Racial segregation in public schools is intensifying at an alarming rate. Yet, the options for remedying school segregation are limited. Modern Supreme Court school desegregation jurisprudence significantly tightened the legal requirements to both place and keep a public school under a federal court school desegregation order. Intense residential segregation creates pragmatic obstacles to fashioning student assignment plans that can effectively integrate schools. Further, student assignment plans that require bussing or other forms of involuntarily displacement from neighborhood schools receive fierce resistance from parents and are viewed as politically infeasible. Consequently, in many ways, school desegregation is no longer prioritized. Instead, many have come to accept school segregation as an inevitable byproduct of residential segregation. Indeed, few policy incentives exist at the national, state, or local level to address racial segregation in schools.

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