Education and the Boston School Desegregation Case

Abstract

This article summarizes the positive educational, social, and political effects that can result from the advent of public school desegregation. It distinguishes these from unplanned, coincidental outcomes for students, such as academic achievement. It then contrasts the educational situation in Boston in 1973, stressing the historical decay of a once adequate public school system, with the improvements and reforms introduced through federal court intervention, including an account of sources of public resistance and political conflict. Finally, the article provides a summary of the unfinished educational reform agenda facing the Boston public school system and the paradox entailed in treating these in a context of drastic declines in enrollment resulting from shrinking births and regional out-migration.

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