in Wake County, North Carolina, where black students performed better than they did 10 years earlier when they were being bussed based on race, says John Powell, the executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University.
Powell advises that funding schools by county and/or regional school districts instead of by city boundaries could ensure the even distribution of education funds and also combat the incidence of white flight, which exacerbates the phenomenon of racially isolated schools.
Powell, however, agrees with Shaw that SES is not a substitute for racial desegregation. “Although black people are disproportionately poor, in absolute numbers, there are more poor white people than poor black people,” notes Shaw. “School Boards can easily implement class conscious plans that don’t have a desegregative effect.”