Voluntary integration in uncertain times

Abstract

Sixty-five years after the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, the federal and judicial role in school desegregation has declined. In a more difficult political and legal environment, it has fallen on school districts to develop and implement voluntary integration plans through diversity-minded student assignment policies. In this article, Jeremy Anderson and Erika Frankenberg discuss how many and what types of voluntary integration policies currently exist in the U.S. and assess how effective they are at reducing racial and socioeconomic segregation.