The Evanston/Skokie School District 65 school board received a presentation Tuesday night on the effectiveness of a goal it has to keep its schools racially diverse.

The idea of diversifying the schools originated in 1966 when the district adopted a desegregation plan. In 1985 the board accepted the current guideline that no one racial group should exceed 60 percent of the student body in any school.

District 65’s Director of Research Paul Brinson presented the report, which focused on whether busing students to schools outside their neighborhood to fulfill the guideline affected their scores on standardized tests. The state requires the district to provide free transportation to students living at least 1.5 miles away from school and students who would face dangerous conditions if they walked to school.

Baum noted that two major arguments against the guideline were that it increased the number of bused minority students and that the burden of being bused resulted in lower achievement scores.

“This report suggests that neither of this is true, which suggests why get rid of the 60 percent guideline?” Baum said Wednesday.

The board had previously discussed the idea of a Fifth Ward school to relieve students from being bused to other neighborhoods. The idea of a Fifth Ward school was dropped in February in light of financial constraints.