Precarious victory

Current education scholarship positions the United States firmly within a "post-desegregation era," suggesting that the end of most court-ordered desegregation plans and a new set of concerns and priorities within education reform have effectively supplanted the commitment to racial integration as an essential facet of equalizing opportunity and outcomes in K-12 education. In reality, reactions to the changing legal and political landscape are varied and complex, with some communities and school districts fighting to prevent a return to racial and economic isolation, or to initiate efforts to increase diversity. Despite copious scholarly attention to the dynamics and consequences of the retreat from school desegregation, surprisingly few studies have closely examined successful efforts of this kind. This dissertation contributes to the literature by exploring one suburban community's successful effort to maintain an inter-district transfer program voluntarily after a quarter century of court oversight. Utilizing a qualitative case-study approach, I seek to identify how and why desegregation advocates effectively preserved the program in the face of contentious challenge. By extension, I shed light more generally on the conditions necessary to foster support for integration efforts during a period of widespread resistance to race-conscious policy and an "excellence" agenda within education reform that deprioritizes the social and civic purposes of schooling. This study identifies several key factors related to the political outcome in this case, in particular, the effective framing of the program as an opportunity for all youth and a social responsibility, as well as the growth of an intergenerational alliance between traditional civil rights leaders within the community and the students who experienced integration. At the same time, it illustrates the precarious nature of the victory, given the presence of a vocal minority articulating post-racial assumptions and beliefs dominant in broader, national discourse that gained rapid and substantial influence, even within a community long associated with progressive politics and leadership in school desegregation. This inquiry points, thus, to both the promise and challenge of fulfilling the ideals of Brown across northern metropolitan regions as a new century unfolds. Insights and recommendations for other communities grappling with the future of integration efforts in the coming decades are included.