, the pivotal Supreme Court decision that made school segregation unconstitutional, turns 70 years old on May 17, 2024.

At the time of the 1954 ruling, 17 U.S. states had laws permitting or requiring racially segregated schools. The Brown decision declared that segregation in public schools was “inherently unequal.” This was, in part, because the court argued that access to equitable, nonsegregated education played a critical role in creating informed citizens – for the political establishment amid the Cold War. With Brown, the justices overturned decades of that kept Black Americans in .

As a professor of education and demography at Penn State University, I research . I’m aware that, after several decades of , the upcoming Brown vs. Board of Education anniversary comes at an especially uncertain moment for public education and efforts to make America’s schools reflect the nation’s multiracial society.

Recent setbacks

In June 2023, the Supreme Court efforts. The decision followed the COVID-19 pandemic, which in the U.S.

Meanwhile, politicians and school boards have banned or removed books by from school libraries and restricted teaching about . I believe these legal setbacks amid the current political climate make finally realizing the full promise of Brown more urgent.

Resistance to Brown ruling

The Brown vs. Board of Education decision did not immediately change the nation’s public schools, especially in the completely segregated South, where there was . Resistance was so fierce in the first decade after Brown that compliance with desegregation orders at times required to escort to enroll in formerly all-white schools.

It would be a decade after Brown before the federal courts, a newly enacted and expanded federal education funding spurred .

While only 2% of Southern Black K-12 students attended majority white schools in 1964 – 10 years after Brown – the number had by 1970. The South surpassed all other regions in desegregation progress for Black students.

Segregation persists

Public school students today are the most racially diverse in U.S. history. At the time of Brown, about and most other students were Black.

Today, according to a , 46% of public school students are white, 28% are Hispanic, 15% are Black, 6% Asian, 4% multiracial and 1% American Indian. Based on my analysis of 2021 federal education data, public schools in 22 states and Washington, D.C., served majorities of students of color.

And yet, public schools are deeply segregated. In 2021, approximately 60% of Black and Hispanic public school students attended schools where were students of color. Black and Hispanic students who attend racially segregated schools also are overwhelmingly enrolled in .

A , a nonprofit that produced reports on school funding inequities, found that schools in predominantly nonwhite districts received $23 billion less in funding each year than schools in majority white districts. This equates to roughly $2,200 less per student per year. Unequal funding results in , to name just one example.

Benefits of diversity

While Brown was an attempt to address the inequality that students experienced in segregated Black schools, the harms of segregation affect students of all races.

Racially integrated schools are associated with , or simply building that teach children how to work effectively with others.

White students are the to students of other races and ethnicities, and therefore they often miss out on the benefits of diversity. Nearly half of white public school students attend a school in which white students are 75% or more of the student body.

Factors that exacerbate segregation

Although residential segregation is , many U.S. communities remain both . Segregated schools, therefore, often reflect segregated neighborhoods.

However, how students are assigned to schools and districts can play a key role in how segregated those schools are.

This is because school attendance boundaries often determine which local public school a student may attend. How those boundaries are drawn or redrawn can exacerbate or alleviate school segregation. More than that are predominantly of one race are located within 10 miles of a school that is predominantly of another race.

Studies show that within school districts could make a substantial number of schools less segregated.

The same is true when it comes to school district boundaries. A high level of income and racial segregation also exists . And district secession – when schools leave an existing school district to – is . Redrawing district boundaries or preventing the formation of new boundaries could affect segregation.

Another key factor is the rise of public school choice, which allows parents to send children to charter schools or other schools beyond their zoned school. One study found that areas with more students enrolled in charter schools were associated with .

Potential solutions

Several hundred , which require districts to eradicate segregation that existed prior to the Brown decision, still exist. These are largely concentrated in some Southern states.

For the rest of the country, efforts are attempts to finally achieve the goals of the Brown decision. These include Berkeley, California’s and legal cases brought against states that challenge existing segregation under .

Finally, since reducing residential segregation could also reduce school segregation, some efforts have combined and policies. Connecticut, for example, has piloted for eligible participants in its interdistrict school desegregation program.

Like 70 years ago when Brown was decided, addressing public school segregation remains important for a healthy democracy – one that today is more multiracial than ever before.

It found that 49 percent of 1,200 respondents from around the country said schools have a responsibility to ensure students learn about the ongoing effects of slavery and racism in America while 41 percent believe schools should teach students about the nation’s history of slavery and racism — but not about race relations today. 

A full 10 percent said schools do not have a responsibility to teach anything about slavery or racism in the U.S., according to the sixth annual conducted by The McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State. 

​​The results were further broken down by other demographic factors: 79 percent of Black respondents and 77 percent of Democrats and Independents who lean Democratic believe students should, in fact, learn about the ongoing impacts of both slavery and racism. 

The teaching of both topics has been under intense fire with recently moving to prohibit or attempting to dramatically curtail discussion of race and race-related topics in the classroom, often targeting a concept called which explains how American racism has impacted a wide range of systems and institutions. 

Conservatives across the country have renewed their push for removing some texts — including the the Pulitzer Prize-winning Holocaust graphic novel — that explain racial and ethnic discrimination. 

“The public is a little more divided than we thought,” said Craig Helmstetter, managing partner at American Public Media Research Lab, a St. Paul, Minnesota-based group that conducts independent, nonpartisan research and reporting. APM Research Lab reported the poll results and analysis.

The poll, released today, was conducted between Nov. 30 and Dec. 7, 2021. The data was collected online by and has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points. 

In addition to questions on race, it also addresses the degree to which people believe parents should influence their child’s education — another current flashpoint — and the teaching of evolution and sex education.

“There are an awful lot of people who think parents ought to have a substantial amount of influence even though they have no statutory or legal role in setting curriculum,” said Eric Plutzer, a political science professor at Penn State and the McCourtney Institutes’s director of polling. “That was especially pronounced among Republicans and social conservatives.”

Another group, he said, believes these decisions should be left up to people with expertise, including teachers, because of their subject matter knowledge and classroom experience, and state agencies, which have long crafted curriculum standards.

“That view was expressed by Democrats and social liberals,” Plutzer said.

The biggest gap between those who thought parents should have the most sway and those who thought teachers should be more influential was on the question of COVID safety, with 46 percent saying parents should have a great deal of influence in that area and 28 percent saying educators should.

The poll considered respondents’ gender, age, race, income and political party, among other factors. It also accounted for religion, including affiliation and frequency of worship attendance.

While 90 percent of respondents said schools should teach scientific evolution, half think it should be combined with the teaching of biblical perspectives about creation. A full 10 percent said schools should teach only biblical perspectives.

More than a quarter of those surveyed said they were born again or Evangelical Christians, and their distinctiveness from those of other faiths shows up in several ways:

Just 12 percent believed schools should teach evolution only as compared to 58 percent of other respondents. A full 66 percent of Democrats and those who lean Democratic held the position as compared to 25 percent of those who were Republican or Republican-leaning.

Helmstetter said policymakers should not discount the role of religion in America.

“Although there is a long, steady decline in the number of people attending church on a regular basis, it is still an important and significant part of people’s lives,” he said. “We should acknowledge and pay attention to it. There are some pretty big divisions across all of these questions, specifically as it relates to people being identified as born again Christians.”

And while 75 percent of respondents believe sexual education for teens should include the dangers of sexually transmitted infections as well as contraception, a majority said they believe parents of school children should have “a great deal of influence” on how sex education is taught. That number includes 72 percent of Republicans, among them Independents who lean Republican, 66 percent of born again Christians and 63 percent of those age 65 or older.

Nearly half of born again Christians think sex education for teens should stop at teaching about STIs and abstinence: 37 percent of Republicans, including independents who lean Republican, held this same view.

Just 22 percent of respondents said local school boards and state departments of education should have significant influence over the teaching of sexual education, an opinion slightly more common among Black Americans and Democrats as compared to other groups.

The survey included a number of open-ended questions that allow respondents to explain their views in their own words: A 63-year-old white woman from Georgia, who does not identify as a born again Christian or Evangelical, said school boards and educators should have a great deal of influence on the teaching of sex education.

“Local teachers have a rapport with students and can build a trust with them,” said the woman, who identified herself as Republican.

Plutzer, considering the division on so many issues, said schools looking to make big decisions without including parents might be considered out of touch.

“There is already eroding respect for expert judgement in many parts of our society including education,” he said, adding a failure to include parents would only make adopting best practices more difficult. “It doesn’t mean the recommendations of those experts is wrong, but it means that if they are resisted, even a good recommendation is not going to be implemented well.”