In a recently released report, “Brown At 50: King’s Dream or Plessy’s Nightmare?“, noted Harvard Professor Gary Orfield concludes that 50 years after the Supreme Court ruled that legally sanctioned racial segregation in public schools was illegal, desegregation efforts are failing and that the nation’s public schools are actually resegregating.

He bases this conclusion on two observations: Between 1992 and 2002 there was an increase in the number of minority students attending majority minority schools and a decline in the proportion of minority students being exposed to white students in the public schools. Unfortunately, while the data he uses appears to support his conclusion his use of that data may be somewhat misleading and therefore his conclusions questionable.

First, there is a real question about whether it is still appropriate to use the terms “desegregation” and “resegregation” when talking about the racial and ethnic composition of schools. In 1954, desegregation was the process intended to eliminate the array of intentional legal, and quasi-legal, barriers erected by state and local governments and school boards to keep African-American children from going to public school with white children. While it took years to fully dismantle the legal framework that supported racial segregation, the 1954 Brown decision made these practices illegal. The Brown decision has not been overturned and therefore there is no legal process of resegregating the schools. However, it is true that based on the data presented in the Orfield report the probability of minority children going to school with white children does appear to be declining. But why is this the case? And is this the major educational priority Orfield reports suggest it is?

One important reason that the probability of minority children attending school with white children has declined is that there have been dramatic demographic changes in the ethnic and racial composition of the nation’s school children. The Orfield report while providing data that clearly show the extent of the demographic shifts underplays its importance. Between 1991 and 2001, the proportion of white children in U.S. schools declined from 67 percent of all school children to 60 percent of all school children. This change was driven primarily by the tremendous differences in population-growth rates between white and minority children. From 1991 to 2001, the number of white children in the public schools rose by 13 percent. However, the number of black and Latino children increased by 37 percent and 74 percent respectively. So, a very large portion of the decreased exposure of minority children to white children in public schools is simply an outcome of demographic changes.

But even with the demographic shifts, are minority children disproportionately concentrated by race? Orfield’s report seems to answer “yes” to this question. The real answer maybe more complex. What we may actually be seeing is not racial and ethnic separation but economic sorting. On the heels of the Brown decision came the dismantling of the entire legal framework supporting racial segregation in the U.S. A major area of change has been the outlawing of racial discrimination in housing. One result is that the black middle and upper class can now pick residential neighborhoods with schools that are predominately non-black and educationally high performing. Unfortunately, this has meant that formerly economically mixed black ghettos, with a few notable exceptions, have now become primarily the home of low-income and very poor individuals and families. Such individuals and families make up a disproportionately large share of all black families. The same is true of Latinos.

While Professor Orfield did not directly control for income level in his study, it might be more useful to examine whether the phenomenon being observed is not so much racial sorting but economic sorting. Because local public-school systems, with few exceptions, determine school attendance based on place of residence, if children in low-income families regardless of race live predominately with other low-income families they will attend schools that are predominately low-income. Indeed, the data in Professor Orfield’s report provides some support for the notion that income level rather than race is the driving force behind the racial composition of schools.

For example, in schools that are 80%-90% black and Latino–a category that according to Professor Orfield is growing, 85% of these black and Latino children are in schools where 50%-100% of the student body is poor. On the other end of the extreme, over 47% of all black and Latino children attending schools that are 90% white were in schools where the student poverty rate was 25%-100%. This suggests that even in overwhelming white schools many minority children attend schools where a large proportion of their classmates are poor. The truth may be that low-income white children are just as isolated as low-income black and Latino youngsters. If this is the case, it suggests a very different policy problem. Rather than how do you increase racial integration? The real question may be is there an acceptable strategy for reducing economic isolation?

Finally, black parents did not support school desegregation simply to achieve racial integration. Racial integration was seen as a means to remove the stigma of racial inferiority and to open up opportunities for better education, employment, and housing. This goal continues to be paramount for most black parents regardless of their economic status. Continued focus on the desegregation of schools 50 years after the end of legally sanctioned school-segregation diverts attention from more pressing needs. Low-income black and Latino parents are primarily interested in how to improve the quality of education available to their children, not how to achieve a perfect or near perfect racial and ethnic balance in schools. This is why in recent surveys blacks and Latinos overwhelmingly supported vouchers and school choice as a strategy for improving the educational opportunities available to their children.

Interestingly, Professor Orfield also sees utility in school choice. In his report, buried in a list of 9 policy options for promoting school desegregation is support for educational choice programs, including vouchers, but only if they can be shown to operate in an explicitly pro-integration mode. Unfortunately, even with these qualifications, Professor Orfield seems to place a low priority on school improvement strategies such as vouchers and school choice. Instead, his highest priority is on ” Appointing judges and civil rights enforcement officials who understand that the Supreme Court was right in Brown and that the job is far from over.” This is too bad.

While there still may be some isolated cases where local governments and school boards continue to collude to maintain racial segregation, these cases no longer characterize public education in our nation, and where such cases exist the courts should be used to insure that the law is obeyed. The debate now has correctly turned to how to insure that low-income minority youngsters can achieve a high quality education that provides them the tools to succeed in a fast changing society and economy. If vouchers and school choice programs were widely available for all minority children, especially low-income minority children, families would seek out schools that provide the best education for their children. The results of such a widespread increase in choice might actually make it possible to achieve the goals of minority parents for real improvements in educational quality and the objectives of social reformers such as Professor Orfield for greater racial integration without engaging in heavy-handed social engineering.

–John A. Foster-Bey was formerly a senior researcher and director of the Program on Regional Economic Opportunity at the Urban Institute.