WASHINGTON

Reversing the resegregation of many of the nation’s school districts may require congressional leadership and the president’s attention, said lawyers, policymakers and educators assembled on Capitol Hill Friday to discuss policies that would encourage more integrated schools.

The policy briefing, “New Initiatives for Integrated Education in the Obama Era: Reversing the Resegregation of the Past Two Decades,” drew about 75 attendees and gave several scholars the opportunity to share papers and research studies.

“Congress hasn’t done anything positive to help the desegregation of schools since the 1970s,” said the panel’s moderator, Dr. Gary Orfield, a professor from the University of California, Los Angeles and co-director of the Civil Rights Project /Proyecto Derechos Civiles.

At the end of the 1960s, Southern public schools were among some of the nation’s most integrated because of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. However, today, the region is experiencing an increasing amount of resegregated school districts.

Orfield said the nation has taken a step backwards on integration by cutting funding for such efforts.

“Students in segregated schools won’t learn how to live in integrated society,” said Orfield, whose Civil Rights Project has commissioned more than 400 studies and influenced the results of legal cases such as Grutter v. Bollinger, a 2003 case which upheld affirmative action.

Chinh Q. Le, practitioner in residence with the Center for Social Justice at Seton Hall University School of Law, also argued that the federal government should have a role in advancing the cause.

Le, who formerly served as assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, authored “Racially Integrated Education and the Role of the Federal Government,” one of the five papers highlighted during the panel.