think on this.

The face of America is changing. In 40 years, the United States will become a minority-majority nation – a remarkable milestone for a country that already boasts one of the most religiously, ethnically and racially diverse societies in the world.

But you wouldn’t know it looking at our nation’s schools. Census and school data tell a very different story:

• The average white student goes to a school that is more than three-quarters white.

• One in four children in poverty attends schools with few middle- and upper-middle class schoolmates.

• One-third of black and Latino students attend schools with 90 to 100 percent minority populations. In the Northeast, over half of black students are in majority black schools.

This re-segregation of America’s schools has only been accelerated by a U.S. Supreme Court decision that marks its fifth anniversary this year – Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District.

That 2007 decision found that districts cannot use race as a factor in assigning children to schools – eliminating a powerful tool for integration. Sadly, some school districts aren’t using the few remaining tools. We’ve seen school districts – such as the Wake County, N.C., district – dismantle successful programs that use economic diversity to assign students to schools.

At a time when we should be preparing our children for a diverse nation, more communities are seeing their schools segregate. It’s not that people are suddenly rallying around an explicit call to return to Jim Crow-era school segregation, but that we have lost sight of the value of integration.