Another school year is upon us as the summer comes to an end. A look of excitement will come across the faces of children as they start new schools and meet new people. And one of the social experiments that was seen as giving students a leg up in education, busing will not be present in Boston and St. Louis, and it and other desegregation measures are being phased out in various school systems across the country.

It was in 1971, in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, a U.S. Supreme Court decision, that the courts authorized "forced busing." Although going to a school of your choice was available to students regardless of color, thanks to the Brown decision that rocked the country (and segregation) 17 years earlier, most schools were still lily white or all Black. So the courts decided that choice was a farce.

"The Mecklenburg decision made it so that schools would not be racially identifiable," said Dr. Robert Smith, a political science professor at San Francisco State University and author of "We have no Leaders."

"The court said that schools had to have the same percentages of Black and white students in the district."

If the school district was 80 percent white and 20 percent Black, each of the schools had to have the same racial make up. Civil rights activists jumped at the Swann decision. They saw busing as a way for white students to interact with Black students, and a way for Black children to receive educational opportunity in an integrated and fully funded public school. They brought action through protests and lawsuits for school systems to implement busing.

While it was seen by some as the "great equalizer" in education, busing has proven to be a failure. While busing was seen as a way to integrate schools, the opposite happened. Many white parents saw busing as a threat to their children�s education and local control of education, so they pulled their children out of city public schools. They began sending their children to private schools, or they just packed up and moved from the cities to the suburbs.

In Boston in 1971, before busing began, 60 percent of Boston public schools were white, and Blacks and people of color made up the rest of the total. Today, the Boston school district is 18 percent white, and people of color make up 82 percent. As busing continued in Boston, it became an exercise in transporting Black students across town to sit next to other Black students.

While civil rights activists talk about busing failures and point to the nativism of whites who pulled their children out of city public schools, they rarely discuss the other side of the busing debate. Aside from the fact that there was no statistical evidence to show busing would improve the educational standards of Black students, a large portion of Blacks hated busing.

They felt busing was counter productive, and based on a false assumption of Black inferiority, and that it was thrust upon them by the courts, and advocated by out-of-touch politicians and civil rights leaders.

This anti-busing sentiment was displayed in 1972, in the closing statement of the famous Black Power conference in Gary, Indiana, which drew a cross section of Black (radical, nationalist, conservative) activists together. "Busing is a bankrupt and suicidal method � based on the false notion that Black children are unable to learn unless they are in the same setting as white children."

These Black activists were called "Wallace sympathizers" by the traditional civil rights community, because George Wallace, who was running for president at the time, opposed busing, (along with white politicians left and right), but the attitude displayed at the Gary Conference regarding busing has always been in the Black community.

This anti-busing attitude grew with the fact that Black students had to deal with most of busing burdens. They were the ones who were shuttled into schools in white neighborhoods, while whites were rarely shuttled into schools in Black communities. But the number one reason busing failed, was that it failed to address the most important factor in education: the parents. "Busing took parents out of the educational process when it took the child out of the community," said Dr. Nathan Hare, of the Black Think Tank, a San Francisco-based family institute.

Children were sent miles away from their homes on buses to go to schools. Often times bypassing a neighborhood school that closed due to busing, to attend a school across town. This traveling made it harder for parents to participate in the school and in their child�s education. Now 28 years after busing became a vogue trend in education, school districts are stopping it, or scaling down busing. They are quietly admitting it was a failure, and they are now advocating what should have been the goal of busing: Providing Educational Excellence. This has been the theme coming out these cities and others that are phasing out busing. Education administrators, activists and parents are now focusing on options such as charter and magnet schools, instead of talking about the racial composition of a school. They are even talking about building more neighborhood schools (a racial code word in the busing debate).

Some civil rights activists worry about racial isolationism in the public schools. They point to a recent study by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, that shows the public schools moving close to 1970 levels of de-facto segregation in the schools. But they�re concerns are misguided. While integrated educational settings are a worthwhile goal, providing a strong solid education should be the number one goal.

Hopefully with the phasing out of busing, this can now take place.