Evidence That Integration Works

• In Event: Diversity by Design: New Visions for School Districts That Serve All Students

Abstract

The first panelist has a long and distinguished career as a civil right attorney and an architect of several well-known integration plans. He has been the lead attorney on many landmark desegregation cases and filed nearly a dozen briefs in the United States Supreme Court. He also has expertise on the intersection between housing and school segregation and the policies that contribute to structural poverty in low-income and neighborhood of color. The connection between school segregation and structural poverty is an important policy framework if schools are to meaningfully integrated.

In his presentation this panelist will provide evidence that integration is successful in terms of academic and life outcomes for black students dispelling the myth that the efforts to integrate school after Brown v. Board of Education were a failure. In conjunction to providing an in-depth review of what strategies work best to integrate schools, this panelist will look forward to assess the future of integration at a time when re-segregation is on the rise in many parts of the country.

The essential question this panelist will address is: what we have learned about past integration plans that can help shape integration designs in the future.

Author

• John C. Brittain, University of the District of Columbia