Brown′s Influence on Education and Education Research: Critical Insights, Uneven Implementation, and Unanticipated Consequences

In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), this volume of Review of Research in Education looks at education research linked to issues addressed in that decision. In the Brown case, the court asserted the central importance of the government’s role in education. The court reversed the previous legal doctrine that had permitted separate but equal schools for Black and White children, setting the stage for court-ordered school desegregation in the decades to follow. The chapters in this volume recognize the tremendous significance of the Brown decision and the subsequent Brown II decision (1955), in which the court laid out principles for the manner and timing of compliance with the order for the elimination of segregated schools. But these chapters also discuss research that has looked at both the limits on the effects of the decision and the ways in which the decision had unintended consequences that undercut the quality of education for children from minority groups.