After "Brown": The Rise and Retreat of School Desegregation »

Charles T. Clotfelter is Z. Smith Reynolds Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics and Law at Duke University. He is also a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. His books include "Buying the Best: Cost Escalation in Elite Higher Education" (Princeton).

"Clotfelter presents an array of evidence showing the failure of school desegregation in the years since Brown. His angle of vision, measuring the lack of interracial contact, is both insightful and informative."--Mary Frances Berry, Geraldine Segal Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania, and Chairperson of the United States Commission on Civil Rights

"Fifty years ago, prompted by the Supreme Court's landmark Brown decision, this nation began a major policy initiative by moving to end the racial isolation of African American children in our public schools. In After Brown. Charles Clotfelter provides the invaluable service of systematically chronicling the history and assessing the impact of this initiative. Much will be written in this anniversary year on the subject of school desegregation, but Clotfelter's meticulous, balanced, and sober assessment has set a standard for rigor that is unlikely to be surpassed."--Glenn Cartman Loury, Boston University

"After Brown offers an amazing array of data on changes in segregation over generations that students of desegregation policy will use in constructing their arguments about both the past and the future of integrated education."--Gary Orfield, Harvard Graduate School of Education

"Instead of dancing around the subject as many have recently done, Clotfelter comes to the point and shows clearly how and why the decision in Brown has had such a painful and tortuous history. The skill and clarity with which he deals with the subject make everything he says quite illuminating and valuable in any effort to understand what has happened. This is must reading for anyone who wishes to follow the history of public education during the last half-century."--John Hope Franklin, James B. Duke Professor of History Emeritus, Duke University

"This is an important, clearly written book with thorough analysis not duplicated elsewhere. While there are likely to be many different books, conferences, and events surrounding the fiftieth anniversary of Brown, Clotfelter's book should become the definitive source for a large number of these."--Eric Hanushek, Hoover Institution, author of Making Schools Work

"After Brown is a valuable contribution to the quantitative study of segregation and race relations more generally. The author is an excellent writer, with an easy, straightforward style."--Robert A. Margo, Vanderbilt University, author of Race and Schooling in the South, 1880-1950

Publishers Weekly

The subtitle of tells it all. While school desegregation-and thus interracial contact-increased for a few decades after the pivotal Brown decision, "contrary forces restrained the extent of this increase," writes Clotfelter, who teaches public policy, economics and law at Duke University. Those forces include the tendency for whites to avoid racially mixed schools, the private school option, predominantly white "tracking" or extracurricular activities, school officials willing to gerrymander attendance zones and the Supreme Court's 1974 decision to limit the scope of desegregation. Clotfelter draws on a deep range of documents, including private school information, to make his case. (June) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.