Educational Studies 370
Spring 2004
Introduction
2004 is the 50th anniversary of the 1954 Supreme Court decision on Brown v. Board of Education, in which racially separate schools were unanimously declared inherently unequal. It is one of the most pivotal opinions ever rendered by the Supreme Court, effecting changes in national and social policy that left no one untouched2. In the intervening years additional cases have come before the Supreme Court further redefining the 1954 ruling. During the 1970s and 1980s, the focus of desegregation was on the physical integration of black and white students through such measures as busing, school choice, magnet schools, use of ratios, redrawn school district boundaries, mandatory and voluntary intra- and inter-district transfers, and consolidation of city districts with suburban districts3. In the 1990
