¹ On “controlled choice” in Cambridge, see, for example, Fiske, Edward B., “Controlled Choice in Cambridge, Massachusetts,” in Divided We Fail: Coming Together through Public School Choice, ed. Chaplin, Duncan D. and Century Foundation Task Force on the Common School (New York: Century Foundation Press, 2002), 167–208Google Scholar; Rossell, Christine, “Controlled-Choice Desegregation Plans: Not Enough Choice, Too Much Control?,” Urban Affairs Review 31, no. 1 (Sept. 1995), 43–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Willie, Charles V. and Alves, Michael J., Controlled Choice: A New Approach to School Desegregation and School Improvement (Providence, RI: Education Alliance Press and New England Desegregation Assistance Center, Brown University, 1996)Google Scholar.

² Rossell, “Controlled-Choice Desegregation Plans,” 54; Judge, Douglas, “Housing, Race and Schooling in Seattle: Context for the Supreme Court Decision,” Journal of Educational Controversy 2, no. 1 (2007)Google Scholar, https://cedar.wwu.edu/jec/vol2/iss1/9; Willie and Alves, Controlled Choice, 25; Wilson, Sarah Sloan, “Readin’, Ritin’, ’Rithmetic, and Responsibility: Advocating for the Development of Controlled-Choice Student-Assignment Plans after Parents Involved,” Kentucky Law Journal 97, no. 1 (Fall 2008/2009), 199–228Google Scholar; “8.2% of Respondents Like ‘Controlled Choice,’” Tampa Tribune, Sept. 4, 2001, 13; and Frankenberg, Erica, “Assessing Segregation under a New Generation of Controlled Choice Policies,” supplement, American Educational Research Journal 54, no. 1 (April 2017), S219-S250CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ Orfield, Gary and Frankenberg, Erica, Educational Delusions: Why Choice Can Deepen Inequality and How to Make Schools Fair (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ Ben-Porath, Sigal R. and Johanek, Michael C., Making Up Our Mind: What School Choice Is Really About (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ Orfield and Frankenberg, Educational Delusions, 17.

⁶ Frankenberg, “Assessing Segregation,” S219, S224-S225.

⁷ Sugrue, Thomas, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (New York: Random House, 2008), 185Google Scholar.

⁸ Maslow, Will and Cohen, Richard, School Segregation, Northern Style (New York: Public Affairs Committee, 1961), 10Google Scholar.

⁹ “Should All Northern Schools Be Integrated?” Time Magazine, Sept. 7, 1962, 8.

¹⁰ Grambs, Jean D. and the Massachusetts State Board of Education, A Sociological View of the Neighborhood School Concept (Boston: Massachusetts State Board of Education, 1964), 2–4Google Scholar.

¹¹ Lassiter, Matthew D., The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 13–14Google Scholar.

¹² Lassiter, Silent Majority, 13–14, 123–36.

¹³ Minow, Martha, “Confronting the Seduction of Choice: Law, Education, and American Pluralism,” Yale Law Journal 120, no. 4 (Jan. 2011), 814–48Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Ben-Porath and Johanek, Making Up Our Mind, 1.

¹⁵ Ben-Porath and Johanek, Making Up Our Mind, 3.

¹⁶ Orfield and Frankenberg, Educational Delusions; Minow, “Confronting the Seduction of Choice”; and Scott, Janelle M., “School Choice as a Civil Right: The Political Construction of a Claim and Its Implications for School Desegregation,” in Integrating Schools in a Changing Society: New Policies and Legal Options for a Multiracial Generation, ed. Frankenberg, Erica and DeBray, Elizabeth (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 32–52Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Minow, “Confronting the Seduction of Choice,” 816–17, 847–848.

¹⁸ Kryczka, Nicholas, “Building a Constituency for Racial Integration: Chicago's Magnet Schools and the Prehistory of School Choice,” History of Education Quarterly 59, no. 1 (Feb. 2019), 1, 34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁹ Orfield and Frankenberg, Educational Delusions, 9–10.

²⁰ Ryan, James E., Five Miles Away, A World Apart: One City, Two Schools, and the Story of Educational Opportunity in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 50–55Google Scholar.

²¹ Ryan, Five Miles Away, 50–51.

²² Ryan, Five Miles Away, 50.

²³ Chafe, William H., Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 158–59Google Scholar; and Siegel-Hawley, Genevieve, When the Fences Come Down: Twenty-First Century Lessons from Metropolitan School Desegregation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016), 61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ Orfield and Frankenberg, Educational Delusions, 10–11.

²⁵ Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, 391 U.S. 439 (1968).

²⁶ Gary Orfield to Francis Sargent, May 29, 1974, folder, “Statements on Gov. Sargent's Amendments,” Massachusetts Black Legislative Caucus, Legislative Files, RG CT7/1148X, Massachusetts State Archives.

²⁷ Orfield, Gary, Must We Bus? Segregated Schools and National Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1978), 21Google Scholar.

²⁸ This paper utilizes block-level census information. Census data for 1960 and 1970 is available from the National Historic Geographic Information System but is primarily limited to the census tract scale, on average about 3,500 people and comparable in size to the school attendance areas. But block-level data, describing an average of about 150 people, can be aggregated to provide more precise information about the demographic composition of each attendance area. The Census Bureau has published some of this data with a focus on housing, which Andy Anderson and Josephine Fisher digitized. By using block-level data, one can significantly increase the historical accuracy. While labor-intensive, this strategy provides a more exact sense of the demographic composition of both the city and its school districts and allows one to analyze school attendance changes at the level at which they occur: the city block.

²⁹ Rasmussen, Chris, “Creating Segregation in the Era of Integration: School Consolidation and Local Control in New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1965–1976,” History of Education Quarterly 57, no. 4 (Nov. 2017), 481CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁰ Report of the Subcommittee on Cambridge Schools of the M.I.T. Faculty Environment Committee, 1965, Cambridge Schools folder, box 60, ASC Series 4, Archives and Special Collections, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

³¹ Board, Cambridge Planning, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1965 (n.p.: Cambridge Planning Board, 1965)Google Scholar.

³² Report of the Subcommittee on Cambridge Schools, 5.

³³ Annemarie Bestor, “Likes Tobin,” Cambridge Chronicle, Sept. 30, 1976, 4; Annemarie Bestor to Project SPAN, May 1, 1980, Deseg Plan 80/History folder, in the Alice Wolf Papers, in possession of the author (hereafter cited as Wolf Papers).

³⁴ Irene Sege, “Families Respond to School Desegregation Plans,” Cambridge Chronicle, March 27, 1980, 4.

³⁵ “Cambridge's Home Prices – up, up, up From East-West,” Cambridge Chronicle, Dec. 7, 1978, 1.

³⁶ Nelson, Adam, The Elusive Ideal: Equal Educational Opportunity and the Federal Role in Boston's Public Schools, 1950–1985 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 61–62Google Scholar.

³⁷ Rossell, Christine H. and Glenn, Charles L., “The Cambridge Controlled Choice Plan,” Urban Review 20, no. 2 (June 1988), 80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁸ “Racial Count to Be Taken in Public Schools,” Cambridge Chronicle, Sept. 16, 1965, 18.

³⁹ Charles Glenn to Commissioner, Dec. 5, 1978, folder “SPAN-Org. Documentation” Box 2, Glenn Koocher Papers in possession of the author (hereafter cited as Koocher Papers).

⁴⁰ Rossell and Glenn, “The Cambridge Controlled Choice Plan,” 80–81.

⁴¹ Massachusetts Racial Imbalance Act of 1965, St. 1965, ch. 641. Acts and Resolves Passed by the General Court of Massachusetts in the Year 1965 (Boston: Wright & Potter, 1965), 414–16.

⁴² “Cambridge Acts on Imbalance,” Boston Globe, April 22, 1965, 2; and “Tobin Recommends Plan for Relieving Racial Imbalance,” Cambridge Chronicle, Oct. 21, 1965, 1. Figure 3 shows the population demographics of the entire catchment area, not just demographics of the children who attend a particular elementary school. The population demographics of a catchment area could be different than the population demographics of a school as children attending private schools would not be included in a public school's demographics.

⁴³ Minutes of the Cambridge School Committee, “Policy Statement re: Report of the Advisory Committee on Racial Imbalance and Education,” April 20, 1965, Cambridge School Committee Minutes, Cambridge Public Library (hereafter cited as Cambridge School Committee Minutes).

⁴⁴ “Plan for Relieving ‘Racial Imbalance’ Wins Speedy Okay,” Cambridge Chronicle, Nov. 18, 1965, 1; Cambridge School Committee Minutes, Oct. 19, 1965; Robert L. Levey, “Cambridge School Balance Plan OK'd,” Boston Globe, Nov. 24, 1965, 4; and John M. Tobin, “Open Enrollment,” SPAN Org. Documentation folder, box 2, Koocher Papers.

⁴⁵ “Plan for Relieving ‘Racial Imbalance’.”

⁴⁶ “Plan for Relieving ‘Racial Imbalance’.”

⁴⁷ Harvard Center for Law and Education, A Study of the Massachusetts Racial Imbalance Act (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Center for Law and Education, 1972), 519Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Cambridge School Committee Minutes, Feb. 2, 1965; and Edward Conley to Owen B. Kiernan, Dec. 17, 1968, folder “SPAN Org. Documentation,” Box 2, Koocher Papers.

⁴⁹ Ellen S. Jackson to Alflorence Cheatham, Nov. 30, 1973, folder “SPAN Org. Documentation,” Box 2, Koocher Papers.

⁵⁰ Cambridge School Committee Minutes, Dec. 6, 1966.

⁵¹ Edward Conley to Owen B. Kiernan, Dec. 17, 1968, SPAN Org. Documentation folder, Koocher Papers.

⁵² Cambridge School Committee Minutes, Jan. 21, 1969.

⁵³ The city did not begin to record the racial breakdown of its elementary school population until the mid-1960s, when the Racial Imbalance Act mandated this data collection. As of 1965, five schools - Putnam, Thorndike, Haggerty, Harrington, and Fitzgerald - were classified as “Racially Isolated.” They had a “non-white” population of less than 5 percent. Houghton, the only school classified as “Racially Imbalanced,” had a non-white population of 55.1 percent. Such numbers suggest that as of 1965, Cambridge's “non-white” elementary school population was unevenly distributed throughout the city, regardless of whether its individual schools violated the RIA. “Tobin Recommends Plan for Relieving Racial Imbalance,” Cambridge Chronicle, Oct. 21, 1965, 1–2.

⁵⁴ Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals By Race, 1790–1990, and By Hispanic Origin, 1790 to 1990, For Large Cities And Other Places in the United States (Washington, D.C., U.S. Census Bureau, 2005)Google Scholar, https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0076/twps0076.html.

⁵⁵ John Herzog to Francis Duehay, Jan. 4, 1966, Francis Duehay Papers, School Committee folder 2/6, box 5, series III, Cambridge Public Library (cited hereafter as Duehay Papers).

⁵⁶ “New Houghton School to Be Named for Doctor King,” Cambridge Chronicle-Sun, April 11, 1968, 1.

⁵⁷ Barbara Hayes Buell, “Her Personal Reflections on the Grievances of the Black Community,” Cambridge Chronicle-Sun, May 16, 1968, 7; “Black Community Group Meets with Council Tonite,” Cambridge Chronicle-Sun, May 9, 1968, 1–2; and “Black Community, Council in Exchange of Views,” Cambridge Chronicle-Sun, May 16, 1968-1-2.

⁵⁸ Committee to Study Means of Improving Race Understanding in Our Community, Report of the Committee on Race and Culture, May 12, 1969, Wolf Papers; and Ray Shurtleff, “Crisis Management in an Urban School District: A Case Study” (EdD diss., Northeastern University, 1985), 25.

⁵⁹ “Racial and Ethnic Issues Are Aired at School Board,” Cambridge Chronicle, April 9, 1970, 1; and Cambridge School Committee Minutes, April 18, 1970.

⁶⁰ “Black Deputy School Supt. Asked of Board,” (Boston) Record American, May 7, 1970, 28; “School Board Sit-In Take Over Averted,” (Boston) Record American, June 3, 1970, 34; “Cambridge Appoints Black Teachers,” Bay State Banner (Boston), June 11, 1970, 2; “Black History Courses Expanded in Cambridge Public Schools,” Bay State Banner (Boston), Nov. 5, 1970, 12; and “Black Parents and Teachers Enjoy Buffet,” Cambridge Chronicle, Dec. 3, 1970, 2.

⁶¹ Neil V. Sullivan to Frank Frisoli, Nov. 16, 1970, SPAN Org. Documentation folder, box 2, Koocher Papers.

⁶² Neil Sullivan to Alfred Velucci, Nov. 23, 1971, SPAN Org. Documentation folder, box 2, Koocher Papers.

⁶³ Frank J. Frisoli to Rae Cecilia Kipp, Dec. 6, 1971, SPAN Org. Documentation folder, box 2, Koocher Papers.

⁶⁴ Stephen Curwood, “Cambridge School Supt. Selected,” Bay State Banner (Boston), June 22, 1972, 1.

⁶⁵ Cambridge School Committee Minutes, July 5, 1972; John R. McCarthy, “Open Enrollment Policy,” Aug. 9, 1975, Superintendent's Recommendation #76-053, Cambridge School Committee, Cambridge Public Schools.

⁶⁶ “Change Allows Pupils to Attend City Schools Outside Their District,” Cambridge Chronicle, Aug. 17, 1972, 3.

⁶⁷ Cambridge School Committee Minutes, “Task Force on School Overcrowding in North Cambridge,” March 21, 1972.

⁶⁸ Cambridge (Mass) Planning Board, Suggested Goals for a City Plan for Cambridge, Nov. 1965, 3–7, folder 13, Box 34, ASC205-Series III – MIT. Planning Office, Archives and Special Collections, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

⁶⁹ Cambridge Planning Board, Suggested Goals for a City Plan for Cambridge.

⁷⁰ Cambridge Planning Board, Suggested Goals for a City Plan for Cambridge.

⁷¹ “Change Allows Pupils to Attend City Schools Outside Their District.”

⁷² “Summary of Area Racial Balance Advisory Committee Meeting,” May 21, 1979, Racial Balance folder, Wolf Papers.

⁷³ “Open Enrollment Begins,” Cambridge Chronicle, Sept. 20, 1973, 11.

⁷⁴ Muriel Heiberger to Gerald Kohn, Jan. 30, 1979, “Summary of Meeting with State Department of Education Bureau of Equal Education Opportunity Jan. 26, 1979,” Desegregation (SPAN) folder, Koocher Papers.

⁷⁵ Paul Richard, “Graham May Sue the City Over Affirmative Action Concerns,” Cambridge Chronicle, June 24, 1976, 2.

⁷⁶ Richard, “Graham May Sue the City.”

⁷⁷ Richard, “Graham May Sue the City.”

⁷⁸ Richard G. Woodward to Charles Glenn, Jan. 8, 1974, SPAN Org. Documentation folder, Koocher Papers.

⁷⁹ Marjorie and Harold Bakken; Annie L. Cooper; Peggy Dotler; Rosa Foulker; and Janet and Jeff Murray, “Who Gets Shortchanged?” Cambridge Chronicle, July 19, 1979, 4.

⁸⁰ Alves, Michael, “Cambridge Desegregation Succeeding,” Integrated Education 21, no. 1 (1983), 180Google Scholar.

⁸¹ Charles Glenn to Mike Alves, “Cambridge Open Enrollment Transfers,” June 1, 1979, Enrollment and Racial Balance folder, Wolf Papers.

⁸² Paul Richard, “No Imbalance Here, Says School Census,” Cambridge Chronicle, Nov. 4, 1976, 1.

⁸³ Report of the Subcommittee on Cambridge Schools of the M.I.T. Faculty Environment Committee, 1965, Cambridge Schools folder, box 60, ASC Series 4, Archives and Special Collections, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Josephine Fisher, Yinan Zhang, Andy Anderson, and Hilary Moss, “School Construction in Cambridge: Reconstructing the Role of Space, Race, and Class in School Building Decisions,” (unpublished paper, 2011), 9–10.

⁸⁴ Cambridge School Committee Minutes, Sept. 7, 1976; and John M. Tobin, “Open Enrollment,” April 26, 1965, SPAN Org. Documentation folder, Koocher Papers,

⁸⁵ “Board Hears Transfer Request,” Cambridge Chronicle, Sept. 9, 1976, 1–2.

⁸⁶ “Board Hears Transfer Request”; and Richard Paul, “Tobin Racial Imbalance Denied by School Dept.,” Cambridge Chronicle, Sept. 16, 1976, 1–2. As of 1976, 15.5 percent of students at the Peabody School were classified as “non-white” in contrast to 41.9 percent of students at the Tobin School. Richard Paul, “No Imbalance Here, Says School Census,” Cambridge Chronicle, Nov. 4, 1976, 1–2.

⁸⁷ William Lannon to the Honorable Members of the School Committee, Oct. 12, 1978, “Report on Open Enrollment Requests and Placements as of Oct. 6, 1978,” N8-114, Folder Enrollment and Racial Balance folder, Wolf Papers.

⁸⁸ Cambridge School Committee Minutes, Aug. 17, 1976; and Cambridge School Committee Minutes, “Report on the Classroom Spaces Available and the Existent Waiting List for Open Enrollment Transfers,” Oct. 8, 1976.

⁸⁹ J. Harold Flannery and Robert D. Goldstein to William Lannon, “Memorandum: School Desegregation: Legal Obligations,” June 6, 1980, Legal-Racial Balance folder, Wolf Papers.

⁹⁰ Cambridge Planning Board, Suggested Goals for a City Plan for Cambridge; and “Complaint of Intervenors—Civil Action No. 81-1436—Gloria Brown et al. vs. Cambridge School Committee (1981),” Koocher Papers.

⁹¹ “Tobin Recommends Plan for Relieving ‘Racial Imbalance,’” Cambridge Chronicle, Oct. 21, 1965, 1; Robert F. Cunha Jr. “No Deliberate Speed: The Failure of School Desegregationism in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1965–1978” (BA thesis., Harvard University, 1987), 23; and Irene Sege, “Racial Balance Plans Due Soon,” Cambridge Chronicle, March 6, 1980, 1, 7.

⁹² Gregory R. Anrig to William C. Lannon, Dec. 21, 1978, SPAN Org. Documentation folder, box 2, Koocher Papers.

⁹³ According to Gerald Kohn, Project “SPAN” stood for “System-wide Planning for a New High School” but became the name for the planning process tasked with supervising elementary school desegregation. Gerald Kohn, interview by author, Amherst, MA, 2011.

⁹⁴ Gerald W. Kohn, “Toward Balanced Schools,” Cambridge Chronicle, May 17, 1979, 5; William Lannon to the Honorable Members of the School Committee,” Dec. 13, 1979, N9-150, Cambridge School Department.

⁹⁵ Gerald Kohn, interview by author, Amherst, MA, Aug. 31, 2011.

⁹⁶ Muriel Heiberger, “Racial and Ethnic Composition of Cambridge Public Schools after Impact of Pupils Leaving as a Result of the Return of Out of District Open Enrolled Who Would Not Qualify for Open Enrollment under the VCT Policy of 1979,” June 5, 1980, NO-100, School Committee Discussion-Racial Balance folder, Wolf Papers.

⁹⁷ Kohn, interview. King “Open” referred to a “school-within-a-school” magnet school located within the larger Martin Luther King School. It opened in 1976, was parent-run, and accepted students from throughout the city, not only from the King catchment area. “King School Opens Its Doors,” April 15, 1976, Cambridge Chronicle, 4.

⁹⁸ Elaine Spatz-Rabinowitz and Morris Rabinowitz, “An Open Letter to the School Committee,” May 27, 1980, SPAN Testimony folder, Koocher Papers.

⁹⁹ Catherine B. Hughes and Susan Colannino to William Lannon, April 2, 1980, SPAN folder, box 2, Koocher Papers.

¹⁰⁰ Stephen Hantman to Alice Wolf, April 4, 1980, Wolf Papers.

¹⁰¹ Cambridge School Committee Minutes, “Re: Desegregation and the Peabody,” Nov. 5, 1980.

¹⁰² Cunha, “No Deliberate Speed,” 63.

¹⁰³ “Racial Balance Advisory Committee's Recommendation on Short and Long Range Issues,” Racial Balancer folder, Wolf Papers.

¹⁰⁴ “Families Respond to School Desegregation Plans,” Cambridge Chronicle, March 27, 1980, 4.

¹⁰⁵ Heather M. Leslie, “Choosing Schools: Parents, Students and Administrators Balance Race, Class and Education,” Harvard Crimson, April 14, 1993, https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1993/4/14/choosing-schools-pmore-than-a-decade.

¹⁰⁶ Eve Odiorne Sullivan, “Maintain Neighborhood School,” Cambridge Chronicle, May 27, 1976, 4.

¹⁰⁷ Pamela Varley, “Deseg Plan Fair?,” Cambridge Chronicle, Feb. 19, 1981, 1.

¹⁰⁸ Michael Alves, interview by Joseph Taff, Milton, MA, Aug. 24, 2011.

¹⁰⁹ Michael Alves, interview by Elysia Chandler, Milton, MA, Aug. 26, 2013.

¹¹⁰ Chandler, interview

¹¹¹ Chandler, interview.

¹¹² Kohn, interview.

¹¹³ On controlled choice plans outside Cambridge, see, for example, Erica Frankenberg, “Assessing Segregation”; Olivia Herrington, “Choosing Classrooms: Controlled Choice Policies in NYC Public Schools,” Harvard Political Review, Dec. 1, 2015, http://harvardpolitics.com/united-states/choosing-classrooms-controlled-choice-make-new-york-citys-education-system-equal/; Erica Frankenberg and Lisa Chavez, “Integration Defended: Berkeley Unified's Strategy to Maintain School Diversity” (Berkeley: UCLA Law School, Civil Rights Project, 2009), http://issuelab.org/permalink/resource/9870; and Kahlenberg, Richard, All Together Now: Creating Middle-Class Schools through Public School Choice (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2003)Google Scholar.

¹¹⁴ William C. Lannon, Francis H. Duchay, Alice Wolf, and Charles V. Willie, “Striving for Equality: Controlled Choice and School Desegregation in Cambridge, Massachusetts,” panel discussion, History of Education Society 50th Annual Meeting, Cambridge, MA, Nov. 5, 2010. Audio recording of session in possession of author. For more of Willie's thinking on the development of controlled choice, including the limitations of the neighborhood school model and the importance of choice and competition, see also Alves, Michael J. and Willie, Charles V., “Controlled Choice Assignments: A New and More Effective Approach to School Desegregation,” Urban Review 19, no. 2 (1987), 75–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Willie, Charles V., “The Evolution of Community Education: Content and Mission,” Harvard Educational Review, vol. 70, no. 2 (Summer 2000), 199–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Willie, Charles V., “Controlled Choice Avoids the Pitfalls of Choice Plans: Response to John Chubb and Terry Moe,” Educational Leadership 48, no. 4 (Dec.- Jan. 1990–1991), 62–64Google Scholar.

¹¹⁵ Alves, Michael, “Cambridge Desegregation Succeeding,” A Chronicle: Equal Education in Massachusetts 4, no. 4 (Jan. 1983), 2–16Google Scholar; Cambridge School Department, “Cambridge School Desegregation Plan,” May 1, 1980, box 1, Koocher Papers; and Cambridge School Department, “The Cambridge Controlled Choice School Desegregation Plan: A Decade of Success” (1990), Cambridge (MA) Public Schools.

¹¹⁶ Alves and Willie, “Controlled Choice Assignments,” 67–70.

¹¹⁷ Willie and Alves note that, “it is the ‘forced choice’ dimension of policy that gives controlled choice its existential power. Just as parents must think about why they should enroll their children in certain schools, each school must face the question of how to become more attractive to students on a desegregative basis.” Alves and Willie, “Controlled Choice Assignments,” 79.

¹¹⁸ Friedman, Milton, “The Role of Government in Education,” in Economics and the Public Interest, ed. Solo, R. A. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1955)Google Scholar.

¹¹⁹ On how neighborhood school assignment plans can exacerbate segregation, see, for example, Garcia, David G., Strategies of Segregation: Race, Residence, and the Struggle for Educational Equality (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goyette, Kimberly A. and Lareau, Annette, Choosing Homes, Choosing Schools (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2014)Google Scholar; and Rothstein, Richard, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (New York: Liveright Publishing, 2017)Google Scholar.

¹²⁰ Diego Ribadeneira, “Cambridge Desegregation Plan Praised,” Boston Sunday Globe, April 5, 1987, 42.

¹²¹ Peterkin, Robert S. and Jones, Dorothy S., “Schools of Choice in Cambridge, Massachusetts,” in Public Schools by Choice: Expanding Opportunities for Parents, Students, and Teachers, ed. Nathan, Joe (St. Paul, MN: Institute for Teaching and Learning, 1989), 136–37Google Scholar.

¹²² Peterkin and Jones, “Schools of Choice in Cambridge, Massachusetts,” 138.

¹²³ Gia Kim, “Cambridge Schools Fail to Achieve Racial Balance,” Harvard Crimson, Feb. 18, 1992, https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1992/2/18/cambridge-schools-fail-to-achieve-racial/.

¹²⁴ “Educational Choice Success,” Oct. 11, 1988, White House Workshop on Choice folder, box 4, John Klenk Files, 1988–1989, White House Staff and Office Inventories, 1981–1989, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, CA.

¹²⁵ “The Perfect Storm: Nine Reforms to Revolutionize American Education,” U.S. News & World Report, Jan. 11, 1993, 59.

¹²⁶ Scott S. Greenberger, “Cambridge Eyes Income, Not Race, for Desegregation,” Boston Sunday Globe, Dec. 16, 2001, 1.

¹²⁷ Richard, Alan, “Cambridge Becomes Latest District to Integrate by Income,” Education Week 21, no. 16 (Jan. 9, 2002), 11Google Scholar. For a thorough evaluation of Cambridge's decision to implement socioeconomic integration, along with the implications of this policy, see Kahlenberg, All Together Now.

¹²⁸ Tracy Jan, “An Imbalance Grows in Cambridge Schools,” Boston Globe, July 23, 2007, 1.

¹²⁹ Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, xxiii.

¹³⁰ On Boston's busing crisis see, for example, Lukas, J. Anthony, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families (New York: Vintage Books, 1986)Google Scholar; Delmont, Matthew and Theoharis, Jeanne, eds., “Rethinking the Boston ‘Busing Crisis’ Special Section,” Journal of Urban History 43, no. 2 (March 2017), 191–293CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Formisano, Ronald P., Boston Against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On “busing” in the American imagination, see Delmont, Matthew F., Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016)Google Scholar.

¹³¹ Gary Orfield, “Forward,” in Jennifer B. Ayscue and Slyssa Greenberg with John Kucsera and Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, “Losing Ground: School Segregation in Massachusetts,” (Los Angeles: The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles, May 2013), vi-vii, https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/losing-ground-school-segregation-in-massachusetts.

¹³² On contemporary urban experiments with choice and re-segregation see, for example, Dana Goldstein, “San Francisco, A Hard Lesson on Integration,” New York Times, April 25, 2019, 1; Michelle Chen, “New York's Separate and Unequal Schools,” The Nation, Feb. 20, 2018, https://www.thenation.com/article/new-yorks-separate-and-unequal-schools/; and The Century Foundation, “The Benefits of Socioeconomically and Racially Integrated Schools and Classrooms,” April 29, 2019, https://tcf.org/content/facts/the-benefits-of-socioeconomically-and-racially-integrated-schools-and-classrooms/.