white and of color, are fleeing these same central areas for perceived
better and safer lives in the suburbs. As the inner suburbs become
more integrated, options for the increasingly segregated central cities
are diminished.

Further, as all levels of government feel growing financial
pressures, the cost of integration is likewise increasingly challenged.
Educators as well as parents and lay citizens question whether
moving students for the purpose of desegregation is the best use of
the education dollar. In early 1995, 40 years after Brown v. Board of
Education, this concern has been demonstrated in Missouri v. Jenkins
where the State of Missouri contested a court order that had required
the expenditure of 1.3 billion dollars during the previous decade to
integrate its overwhelmingly black inner-city schools. Although 56
magnet schools were created in the system and 1500 suburban
students voluntarily transferred to the Kansas City schools, test
scores, especially at the high school level, did not show the progress
expected. In the 1990s, the quality of education and the results
achieved are as much discussed as the racial composition of the
student body ( The Christian Science Monitor, January 10, 1995, p.
10).

In the 1950s, once Brown was accepted as the law of the land, it
was generally assumed that desegregating those schools that were
racially unbalanced, whether by de jure or de facto circumstances,
would sufficiently address the issue. Viewed from the perspective of
the 1990s, the situation seems far more complex. School districts
that voluntarily or under court order, desegregated their schools may
become resegregated as students and their parents choose to move
into or out of the district.

Desegregation was assumed to have educational as well as social
benefits. This hypothesis is now being called into question. While the
circumstances of the next century will differ significantly from what
already has transpired, we still benefit from an awareness of past
successes and failures.

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