¶ … desegregation has taken place in schools. This began as a trend some years ago, but was pushed very clearly in the 1990s. Many court cases have appeared recently because school districts want to be released from the required court supervision that they had to deal with when they were originally desegregating. Many students are also returning to neighborhood schools, and this is causing resegregation of many urban districts. Another important thing that is happening with this issue is that minority students are being watched more closely and their academic performance is becoming more important. They are also being given access to the things that they need for a good education.
School districts in general, especially those that are involved in court cases, have made an effort to draw attention away from their efforts at desegregation and have turned them instead toward issues that involve fairness and equity for all of the students in the school. In the '70s and '80s, there was a large focus on mixing Caucasian and African-American students in various schools. Some of these efforts still go on today, but mostly schools are allowed to be made up of the general population around them instead of working to deliberately bus and move children from one area to another simply so that there will be a proportionate amount of black and white students.
It seems that this is a good idea. Segregation was not a good thing, and it was unfair to many people. However, it also seems wrong to ship the students across town simply because one school has more white or more black students. Students should be allowed to go to school at the place that is closest to where they live, regardless of their color. This is the view that I take, and it is apparently the view that is being taken by more and more school districts around the country as they allow children to attend school without regard for race and segregation issues.
