The authors acknowledge (p. 16) that these measures could be affected by demographic shifts: “If everything else stayed the same and the country had more African Americans and Latinos, and, at the same time, fewer whites, there would tend to be fewer whites in the average African American or Latino student’s school."  But they insist that the figures represent resegregation.

With respect to the first measure, the report finds that "The percentage of white students in schools of the average black has declined since 1988, and is lower in 2000 than in 1970, before busing for racial balance began. From 1988 to 2000, there was a 5.3 percentage point decline in the share of white students in schools of the average black student to the current low of 30.9%."  Table 2 shows a similar trend between 1990 and 2000, though the current exposure of black students to white classmates is considerably higher than it was in 1968, the year of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination (45.9% vs. 37.7%).

Regarding the second measure, the report states “If one of the aims of desegregation was to cut segregation in public schools and to create interracial schools, then another measure of school segregation is the number of minority students remaining in predominantly and intensely segregated minority schools. The percentage of black students in intensely segregated schools [those over 90% minority] is now larger than it has been since the early 1970s." The report finds that 64.3% of blacks attended such schools in 1968-69, dropping to 38.7% in 1972-73 and 33.2% in 1980-81, and rising to 37.4% in 2000-01.  The report also finds that “More Latinos than ever before are also now in intensely segregated schools (90-100% minority), rising from ?a low of 23% in the late 1960s, the percentage of Latinos attending these schools has consistently increased to reach an unprecedented 37% in 2000."   Conversely, it finds a declining share of black and Latino students attending majority white schools in 2000 compared to 1988.

While recognizing that population growth could account for increasing isolation of Hispanic children, the report argues that this could not be the case for African Americans.  For them, “particularly in the South ... the resegregation seems clearly related to the change in the federal court’s position on desegregation law"(p. 17).  “The basic trend is toward the dissolution of desegregation orders and return to patterns of more intense segregation"(p. 20).

This particular argument about court action is contradicted by Tables 1 and 2, based on comparison of school districts that came under desegregation orders versus those that did not.  In the South in particular, average levels of segregation within districts that ever experienced court-ordered desegregation actually dropped slightly between 1990 and 2000, while segregation increased by three points in districts that were never under a court order (Table 1).  Black exposure to whites as a national average declined by 6 points in districts that had not faced desegregation orders, but by only 5 points in those that did (Table 2).

Still, the Civil Rights Project report shows that there has been a recent decline in the percentage of white students in the school attended by the average black student, and a decline in the share of black and Hispanic students who attend majority white schools.  Does this mean that schools are resegregating?