Kansas City, Mo ? The Kansas City school district has asked a federal judge to end a 26-year-old court-ordered desegregation case that has cost more than $2 billion.

In a motion filed Thursday, the district said it had reduced the achievement gap between black and white students.

“We’ve done what we’re supposed to do,” Supt. Bernard Taylor Jr. said during a news conference Thursday. “We’re confident that we can move forward. We’ve met the goal, and now we need to have more control over our destiny.”

The motion asks U.S. District Judge Dean Whipple to end court supervision of student achievement in the district and dismiss the desegregation case.

Student achievement was the last portion of the desegregation plan the court was monitoring. Whipple last year ended federal oversight in the areas of racial balance, facilities, budget and transportation.

The district has requested a hearing in April.

Arthur Benson, the attorney for the plaintiff schoolchildren in the case, said he would examine closely the district’s claim that the black-white achievement gap had been closed.

The district said the gap between white and black students on the math portion of the state test shrunk by 29 percent between 1998 and 2002. But Benson said the district in 2001 abandoned a similar claim that it closed the gap after a close analysis of district data showed the gap had not closed.

“If it (the data) establishes the academic gains the Kansas City, Mo., school district today presents, it will be the final monumental victory in this nationally important desegregation litigation,” Benson said.

The filing of the desegregation lawsuit in 1977 led to the renovation and replacement of aging buildings and the racial integration of city schools.