On Sept. 4, 1957, Little Rock High School was the site of one of the most infamous American reactions to school integration ever documented. Nine African American students were not allowed entrance into their new school building, where they were assigned to study alongside their white peers. Upon arrival, the children were met with blows and bottles, brick-throwing and malicious taunts by angry white mobs. The fair-weather protection of the National Guard left them vulnerable to violence, and local police had to evacuate the "Little Rock Nine" by noon that day. But they returned, and under federal protection, the students would finish out the school year.

Only three years earlier, the Supreme Court decision Brown v. Boad of Education of Topeka paved the way for school integration. Now, 60 years later, a new report — "Brown at 60: Great Progress, a Long Retreat and an Uncertain Future," published by UCLA's Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles — assesses the status of school segregation in America and explores the transformation of the nation's school population since the civil rights era. The publication showed a sweeping transformation of the nation's schools, including a 30 percent drop in the percentage of white students and a quadrupling of the Latino student population.

The South and the West, the country's two largest regions, now have a majority of "minority students." The South is currently profoundly tri-racial. In the West, whites are the second largest group in the region. The visible change in the racial landscape, couple with a troubled educational system has led the public to believe that the South has returned to the level of segregation that was visible before the Brown decision, which challenged the validity of the "separate but equal" educational system in the South. Authors of the report say it disprovse this notion, showing the South is the least segregated region for black students. The report also uncovered that, while Southern schools have not reverted to their pre-Brown makeup, they've lost all of the progress toward integration that they made after 1967.

Since the 1990s, the Supreme Court has profoundly changed desegregation laws, ending desegregation plans in many large districts, including Charlotte, North Carolina; Pinellas County, Florida; and Henrico County, Virginia. More than two decades of conservative-leaning Supreme Court rulings resulted in the dismantling of federal desegregation efforts, giving authority back to local school districts and reproducing segregated schooling in divided communities.

"Brown was a major accomplishment, and we should rightfully be proud. But a real celebration should also involve thinking seriously about why the country has turned away from the goal of Brown and accepted deepening polarization and inequality in our schools," said Gary Orfield, co-author of the study and co-director of the Civil Rights Project.

The UCLA research confirmed that segregation coincides with the surge of the Latino population, particularly in the West, where integration was substantial during the 1960s but has slowed since. The report details that segregation occurs at many levels, but students of color and poorer students tend to feel its effects, in the form of fewer resources — as more integrated schools are routinely offered more benefits.

Segregation in New York, Illinois and California tops the list for its isolation of black students in the central cities of large metropolitan areas, and it's the highest in the Northeast for blacks overall. That said, Latinos are now significantly more segregated than blacks in suburban America, where blacks and Latino students are increasingly moving to schools with fewer white students. Black and Latino students tend to attend schools with a majority of poor children, while white and Asian students attend schools with children who come from middle class families. Geography notwithstanding, there are stark differences between whites and students of color and their level of exposure to white students.

The Civil Rights Project research concluded with recommendations for ways to make equal education opportunities available to all students. The report indicated that six decades of "separate but equal" was followed by six decades of "separate is inherently unequal," which is why the inequality deserves attention from educators and policy makers.

The report says mending the societal wounds caused by both passive and active racial divides can be done in a number of ways: building high quality preschools, developing policies to assign highly qualified and experienced professionals to segregated schools, resolving housing discrimination, re-examining the structure of school choice policies, broadening the diversity in administrative ranks and student education agencies, having educators "talk back" to explain contemporary racial and economic realities in schools, actively communicating the missed opportunities facing disadvantaged students, equalizing education opportunities and preparing young Americans for the diverse society that awaits them, and by stopping the celebration of "a version of history that ignores our last quarter century of retreat and to begin to make new history by finding ways to apply the vision of Brown in a transformed, multiracial society in another century."

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