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U.S. and Gulf South School Segregation
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<p>by Jeanie Donovan, M.P.A., M.P.H. and Fred Kammer, S.J., J.D.</p>
<p>Across the country, schools are opening and students returning to their classrooms. &nbsp;Despite the Supreme Court&rsquo;s 1954 Brown versus Board of Education decision to desegregate schools &ldquo;with all deliberate speed,&rdquo; too many classrooms are still segregated.</p>
<p>School districts made significant progress toward desegregation after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but the trend has shifted back toward race-based school segregation. [1] Following court decisions in the late 1960s and 1970s that required Department of Education officials to oversee implementation of desegregation plans, the rate of black students attending majority-white schools increased dramatically from 1 percent in 1963 to 43 percent in 1983. [2] &nbsp;After federal oversight phased out and schools were left to make &ldquo;good faith efforts&rdquo; to maintain integration, significant backsliding followed. In 2012, 74 percent of black students and 80 percent of Latino students attended schools that were 50 to 100 percent minority; and of these, more than 40 percent of black and Latino students attended schools that were 90 to 100 percent minority. &nbsp;[3]</p>
<p>This re-segregation trend often concentrates minorities in schools with fewer resources that face challenges attracting and retaining quality teachers. [4] &nbsp;A mounting body of evidence indicates that school segregation has negative impacts on short-term academic achievement of minority students and their success in later life. [5] &nbsp;Integrated schools have a positive impact on all students through promoting awareness and mutual understanding and ensuring that they have the necessary tools to function in an increasingly multicultural society. [6] &nbsp;Not taking intentional steps to ensure that all students have the opportunity to attend quality, integrated schools perpetuates injustice, allowing the mistakes of the past to haunt the future.</p>
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