Choice-based school integration plans leave segregation almost entirely intact.

Evidence

The freedom-of choice plans were next to be widely implemented. Each student was given a choice at the beginning of the year as to what school they wanted to attend, regardless of race. The only means of denying enrollment was because of overcrowding, yet the numbers of blacks enrolled in white school was still insignificant. … By l%5 all black schools were still being attended by about 94 percent of the total number of black students in the area (Rossell, 5). — Marcy Crouch, Magnet Schools and Other Means of…, 18

Categorization

• XREF: Sharp counterpoint to modern school-choice advocacy; ties to any prior reading on market mechanisms reinforcing rather than dissolving racial sorting.
• SEED: Article angle: ‘The Freedom to Stay Segregated’ — how formally neutral choice programs reproduce the status quo when informal pressure and capacity limits do the gatekeeping.
• DEEPTHINKING: The 94 percent figure exposes a structural paradox: removing legal barriers does nothing when the sorting mechanism migrates to informal social pressure.