No failure of social engineering has quite matched the forced busing of students to achieve "racial balance" in public schools. For decades, this grandiose experiment tore at our nation's social fabric, squandering millions of dollars and perpetuating the hoax that black children can't learn adequately unless they are sitting next to white children.

Last week, we saw more evidence of the wrong-headedness of the premise behind busing -- that racial balance is the critical factor in minority academic achievement. For the second year in a row, students in The Choice Is Yours -- a voluntary program in which low-income, minority Minneapolis students are bused to schools in nine suburbs -- scored no better than their peers in the Minneapolis schools in reading and math. In 2005-6, students who stayed in Minneapolis schools outperformed their suburban-school peers, and in 2006-7 they scored slightly higher in reading and practically even in math.

There's some question about how much can be concluded from these comparisons. But results have fallen short of hopes in 2001, when the program was launched as part of a lawsuit settlement with the NAACP.

Today, it's easy to forget that, from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s, Minneapolis was one of hundreds of school districts where kids were compelled to be bused across town to achieve a vision of optimal racial balance.

During that era, federal judges, not school boards, often effectively set education policy. Judicial over-reaching was perhaps most on display in Missouri, where in the mid-1990s, 6 to 8 percent of the state budget went to desegregation expenses for the Kansas City and St. Louis schools, and a judge nearly doubled local property taxes to fund a $1 billion-plus desegregation program.

In Minneapolis, busing turned many families' lives upside down. Thousands of students spent extra hours on the bus each week, and parents struggled to stay connected with children who were often assigned to widely separated schools. The scheme cost millions, but black achievement did not substantially improve.

Busing did, however, trigger a critical unintended consequence: massive white middle-class flight. In 1971, the Minneapolis school district was 14.5 percent minority. In 1985, it was 40 percent minority. In 1994, it was 62 percent minority and today it's 70 percent minority.

In 1995, Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton responded to black families' frustration by joining black mayors across the country -- Denver, St. Louis, Cleveland -- in a crusade to end mandatory busing and return to neighborhood schools. In 1999, a judge finally approved a state desegregation plan that dropped mandatory racial quotas in favor of voluntary integration strategies.

But cherished illusions die hard. Even as Minneapolis sought to end its disastrous experiment with busing, the now-defunct State Board of Education moved to extend it to the whole metro area.

The board's Utopian scheme -- apparently unprecedented in the nation -- would have required every school district in the seven-county metro area to help "desegregate" Minneapolis and St. Paul schools. The plan would have imposed racial ceilings and floors on districts as far as New Prague and Forest Lake. To comply with its quota, the Minneapolis district would have had to exchange about 12,000 students with its suburbs.

After the plan foundered, the NAACP filed a lawsuit in 1995, apparently seeking to impose metrowide busing through the courts. The settlement in that suit produced The Choice Is Yours.

Busing is on its way out

Today, mandatory race-based busing is on its way out across the nation. In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed course and ruled that districts not under court order to desegregate cannot use race to assign students to schools.

Minnesota still has relics from the outmoded era of race-based busing. The state's Desegregation Rule is grounded in the notion that students' race is important, but compliance is voluntary. The state continues to dispense "integration revenue" to "racially identifiable" schools and districts, but in 2005 the Office of the Legislative Auditor found that the purpose of these funds is "not clear" and that district use of them is inconsistent.

Today, we have overwhelming evidence that the color of your classmates' skin is not an important factor in educational achievement. In fact, the student bodies at schools that do best with disadvantaged students -- such as KIPP Academies and Achievement First schools -- are often entirely poor and minority.

Schools that succeed focus on what really matters: Strong curricula grounded in the basics, lots of time on task, careful testing, discipline and the instilling of character.

Katherine Kersten • kkersten@startribune.com Join the conversation at my blog, Think Again, which can be found at www.startribune.com/thinkagain.