ABSTRACT
Desegregation politics and doctrine interacted with desegregation seen as education policy. Most who support desegregation believe it has various educational benefits. One can imagine several educational theories in which learning suffers in one-race environments. White Americans are primarily responsible for setting tax rates and expenditure levels for public schools simply because whites are a majority in every state, and statewide tax and expenditure policies substantially determine education expenditures. The most effective voluntary desegregation plans involved creating magnet schools, where students were offered specialized programs, usually at a per-student outlay well above the average in non-magnet schools. In the terms used by scholars of the desegregation process, the district judge's plan was voluntary, not mandatory. At the same time, the evidence did suggest that the compulsion involved in student-assignment policies reduced the desegregation's educational benefits.
