Braun: Bringing N.J. schools' racial segregation into open | NJ.com

Race - de facto segregation - is the rock against which northern school integration efforts met their death in the United States Supreme Court.  The turning point was Milliken v. Bradley (1974).  There the Supreme Court declared that metropolitan cross-district integration was impermissible - because the suburban districts were not guilty of intentional de jure (legal) segregation.  
The New Jersey Supreme Court wouldn't touch the issue either.  But they did undertake a work-around using the state constitutional guarantee of a "thorough and efficient" public school education.  Equalizing funding would, it was hoped, equalize outcomes between city and suburb.  It's the parents, not the money was a common cry to those who objected to the financial burden of equalization.  The subtext of the battle has always been race, de facto segregation that followed housing patterns and local control of schools.  The brewing confrontation between Gov. Chris Christie, a master of the politics of suburban resentment is bringing the underlying issues to the fore.  The Star ledger's Rober Braun reports:


Braun: Bringing N.J. schools' racial segregation into open | NJ.com: "'There always has been a sort of subterranean message working here — intended or not — that, maybe, if the state gives minority kids and their schools more money, they won’t press for solutions that end up with black kids in suburban schools and white kids in city schools,' says Paul Tractenberg, the Rutgers Law School professor who has studied the issue for decades.
The question now is, what happens if the money stops?"