During recent decades, social inequalities have increased in many urban spaces in the globalized world, and education has not been immune to these tendencies. Urban segregation, migration movements and education policies themselves have produced an increasing process of school segregation between the most disadvantaged social groups and the middle classes. Exploring school segregation patterns in Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, England, France, Peru, Spain, Sweden and the USA, this volume provides an overview of the main characteristics and causes of school segregation, as well as its consequences for issues such as education inequalities, students' performance, social cohesion and intercultural contact. The book is organized in three parts, with Part 1 exploring the systemic dimensions of education inequalities that shape different patterns of school segregation, and the extent to which public policies have addressed this challenge. Part 2 focuses on the consequences of school segregation on student performance and other educational aspects, and the Part 3 explores how school segregation dynamics are shaped by market forces and privatization of education. Whilst focusing on different dimensions of school segregation, each chapter explores the magnitude, trends and consequences of school segregation, providing readers with a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon and facilitating cross-country comparisons. Moreover, the volume provides important evidence about the dynamics and characteristics of school segregation, which is key for the planning and implementation of de-segregation policies.

List of Oral History and Interview Participants -- Notes -- Index

An acclaimed economist reveals that school integration efforts in the 1970s and 1980s were overwhelmingly successful -- and argues that we must renew our commitment to integration for the sake of all Americans We are frequently told that school integration was a social experiment doomed from the start. But as Rucker C. Johnson demonstrates in Children of the Dream, it was, in fact, a spectacular achievement. Drawing on longitudinal studies going back to the 1960s, he shows that students who attended integrated and well-funded schools were more successful in life than those who did not -- and this held true for children of all races. Yet as a society we have given up on integration. Since the high point of integration in 1988, we have regressed and segregation again prevails. Contending that integrated, well-funded schools are the primary engine of social mobility, Children of the Dream offers a radical new take on social policy. It is essential reading in our divided times.

The Commission on Civil Rights conducted its current study of ten school districts during the late fall and winter of the 1972-73 school year. The purpose of this study is to reexamine earlier findings and explore more deeply the dynamics of school desegregation and community reaction. In brief, the Commission found that one reason why many people are uneasy about desegregation is their fear that it will result in a poorer quality of education for their children. It is necessary to prepare carefully and sensitively for desegregation. The technical problems of achieving desegregation, such as determining the most appropriate desegregation technique and dealing with the problems incident to increased busing, have proven to be far less formidable than previously believed. Many school officials, in their concern to facilitate a successful transition to desegregation, have tended to consider the needs and desires of the white community alone, sometimes assuming that minority parents will welcome desegregation on almost any terms. The way in which school officials, civic leaders, and the news media respond to disruptive incidents can serve either to preserve an atmosphere of calm or heighten tension even more. There is a sharp contrast between the reaction of communities to their own experience in desegregation and their expressed feelings concerning desegregation as a general proposition. Finally, the effects of the controversy at the national level concerning busing and school desegregation have been felt in a number of communities visited by Commission staff. (Author/JM).

This book is written for the Millennial Generation to educate them about what school desegregation was actually about—the struggle over white domination in the United States. The textbooks they read as high school students describe the heroic efforts of African Americans to achieve civil rights but do not describe who was denying them these rights—white Americans. The oral histories in this book reveal how individuals navigated efforts to achieve educational equity amidst efforts to reassert white domination. These accounts counter the textbook history the Millennial Generation read which omits the massive white resistance to school desegregation, the various ways whites used subterfuge to slow down and redirect school desegregation in what would more benefit whites, and the concerted white political backlash that has been ensconced in educational policy and reform beginning with A Nation at Risk and continuing in No Child Left Behind. That is, educational policy as we know it is all about asserting white domination and not about educating children, and thus the Millennial Generation is faced with undoing what their parents and grandparents have done.

The great progress of recent years towards school integration has not been uniform: pockets of resistance remain and the issues involved in school desegregation continue to arouse public controversy and confusion. Sixteen years after the Supreme Court (in Brown vs Topeka) had ruled that school segregation compelled or sanctioned by law unconstitutional, there is still no widespread understanding of the nature and scope of the issues. The Civil Rights Commission believes that public understanding of the issues involved in school desegregation is essential if they are to be resolved satisfactorily. Many of these issues are legal in nature and require careful analysis of relevant court decisions. Other issues involve practical questions concerning the quality of education afforded to the Nation's children. Still others relate to fundamental human and moral questions of national conscience. The Commission speaks out in the hope that it can shed light on the issues and, by so doing, contribute to their successful resolution. The issue of school desegregation, like other issues of national concern, has roots deep in history; to understand fully the present situation and to form a sound basis for determining courses of action for the future, what that history has been must first be understood. (Authors/JM).