Rothstein, Richard. “
Racial Segregation and Black Student Achievement.” In
Education, Justice, and Democracy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Publisher's VersionAbstractThis chapter links the black–white achievement gap to racial segregation and analyzes the capacity of the US policymakers, including the justice system, to tackle the problem. It takes as a starting point the observation that US courts seem to have concluded that residential segregation is no longer de jure but entirely de facto, the product not of government policy but of individual choice about where to live. By examining a wide array of social policies, the chapter shows that de jure segregation and its effects are extremely alive and well and belie assumptions about de facto segregation embedded in major court decisions on school desegregation.