Court Ruling Likely to Further Segregate Schools, Educators Say

But Browne endorsed the Wake County plan as an ideal model for school districts to achieve racial integration without violating the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection. "Plans that use socioeconomic factors do not have the pitfalls of using race, which violates the equal protection clause," she said.

The most effective way to achieve racial diversity, however, is by taking race into account, most experts agree, and they fear that the court's ruling will accelerate the resegregation of American schools that has been going on for decades. The court's dissenting opinion, for example, noted that the percentage of white students in schools attended by the average black student dropped from 1968 to 2000.

In the Washington region, school districts have responded in markedly different ways to the 4th Circuit's decision striking down the use of race in school assignments. Some local school districts, such as Fairfax County, have no such plans.

"We draw our boundaries geographically, and we don't have any sort of desegregation plans, if you will, that will try to bring racial and ethnic equality to our schools," said Mary Shaw, a spokeswoman for Fairfax County schools.

At the same time, Fairfax, like a number of suburban districts across the country, has experienced fairly significant demographic changes that have resulted in a number of non-integrated schools. Hybla Valley Elementary, for example, is 60 percent Hispanic, even though Hispanics make up 16 percent of the district's students.

Arlington Superintendent Robert G. Smith said that because of the ruling, some schools got "considerably less diverse for a few years." The county shifted strategies by creating admissions policies based on income, he said, but schools still do not reflect the county's demographics.

"Right now, I don't think there is a whole lot you can do," Smith said.

"One of the four major strategic goals that our school board has adopted is to prepare students for a diverse society. I'm not sure how you do that if the student body in which they're educated is not."

Staff writers Ian Shapira and Daniel de Vise contributed to this report.