Giving Compass' Take:

• The author provides an overview of the many school components that changed since the historic Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. 

• The author finds that 80 percent of teachers are white, and within the next five years many non-white students will be enrolled in schools and make up much of the population. How are schools calibrating their own diversity initiatives to mirror that of their student population? 

• Read more about the problems schools can have with teacher diversity. 

Rev. Oliver Brown, born Aug. 19, 1918, became a household name in May 1954 when he led a group of plaintiffs in a Supreme Court victory over the Topeka, Kansas, Board of Education.

Filed three years prior, the class action lawsuit called on the school district to reverse its long-standing policy of racial segregation, through which elementary schools in the state were permitted to maintain separate facilities for children of different races . On May 17, 1954, legal segregation in American schools came to an end, as the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Oliver Brown, et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, et al. that state laws mandating separate public schools for black and white students were unconstitutional.

Earlier this year, on the anniversary of that verdict, I took a look back through the research and Census data to get a sense of how America’s public education system has (and hasn’t) changed in the 64 years since the pronouncement.

  • Integrated Classrooms: Two big steps forward for white-black exposure — but, after 1990, another big step back
  • Expiring Desegregation Orders: Courts started releasing districts from legal requirement
  • Academics: The racial achievement gap has widened over the past 30 years
  • Attitude Gap: Many Americans have positive views of their local schools — but not black families
  • Discipline Gap: Not just more discipline, but harsher discipline
  • Teacher Diversity: Majority-minority school districts, but 80 percent of teachers are white
  • The Next Generation of Integration: How schools will change over the next 5 years? The growing numbers of Hispanic, Asian, and mixed-race children will fill more and more desks and classrooms as the U.S. continues down the road to becoming a majority-minority nation.
  • In Depth: How does the diversity of America’s student body compare with the country’s teachers?

Read the full article about America's schools by Laura Fay at The 74.