- The evolution of school desegregation law profoundly affected how it was implemented and therefore how well it was able to satisfy the individual and collective goals of the American dream.
- The federal courts and the federal executive branch created the possibility of desegregated schools; at the same time, however, they constrained its impact and framed a volatile controversy over it that eventually halted its growth and impeded it good effects.
- The common claim that desegregation failed is wrong; governmental authority was used successfully to ensure that Black students attend schools with others.
- Ending legal segregation in schools and other public facilities did at least as much to move the American dream from ideology to practice as any other public policy of private effort in the twentieth century.
- Desegregation was not an educational failure.
- Both White students and Black students are learning more and staying in school longer than before desegregation.
- School desegregation generally makes Black students better able to pursue and attain their dreams.
- Across the board, school desegregation has not harmed any group and it has enhanced the chances of individual African Americans to achieve their dreams.
- It has fostered the collective goals of equal opportunity, interracial engagement, and equal rights.
- Most White Americans are still not willing to take the risk of desegregating their schools and will punish at election time any politician who tries to do it.
- Most racially isolated Black students are now in school districts deemed by the courts to be segregated by legal practice rather than by illegal mandate.
- Although academic achievement was never certain to follow desegregation, it has proved very difficult to accomplish without it.