The end of racial integration? Education advocates brace for a decision.

SCHOOL DISTRICTS, PARENTS and advocates across the country are awaiting what could be a historic decision from the Supreme Court on racial integration in schools. In December 2006, justices heard arguments in lawsuits brought by white parents who charged that school districts in Seattle, Washington and Louisville, Kentucky had discriminated against their children. In the Seattle case, a white mom sued after her daughter was blocked from attending the high school she wanted. The school district had used race, among other factors, to select students when too many of them applied to the same school. In Louisville, the school board had a voluntary desegregation program that mandated that no school could have a student population that was more than 50 percent or less than 15 percent Black. A white parent sued.

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A decision from the justices is expected before June and would affect about 15,000 school districts nationwide that are under court orders to desegregate. It would also impact hundreds of more schools that voluntarily consider race as a factor in placing children. "A broad decision against race-conscious programs would threaten schools all across the country," said Gary Orfield, director of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. "It would make it illegal to have an integrated school unless it happens by accident."

The two school districts involved in the current lawsuits have argued that racially integrated schools best prepare young people for living in a racially integrated world. Advocates have also pointed out that without desegregation, public schools will mimic the severe racial segregation that happens in housing because of institutional racism. Yet some education leaders point out that racial integration didn't secure the success of children of color. "It helped, but it didn't totally close the gap because the funds were being used to put kids on buses, not to support kids," commented Linda Murray, the former superintendent for the San Jose Unified School District and now superintendent in residency at Education Trust-West.

The school district in San Jose took a different approach. "It shifted the whole focus from busing to student achievement," Murray said. The school days and weeks were extended; the master schedule for high school students was changed to offer more vigorous classes; and the high schools with a high population of Latino students began offering international high school diplomas, giving the school a competitive edge. As a result, the gaps traditionally seen in academic scores between white youth and children of color narrowed.

Victor Goode, a law professor at the City University of New York, warns that the Louisville and Seattle cases could represent a big step backward in civil rights history. "If the Court strikes down these programs, conservatives will have finally achieved a goal that they have been arguing for since the Brown desegregation case of 1954--that segregation should be outlawed, but that integration should be left as a completely voluntary individual choice," he said. "The irony of this position shouldn't be lost. We can socially engineer 350 years of racial oppression, but there is no more social imperative for equality than there is for getting people to choose a particular style of sneakers."