Societal Context

District Court Order Data

These data were most recently updated in 2021. The data update involved researching districts that were still under court orders at the time of the prior data release and updating their dismissal status if necessary. Please see the documentation for more details. The original 2011 data were compiled from a variety of sources. First, we began with a dataset compiled by Logan and Oakley (Logan & Oakley, 2004) (hereafter the LO dataset), which was provided to us by John Logan. The LO dataset contains information on the case name, state, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) district identification number, year of the initial case, current status of the plan, and dismissal date when available for 1094 districts. Logan and Oakley created the dataset by compiling information from case dockets and bibliographies for desegregation court orders from the Department of Justice, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the U.S. Department of Education, as well as a set of published sources (see also Logan, Oakley, & Stowell, 2008). They then checked each case against legal databases, including Westlaw. The total case inventory includes 358 court cases, which resulted in desegregation plans involving 850 school districts as defendants, plus 207 HEW actions involving 207 school districts since 1978.