of success in the south and then moved on. why did we give up, sheryl? because it s hard and mainly because of federal courts, the supreme court, sent the signal to lower courts it was time to get out of the business of polices school desegregation, and i think a lot of parents were frustrated with forced busing and the tensions around that. meanwhile, there are strategies that are smarter than forced busing. i think the conversation has felt like it s either force erred busing or nothing, because we have this peak moment, this enter intense clash, particularly in boston and around the country, and we left policymakers left the impression we either just wave our hands and decent do this or don t force busing which no electorate is going to put up with, and so well, for one, i don t ever like to use the word forced
busing. it s a very political term. most cool kids have ridden busses a long as there have been school buses. only when it became a tool of integration there was a problem. kids ride school buses every day. it s clear that no one is really willing to do that anymore so we have to come up with other solutions. do you think part of this has to do if the thing that was so interesting to me in new york was what you see is in the absence of a plan to desegregate schools, in the absent of policy agitating for that, there s a million different ways that self-segregation will happen, will happen as a natural process. i was so impressed with the spokes at park slope collegiate who are trying to maintain an integrated space, but their willing to walk uphill because there s so maybe things happening at a social level in terms of the way new york is divided and how the society works that pushes towards segregatedded schools. this is unfortunate. a bigger constituency out there
committed from a sort of moral perspective, from a democratic perspective, to not having separate but equal schools, right? or separate but unequal as the brown holding makes very clear. but do we know from the research, are there tangible benefits that occur to the kids that are attending segregated schools as opposed to desegregated ones? absolutely. there s 40 years of research that show that low income and disadvantaged kids do much better in integrated middle class schools. poor kids in high poverty schools on average are two years behind kids in middle class schools. wow. meanwhile, more advantage kids, middle class kids, are not harmed by being exposed to poor kids nor are they harmed in fact, they benefit. there s research that shows they benefit from being exposed to kids of all colors. diversity, well resourced integrates schools work for all kids. this is a really important point. the way the busing debate got framed there s a zero set of
to accept change, is often quite reluctant to accept change of its own. a decade later the fight too big integrate schools famously exploded in boston. i don t think this country can take apiecement to the blacks against the whites. busing white and black children from their area schools to other schools were greet with violence and boycotts. thousands of whites marched through south boston to protest busing. black students were bussed out of six boston schools aten in today because school officials feared for for safety and the schools were closed. after the busing battle, the 70s and 80s policymake issues largely abandoned the desegregation effort but the supreme court was there to help them. in a series of decisions over decades the court diluted the holding of brown, restricting what methods schools could use to achieve racial integration. finally, in 2007, the roberts court struck down a voluntary