Brown's Promise

In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education that schools segregated by race will never achieve true equality. Nearly 70 years later, exposure to racial, ethnic, cultural, and economic diversity is even more important to our children’s educational and civic futures. But progress toward ending segregation is stalled and backsliding. The research is clear: diverse classrooms help students of all races and backgrounds do better in school and beyond. For students of color and students from low-income backgrounds, the effects are especially powerful for one simple reason: resources. Schools and districts with high numbers of students of color and students living in poverty are under-funded, over-reliant on novice teachers, and less likely to provide rigorous coursework. Across the country, many school district boundaries have been gerrymandered to reinforce patterns of segregation and inequality in resources. Diversifying schools remains one of the only proven strategies to expand access to those resources. At a time when division and disunity threaten the fiber of our democracy, it’s also the best way to foster understanding and collaboration across racial, ethnic, cultural, and economic lines. This work has never been easy. We must avoid mistakes of the past, when the brunt of early integration efforts was borne by communities of color. But together we can.