Education Week: Diversity’s Quiet Rebirth: A little more than a year has passed since the U.S. Supreme Court issued a sharply divided, 5-4 decision striking down two school districts’ policies designed to create racially diverse public schools. ('Use of Race Uncertain for Schools,' July 18, 2007; 'Districts Face Uncertainty in Maintaining Racially Diverse Schools,' June 28, 2007.) Educators across the nation are still struggling to make sense of the rulings, identify remedies to segregation that are still lawful, and develop fresh approaches to student assignment.
The pundit parade at the time of the ruling predicted an end to the values of social cohesion and integration embodied in the proudest moment in American jurisprudence, the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954. But what actually has happened after the so-termed Parents Involved ruling is far more hopeful and affirming of the aspirations manifest in Brown, and the civil rights movement it triggered.
