Brown in the 21st Century: A Focus on Court-Ordered Desegregation Today

Brown v. Board of Education (1954) has been highly regarded as a landmark decision that set forth the promise of equality in education for all students. Today, almost sixty years later, the promise of equality still remains a promise as students of color continue to lag behind in educational attainment. Brown had an ambitious agenda that aimed to desegregate as an intermediate step to equalizing educational opportunities. While racial integration has several benefits for students to adjust to cultural values through exchanges in conversations, discussions, and views, the question remains whether desegregation is still worth pursuing today. Court decisions in the 1990s, most notably, Board of Education v. Dowell (1990), suggests that courtordered desegregation plans were only intended to be provisional until schools have made satisfactory efforts to comply with Brown. As a result of these policies, there has been an ongoing administrative push for the end of court-ordered desegregation. This study will seek to answer whether these policies are moving in the direction of Brown by testing the relationship between court-ordered desegregation plans and educational attainment to see if they are statistically significant and whether desegregation is still relevant in terms of improving educational attainment.