The Impact of Brown v. Board of Education on Student Learning in Public Schools

This article discusses three aspects of Brown v. Board of Education. The first section offers a brief judicial history of desegregation in American public schools. The second portion discusses the promise and ultimate limitations of Brown, while the final part offers recommendations aimed at eliminating the effects of racial segregation in public education in the United States. The 60th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) provides an excellent opportunity to revisit the status of desegregation in American public schools. The anniversary also is an occasion for reflecting on the ongoing challenges involving school desegregation. Anticipation that all schools “everywhere . . . would be desegregated by January 1, 1963, the hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation” (Patterson, 2002, p. 4) became a hoped for legacy that has yet to materialize in the post-Brown years. If anything, today, activity directed toward desegregation has slowed perceptively to the extent that it can be argued that with the lack of interest displayed by the federal courts, resegregation is actually occurring