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January 16, 2003
By Erica
Frankenberg, Chungmei Lee
and Professor Gary Orfield
You may download the full report from
the link below or each chapter separately, beginning with the
Executive Summary. Most files are in PDF Format, please allow
a couple of minutes for
them to appear on your screen. 
A Multiracial Society with Segregated Schools: Are We Losing the
Dream?
(590 KB file size, estimated 1 min 22 secs on a 56 Kbps connection)
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, American
public schools are now twelve years into the process of continuous
resegregation. The desegregation of black students, which increased
continuously from the l950s to the late l980s, has now receded to
levels not seen in three decades. Although the South remains the
nation's most integrated region for both blacks and whites, it is
the region that is most rapidly going backwards as the courts terminate
many major and successful desegregation orders.
This report describes patterns of racial enrollment and segregation
in American public schools at the national, regional, state, and
district levels for students of all racial groups. Our analysis
of the status of school desegregation in 2000 uses the NCES Common
Core of Data for 2000-01, which contains data submitted by virtually
all U.S. schools to the Department of Education. Additionally, this
report examines trends in desegregation and, now, resegregation
over the last one-third century.
In HTML Format
In PDF Format (160 KB file size,
estimated 22 secs on a 56 Kbps connection)
When we celebrate Martin Luther King Day, students in schools where
there are no whites and almost everyone is poor enough to get a
free lunch – the very kind of schools Dr. King fought to eliminate
– will be reciting the “I have a dream” speech.
In these immortal words, King told of his dreams of integration,
that “One day, right there in Alabama, little black boys and
black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and
white girls as sisters and brothers...”
In PDF Format (310 KB file size,
estimated 43 secs on a 56 Kbps connection)
Data for this study’s analysis come from the National Center
for Education Statistic’s (NCES) Common Core of Data (CCD)
for 2000-01 and previous years, which contains enrollment data submitted
annually by virtually all U.S. schools to the Department of Education.
In PDF Format (65.8 KB file size,
estimated 9 secs on a 56 Kbps connection)
In the three decades since the Civil Rights era began, there has
been rapid transformation of the racial composition of the nation’s
public schools. The most rapidly growing racial/ethnic group is
Latinos, who have increased from 22.4 million to 32.4 million in
the last decade, a growth of more than 45%. This change in overall
population is reflected in the public school enrollment. Table 1
shows the change in public school enrollment since 1968 for the
three largest racial groups: white, black, and Latino students.
Black and Latino students now make up more than a third of the total
student population in public schools as compared to 1968, when only
one in five students were non-white...
In PDF Format (221 KB file size,
estimated 30 secs on a 56 Kbps connection)
Black Segregation: One of the most consistent trends of
the last decade is a reversal of gains in desegregation for black
students made in the South in the late 1960s and 1970s as a result
of judicial and executive enforcement of desegregation orders. In
fact, court-ordered desegregation of black students in Southern
states resulted in the South becoming the most integrated region
of the country, with 43.5% of black students in majority white schools
in 1988 (Table 10). In the 1990s, as the desegregation plans have
been dismantled across the South, however, the proportion of black
students in majority white schools has decreased by 13 percentage
points.
In PDF Format (161 KB file size,
estimated 22 secs on a 56 Kbps connection)
While the minority public school population in the U.S. continues
to grow, overall, white students in most parts of the country still
remain isolated from any significant minority presence in their
schools (see Table 4 above). There are, however, now eleven states
where white students have, on average, at least 20% minority students
in their classes (Table 13). Seven of these eleven are located in
the South and another is a Border state, all places where students
once attended legally mandated segregated schools. The high number
of Southern states where white students experience significant exposure
to minority students as seen in Table 13, combined with the fact
that none of the Northern or Midwest states have similar levels
of exposure, may suggest the lasting impact of court-ordered desegregation
plans to produce interracial contact in these schools...
In PDF Format (101 KB file size,
estimated 14 secs on a 56 Kbps connection)
In an earlier report released August 2002, The Civil Rights Project
examined the changing exposure of whites, black, and Latino students
to students of other races at the district level. The study found
that despite the growing diversity of the school-age population,
the data show an overwhelming trend towards school district resegregation.
In this section, we further examine the changing racial composition
and enrollments of the largest school systems: central city, countywide
metropolitan, and suburban...
In PDF Format (132 KB file size,
estimated 18 secs on a 56 Kbps connection)
Civil rights goals have not been accomplished. The country has
been going backward toward greater segregation in all parts of the
country for more than a decade. Since the end of the Civil Rights
era, there has been no significant leadership towards the goal of
creating a successfully integrated society built on integrated schools
and neighborhoods. The last constructive act by Congress on the
issue of integrated schools and neighborhoods was the enactment
of the federal desegregation aid program in 1972 (repealed by the
Reagan Administration in 1981)... Although thousands of school districts
(often in the suburbs) are facing new challenges of racially changing
neighborhoods and communities, there has been extremely little research
or technical assistance available for a third of a century. In the
two largest educational innovations of the past two decades—standards-based
reform and school choice—the issue of racial segregation and
its consequences has been ignored...
In PDF Format (55.9 KB file
size, estimated 7 secs on a 56 Kbps connection)
Appendix A and B
In PDF Format (129 KB file size,
estimated 17 secs on a 56 Kbps connection)
Appendix C: Additional Comparative
Tables
In PDF Format (92.5
KB file size, estimated 12 secs on a 56 Kbps connection)
Last revised: 01/29/03
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