
A theme of the Supreme Court’s desegregation cases in the 1990s was returning local control to school districts that understand the local needs and demands of its citizens. This theme is a common thread weaving Dowell and Freeman to the Brown decisions. In Brown II (1955), the Supreme Court considered how desegregation relief would occur and stated,
[f]ull implementation of these constitutional principles may require solutions of varied local school problems. School authorities have the primary responsibility for elucidating, assessing, and solving these [segregation] problems; courts will have to consider whether the action of school authorities constitutes good faith . . . (p. 299)
The Court cogently explained the significance of local school districts taking command of their distinct segregation problems and acknowledged it is the school districts’ responsibility to solve those problems based on their unique needs. In 1992, the Brown III Court of Appeals in the Tenth Circuit fell in line and considered the changing demographics and residential patterns in Topeka, Kansas and ordered the school board to assertively fashion desegregation relief that embodied the unique needs of the community and provided equal protection to all students. Accordingly, the courts, politicians, school districts, and local citizens and school districts are the stakeholders charged with the responsibility to take notice of specific social science evidence affecting segregated schools, the students within them, and the communities around them in light of the diverse society in which we live. We can no longer ignore the detrimental effects that school segregation is having on our children and our educational system in the 21st century. The articles in this special issue will illuminate some of these detrimental effects and provide suggestions on how to address them.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.