ABSTRACT
Though some important gains have been made, most scholars and policy makers revisit the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling with an acute sense of the distance yet to be traveled toward equitable schools that grant meaningful access to all students. Research conducted in the 50 years following Brown reveal that problematic trends persist in spite of the rhetoric of reconciliation and progress. America's classrooms and schools remain, for the large part, racially and socioeconomically segregated spaces (Orfield and Eaton, 1997). There are also huge spending discrepancies between the wealthiest and poorest districts (Kozol, 1991) and large gaps in academic achievement (LadsonBillings, 1994; Noguera, 2002).
