But, as Louisiana has asked, since 91% of the students using vouchers are black, how could their departure to voucher schools make their home school systems less white?  A review by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice backs up Louisiana's common sense question noting that almost every empirical study finds "that school choice moves students from more segregated schools into less segregated schools." In Milwaukee's voucher program, for example, private school enrollment has moved from being 25% minority students before the voucher program to now being 65% minority students. 

A more plausible explanation is that school desegregation has ceased to be about children or educational opportunities. If this is the case, the federal government's war on school choice in Louisiana and around the Country has less to do with racial justice and more to do with the support of one of its major constituents, the Teachers Union. From the union point of view the competition and the accountability that school choice brings to the public schools will threaten the resources needed for the perpetual funding of its failing public education bureaucracy.    

So what is the concern? If successful, the Justice Department's action will harm school choice, whether in the form of vouchers or charter schools, in Louisiana and potentially in every school district around the country still subject to decades old desegregation decrees. It threatens to take from thousands of kids in Louisiana, mostly black, as well as kids around the nation, their only chance for a high-quality education. If successful, it would turn Brown v. Board of Education on its head, since desegregation and school choice share a common aim: educational opportunity.