This website is an educational resource linking information about desegregation court cases to trends in racial composition and segregation of elementary schools for 1968-71, 1989-90 and 1999-2000. For every district, information is provided on court cases (if any) that involved the district. A link to the Westlaw text for the court decision is also provided when available. In addition, for every district there is information on racial and ethnic composition of the elementary student population for available years, and summary indices of school segregation.

Information on the court cases was compiled from multiple sources: Department of Justice; NAACP Legal Defense Fund; and other published documents. We continue to update this inventory, and we seek new information about unpublished decisions or other decisions that are not referenced on the webpage. A comment box is provided for this purpose.

Information on school district racial and ethnic composition and levels of segregation is drawn from two sources, both of which refer specifically to public school children in the elementary grades. For the school years 1989-90 and 1999-2000, these data were provided by the National Center for Education Statistics. For school years 1968-71, Dr. Franklin Wilson of the University of Wisconsin provided data. Use the menu below to select a state or a metropolitan region, and then a school district within it.

NEW! This site also provides information on metropolitan-wide school segregation. This is important because segregation between school districts is a major contributor to educational inequality (such as the common situation where minority students are concentrated in central cities and white students in suburbs). The metro pages compile information about all elementary schools in a metropolitan region, ignoring school district boundaries. There are also links on these pages to information about the central city and suburban portions of these metros. Use the menu below to select a metropolitan region.

Click here for additional technical information on the sources of data and construction of indices. From the download page, you can get the data.