Essay 4126

From The Chicago Tribune…

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Diversity the right way

The Supreme Court decision Thursday overturning school integration programs in Seattle and Louisville prompted outrage in some quarters, starting with the court itself. Justice Stephen Breyer, who delivered an impassioned 20-minute oral dissent when the decision was announced, called it a “radical” one “that the court and the nation will come to regret.”

Columbia University law professor Jack Greenberg, a veteran civil rights litigator, likened the decision to Southern opposition to the famous Brown vs. Board of Education verdict outlawing school segregation: “This is essentially the rebirth of massive resistance in more acceptable form.” In fact, the effect of the court’s split ruling is to move the nation in the right direction but not too far and too fast. Given the constraints established by the majority, school districts will no longer be able to use bald racial classifications to determine which schools individual students will be allowed (or required) to attend. But thanks to Justice Anthony Kennedy, who provided the fifth vote for the majority, education officials still have ample latitude to pursue the important goal of racial diversity.

Four of the justices in the majority took the view that schools must operate in a completely color-blind manner. In Brown, the court ordered that authorities begin “determining admission to the public schools on a non-racial basis.” Asked Chief Justice John Roberts, “What do the racial classifications do in these cases, if not determine admission to public school on a racial basis?”

The problem is that in the absence of some countervailing policy, schools are likely to become less integrated, as they have in recent years. As Breyer pointed out, more than 2 million black and Latino students attend public schools that are less than 1 percent white. Fortunately, striking down the racial quotas used in Seattle and Louisville, as Kennedy made clear, does not mean administrators must be indifferent to the racial makeup of student bodies.

Although districts can’t use race as the decisive factor in assigning students, he concluded, they are free to seek diversity by other means, such as “drawing attendance zones with general recognition of the demographics of neighborhoods; allocating resources for special programs; recruiting students and faculty in a targeted fashion; and tracking enrollments, performance and other statistics by race.”

One method is to use socioeconomic status in making assignments, to foster the mixing of higher-income students with poorer ones (many of whom are minority children). Another is to create magnet schools with attractive specialties to lure families who would otherwise opt for suburban or private schools. Charter schools can also play a key role. These alternatives not only foster integration but advance broader educational goals.

Seattle is already embracing other methods to maintain racial diversity, such as putting more money into struggling schools with predominantly African-American student bodies. Sheldon Berman, incoming superintendent of schools in metropolitan Louisville, says that given the options blessed by Kennedy, he doesn’t think it is going to have a major impact.

Henceforth, school officials will need to be more creative in making schools accessible and inviting to students of all races. Rather than a return to segregation, this decision ought to be the stimulus to achieve racial diversity in a better way.