In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education declared that separate schools for black students and white students should be dismantled with “all deliberate speed.” However, in recent decades, schools have re-segregated to the levels they were just after Brown. In this video, Atlantic education editor Alia Wong speaks to the U.S. Secretary of Education John King, Jr. about his new plan to integrate schools. King’s policy changes will expand a system known as “school choice” that permits students to go to schools outside their neighborhoods and theoretically allows parents to voluntarily integrate schools. But, D.C. parent Natalie Hopkinson argues that schools will continue to re-segregate if the federal government does not intervene more forcefully. “As long as we rely on [parental] choice, we will continue to have the same result,” she says. “White parents will not send their kids to schools unless they are already white.”

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