ABSTRACT
In 1981 Ronald Reagan asked William Bradford Reynolds to find a better approach to school desegregation than compulsory busing. The centerpiece of Reynolds's alternative plan turned out to be magnet schools and curriculum-enhancement programs that were designed to induce families to choose an integrated education. In 1985 former Solicitor General Rex E. Lee identified the termination of court orders as "the most important unresolved issue in the school desegregation area". In the interest of intellectual honesty, some integrationists proposed to scrap the "corrective" explanation the courts had developed for desegregation. The Reagan Justice Department settled several cases by providing that school districts would be declared unitary after three years of implementing an appropriate desegregation plan. Reynolds regarded the courts' decisions as a major turning point in the history of school desegregation. In Green the Court had mentioned six discrete areas that had to be cleansed of the vestiges of past unconstitutional segregation before a school system should be declared unitary.
