With All Deliberate Speed: The Reversal of Court-Ordered School Desegregation, 1970–2013

Abstract

The retrenchment of court-ordered school desegregation has been more variable and incomplete than often acknowledged, challenging common accounts that blame changes in federal policy and legal precedent. This study supplements these accounts by examining local factors that influenced whether and when desegregation orders were dismissed between 1970 and 2013. After accounting for federal policy changes and districts' variable success in desegregating schools, several ostensibly race-neutral organizational, financial, and political incentives appear to influence the survival of desegregation orders. Racial competition dynamics related to local racial composition also seem to play a role, as desegregation orders have been most vulnerable when and where black population shares surpass a tipping point of about 40%. Court-ordered school desegregation was one of the civil rights movement's prime achievements, it was the U.S. government's largest intrusion into a school system built on local control, and it was often very effective. But like other civil rights policies, it was rife with ambiguous goals and methods that permitted a range of outcomes and made it vulnerable to political attack (Stainback and Tomaskovic-Devey 2012; Pedriana and Stryker 2017). We

Is America coming apart? Socioeconomic segregation in neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and social networks, 1970–2020

“…Despite the 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, American schools remain both separate and unequal, albeit in different and subtler ways. While legal mandates mean that racial separation in schools can no longer be absolute, many schools and school districts continue to be segregated, both racially and socioeconomically (Fiel & Zhang, 2019; Orfield et al., 2019; Reardon & Owens, 2014). In this section, we discuss trends in segregation among and within schools at the preschool, secondary (K‐12), and tertiary level.…”

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Merit as Race Talk: The Ontological Myopia of Merit Knowledge

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Beyond composition: What the study of diversity in K12 schools can learn from research in higher education

“…Racial and ethnic differences in K12 educational outcomes narrowed during school desegregation efforts in the 1970s and 1980s (Hedges & Nowell, 1999; Magnuson & Waldfogel, 2008; Reardon & Owens, 2014). Yet, over the past several decades, schools have resegregated (Fiel & Zhang, 2019; Frankenberg et al, 2019), resulting in either a stalling or reversal in the narrowing of racial gaps in academic outcomes (Berends & Penaloza, 2010; Bohrnstedt et al., 2015; Musu‐Gillette et al., 2017). This resegregation has been driven by a combination of demographic shifts, family decisions about schools, policy changes, and the courts' dismantling of state and district desegregation plans (Orfield, 2001; Orfield & Eaton, 1996).…”