Supreme Court - School Integration

Mourning in America

2007-07-27T15:04:00.000-04:00

Is focusing on the positive in the schools cases, the small remnants of Brown preserved for future generations, a mistake? In Patricia Williams's column this week in The Nation, in which she compares the decision to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Williams argues that it is:

"What concerns me at the moment is the general lack of outcry that has met the decision that public school districts cannot take voluntary action to overcome racial inequality. This represents, for all intents and purposes, the overturning of Brown v. Board of Education. Yet the response in many quarters has been to put a positive spin on it. At least it was a plurality decision. At least Justice Kennedy allowed that diversity is an interest....

And while the Supreme Court may force schools and employers to turn a blind eye to racism's ruinous cost of illiteracy, unemployment and poverty, the "war on terror" has reinvigorated profiling by race, religion, ethnicity and lord-knows-what-else. We seem well on our way to resurrecting a dual society, at one level of which no one sees a thing--the show must go on, so to speak. But some of the rest live in a shadow nation where race is a mark of unspeakable yet indelible consequence. "

The Impact on Higher Ed: Better than Expected, Worse than It Seems

2007-07-25T16:58:00.000-04:00

Gary Orfield, Erica Frankenberg and Liliana M. Garces of the Civil Rights Project wrote on July 24th in Inside Higher Ed that the Supreme Court's decision in Parents may not be cause for relief. They said "While a bullet was dodged, optimism should be restrained. The dike protecting affirmative action has held but the river that brings diverse groups of students to colleges may be drying up as a result of the latest decision."

Orfield, Frankenberg, and Garces argue that selective colleges and universities depend on attracting qualified applicants of color to their schools, and many of those applicants come from interracial schools. They go on to note that highly segregated schools produce less academically preparared students who are " often not ready to function socially on a largely white, affluent campus."

Rising segregation in schools, the authors state, will have two major implications for higher education: "First, rising segregation is likely to bring a rise in educational inequality and less prepared black and Latino students. Second, all incoming students are likely to have fewer interracial experiences prior to attending college meaning they will be less prepared for effective functioning in an interracial setting."

Orfield, Frankenberg, and Garces call for institutions of higher education to help limit the ill effects of the decision and keep alive the legacy of Brown by assising local school districts in finding legal and workable solutions to maintain diversity and taking a public leadership and education role in continuing to argue for the importance of integrated educational settings.

An Imbalance Grows in Cambridge Schools

2007-07-24T15:50:00.000-04:00

In today's Boston Globe, Tracy Jan reports that Cambridge, touted as a national model for its economic integration plan, has become more racially segregated over the five years that the plan has been in practice.

"Under the plan, parents list their top three choices and are entered into two pools, depending on whether their children qualify for federally subsidized lunch, which serves as a common gauge of poverty. To qualify, a family's annual income, depending on its size, must range between $12,740 and $43,680; 45 percent of seats in each school are reserved for low-income students to reflect the district average. Schools could fluctuate 15 percent above or below that amount."

Unfortunately, however, while the plan has been modestly successful at economically desegregating the schools, Jan writes that "[P]arents choose schools where they feel the most comfortable, and their choices often split along racial lines. Some high-poverty, mostly minority schools have low-income families on their waiting lists but have trouble filling spots reserved for middle-class students. And some higher income schools popular among middle class families have empty seats for low-income students."

For schools looking to bring their integration plans into line with the recent decisions, Cambridge's combination of parent choice and economic diversity guidelines might be a good place to start, but changes must be made to ensure that racial diversity does not suffer as a result.

Guest Blogger: The Beginning of the End for Conservative Race Theory

2007-07-20T14:51:00.000-04:00

By Christopher Newfield, Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara

One of the truisms of our time is that conservatives rule American politics because they have won the battle of ideas. Although The Supreme Court's new rejection of the use of race in diversity programs in the Louisville and Seattle school districts (No. 05-908) seems like redundant confirmation, the real story of the case is Justice Breyer's astonishing 77-page dissent.

Breyer dismantles every moving part of the conservative case, one piece at a time. The case will not be remembered for its plurality opinion but for Breyer' dissent, which reassembles a democratic theory of racial integration.

In the Seattle decision, Chief Justice John Roberts bases the plurality opinion on the standard, three-part conservative argument. First, racial classification is always and intrinsically bad, not just when it is used to subordinate or stigmatize a group. Second, with very rare exceptions, racial classification can only be used to reverse an institution's own prior, state-sanctioned segregation: voluntary improvements are not allowed. Third, racial diversity is almost always a cover for numerical quotas that try to make institutions conform to the racial mixtures that prevail in society at large. Diversity's secret goal is what the Chief Justice calls "racial balancing," and it is unconstitutional.

As is equally standard in such contexts, racial consciousness is presented as a central threat to individual rights and personal choice. Finally, the icing on the conservative cake is that the color-blind scheme turns out to be, in this view, the only effective form of anti-racism: to cite Roberts' media tag-line, fully pre-tested by conservative think tanks: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." The real causes and effects that shape American society are replaced by a series of scholastic equations, in which race blindness equals race legality equals race justice, and the package is held together by a tone of superior moral rectitude toward the race conscious authorities who impair the freedom to choose.

Breyer systematically rejects each of these claims. First, his lengthy examination of precedent shows that the Court has repeatedly endorsed racial classification when it includes rather than excludes. The whole point of applying "strict scrutiny" standards to racial classifications is precisely to "take relevant differences" between "fundamentally different situations . . . into account." The Roberts plurality, Breyer writes, is in fact breaking with Court precedent in order to make strict scrutiny "fatal in fact" to all racial classification across the board. The power of Breyer's opinion comes from his relentless evisceration of the taboo against race-consciousness based on the Court's own decisions. The conclusion is that the cornerstone of conservative race theory has no basis in the Court's own opinions on race.

Second, Breyer shows that court-sanctioned de jure discrimination ("segregation by state action") is not the only kind that can be addressed with race-conscious programs: de facto discrimination, like the educational effects of housing segregation, is also a legitimate target. The stakes here are whether schools, with public support, have the right to seek to increase racial mixing in communities where larger housing and income patterns make that mixing unlikely. Conservatives have said no, race-conscious remedies can be used only in cases of extreme previous racism, which is like saying that pesticide bans should apply only to former toxic waste sites and not to the landscape at large. Breyer's argument is a fundamental rejection of the conservative restriction.

Third, Breyer argues that the goal of diversity practices is to keep racial integration from moving full speed into reverse. The gains of the period between 1968 and 1980 have been almost entirely lost, as nicely articulated by Breyer's description of the empirical evidence of resegregation. Does the desire of white parents to send their children to whatever school they want always trump the goal of keeping residentially segregated racial groups in communication with each other? Breyer argues that the state has a compelling interest in the use of education to create the powers of understanding that underwrite a multi-racial democracy. He also argues that the districts have bent over backwards to protect individual choice, thus rejecting the Right's assertion that choice and racial diversity are contradictory.

The effect of Breyer's opinion is to hold conservative race theory to account. It has dominated the courts during the same period in which school segregation has increased, when administrators and teachers have had to jump through new legal hoops every year, when educational disparity - like the economic kind - has increased all over the country. Advocates of color-blindness has made all of this worse, attacking nearly all programs of racial inclusion as assaults on liberty, painting as dire threats the integrationist remedies that thirty years ago were considered the least society could do.

Color-blindness has also allowed many white parents to dodge the question of whether they are willing to fix the multi-racial schools their children are assigned to rather than fighting endlessly to keep them from going there in the first place. Conservatives have used racial resentment to blind whites to the general benefit of high-quality public provisions for all students, including the benefit to themselves of Latinos and African Americans receiving equally good educations.

Breyer's opinion, though on the losing side, may eventually help refocus the outrage of whites, who have sought to use the courts for the benefit of their own children regardless of the effects on the children of others, refocus them on how the success of their society depends on the equal distribution of quality in education.

Around the Nation: Districts Determined to Strive for Integration

2007-07-19T23:43:00.000-04:00

As districts across the country ponder the likely effects of the decisions on their own programs, local media cover the often disheartened response. Fortunately, most communities are committed to maintaining plans unchanged, or modifying them in order to ensure that they are in compliance with the law. Below, some of the commentary in more detail:

-- The superintendent of Mobile County Schools in Alabama has said that he will not change the enrollment practices of the district’s six magnet schools, which selects a student body that is even divided between blacks and whites. It appears that the district remains under a federal court order. An editorial in the Decatur Daily posits that the PICS ruling will have a negative effect on Decatur City Schools once a federal court’s desegregation order is lifted.

-- Chris Heller, counsel for Little Rock School District in Arkansas -- synonymous with integration for many Americans -- stated that the district will have to change its assignment policies once a court desegregation order on Pulaski County is lifted.

-- In Berkeley, California, the district believes that PICS will have “no effect on their current system”, which does use race among other factors in prioritizing school choices, while the San Francisco school board is less certain about their own plan. Further analysis of the Berkeley and San Francisco plans, which many predict may be at issue in future test cases, can be found here and here. Attorneys for the Los Angeles Unified School District plan to defend its practice of using race as a factor in enrolling students at the district's 162 magnet programs after the ruling. Articles also note that the district remains under a 1981 desegregation order.

-- The Connecticut school districts of Stamford and Norwalk are reviewing the decision to judge whether it will be necessary to change their existing school-assignment policies, which make decisions based on many factors, including race. Meanwhile, desegregation efforts in Hartford will not likely be affected, as students' area of residence, rather than race, is determinative of school assignment.

-- Broward and Miami-Dade public schools in Florida do not use race in student assignment, and therefore will likely be unaffected by the decision. Lee County, which was released from a court-ordered desegregation plan in 2004, will also be unaffected. An article about Hillsborough County, in the same position as Lee, notes that since the county abandoned its efforts, dramatic resegregation has occurred. Officials in Volusia County are less certain, as in their program some minority neighborhoods outside school boundaries are included to achieve a racial balance. Officials in Pinellas County, designing a new student assignment plan, will assign students based on their location rather than race.

-- Sam Harben, an attorney who represents some Georgia school districts, stated that some magnet programs may be in jeopardy. Several districts under court orders, however, such as Richmond County, and others with more nuanced and comprehensive plans, such as Muscogee County, will not be affected.

-- Six Iowa districts (Des Moines, Davenport, Burlington, Waterloo, Postville and West Liberty) currently use students’ race to determine whether they can open-enroll into a school or district as a result of the 1976 agreement with the U.S. Office of Civil Rights. These restrictions will probably be loosened.

-- Stephen Katz, counsel for Rockford School Board, in Illinois, believes that the ruling should be of no consequence for the district, as their new system (since 2002) uses socioeconomic status and not race as a deciding factor for school assignment.

-- Since the 1990s, the Topeka, Kansas, school district has permitted students to transfer from their neighborhood schools to others when it helps improve racial diversity. It also built three elementary ‘magnet’ schools to attract students from across the city. Officials believe that that race can no longer be “a deciding factor” in school assignment. Wichita does not plan to alter its racial diversity program, since it is the result of a 1971 agreement with the Office of Civil Rights. District officials will meet again with OCR in August. Manhattan, KS, which uses SES rather than race to determine school district boundaries, will be unaffected.

-- Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, Kentucky, plan to continue with their current school assignments for the upcoming school year, despite threats from Teddy Gordon, counsel for plaintiff, of further legal action if the school continues to use their race-based selection system. One JCPS school board member states that the district may include socioeconomic status in future as a result of the PICS ruling. Superintendents in Hardin County, KY, said that their schools would not be affected, as they use only location and not race as a factor for school assignment.

-- District official James Easton believes that the decision will not have a negative impact on schools in Acadiana, a region of Louisiana comprising 22 of the state’s 66 parishes, but believes there may be a change in future enrollment practices. In Lafayette Parish, schools of choice and majority-to-minority transfers both use race as a factor in determining student assignments, and the plan may need to be modified.

-- Attorneys for plaintiff in a suit against a voluntary desegregation plan in Lynn, Massachusetts (a case which the Supreme Court declined to hear two years ago) are now asking a federal court to end the practice, citing the PICS decision. Twenty-two school districts in Massachusetts have state-approved programs to fix racial imbalances, including Springfield, Holyoke and Northampton, many of which are now in limbo. Also in jeopardy may be the historical Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO), which has bused minority students to affluent suburban schools since 1966. School officials said the effect of the high court's ruling in Massachusetts would depend on the specifics of each school system's plan. The state Department of Education approves the plans, and Education Commissioner David Driscoll said yesterday that he would adjust them as needed.

-- In St. Louis, Missouri, the court-approved Desegregation Program appears beyond the reach of the recent decisions. Unlike both Louisville and Seattle, there has never been a decision that said the St. Louis school district had eliminated segregation.

-- The superintendent of schools in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County, North Carolina, says that the school system will not be affected by the ruling, as it has not used race as a factor in student assignment in recent years. In Durham, geographical location is the only factor used for school placement purposes.

-- In Nebraska, Omaha Public Schools uses a program based on socioeconomic status and location rather than race; a school attorney has said that the decision will have little impact on the district's existing voluntary student assignment plan.

-- The New Hampshire deputy commissioner of education says that the impact of the decision is minimal in New Hampshire due to the state’s low rate of diversity, with 98 percent of students being white.

-- Several New Jersey districts continue to review PICS to determine its effect on their desegregation policies. McNair Academic High School, a magnet school in Jersey City, currently does use race as an important factor in accepting students, as it aims for an even number of black, white, and Hispanic students. Dwight-Morrow High School in Englewood, NJ, uses a system of specialized academies designed to draw students of all races from across the county after a court-ordered desegregation. Teaneck Township, the first school district in the nation to voluntarily integrate without a court order, will probably be unaffected, as the district uses “boundaries” to achieve integration rather than students’ races. Montclair County officials are still unsure of the effect on their magnet school system; but since Montclair is court-ordered to maintain racial diversity in its schools, the effect should be minimal. The district is considering economic alternatives to replace the program if necessary. Also at issue is the predominantly white town of North Haledon and its effort to leave Manchester Regional High School, which the NJ Supreme Court denied in 2004, saying it would create an unacceptable racial imbalance at the high school. A lawyer for North Haledon said previously the U.S. Supreme Court's decision would not override the state court, but the ruling is now being reviewed by the district.

-- In New York, Rochester’s Urban-Suburban Interdistrict Transfer Program may be threatened, but some say the program is having only marginal success, leaving Rochester schools among the most racially segregated schools in America. Officials in White Plains School District have asserted that their school choice program was not invalidated by the PICS decision, as race is a factor but not the sole factor in determining school placement. Buffalo Public Schools, which do not assign students to schools based on race, will be unaffected.

-- Officials in Shaker Heights, Ohio, stated that the district no longer assigns students based on race and only on place of residence. A race-based placement program that had been “a national model for voluntary integration” is no longer in use. Columbus district officials state that the decision will not affect Columbus Public Schools, as they discontinued using race as a factor in school choice four years ago.

-- Officials in South Carolina stated that the decision likely will have no effect on the Beaufort County School District because the district doesn't use race as a qualifying factor when assigning students to schools.

-- The superintendent of Jackson-Madison County in Tennessee said that she is currently unsure of the effect of PICS on her district, which has been under a court desegregation order for 44 years.

-- In the Washington, D.C., area, some districts had already modified their plans before the decisions. Montgomery County has not considered race in assigning students to schools since 2000, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit declared that the school system's race-based student transfer policy was unconstitutional. Arlington County school officials no longer give extra credit to minorities when deciding admission to the popular Arlington Traditional Elementary School.

-- In Seattle, the possibility of replacing their current plan with one that considers income rather than race is being considered.

-- A spokesman for the Wisconsin Superintendent of Public Instruction stated that the department was awaiting a review of the PICS ruling before drawing conclusions about the effects. Superintendent of Madison Public Schools Art Rainwater said that “none of the district's school-assignment policies would be directly affected by Thursday's decision because the district relies upon criteria other than race” and especially socioeconomic status when making such decisions. Schools in La Crosse also use socioeconomic status, and will therefore be unaffected.

Guest Blogger: How 6 Year Olds Do (or Don't) See Color

2007-07-16T16:02:00.000-04:00

by H. Rebecca Eaton, New York City Elementary School Teacher

What’s worth saying about race in my first grade classroom is what it isn’t. Race is not an object of discussion or discord in the classroom. Who shares magic markers is; and what matters is who plays with whom on the playground.

I have 23 six and seven year olds in my public school classroom overlooking West 77th Street. About half our kids are of Latino, African-American, and Asian descent—and among these are countless permutations: two children have one white and one black parent, one has a Japanese mother and German father, one black child has parents from the Caribbean. Half the class is Caucasian, some first generation immigrants, and some with grandparents born and raised in New York. Perhaps such a mix of children is rare in New York City, or rare anywhere in the Unites States, for that matter. But what seems rare to me is the amount to which race doesn’t matter in my classroom.

The kids play together and help each other with spelling words or ideas for stories. My students get upset when one child refuses to share the only light blue marker at the table; they argue with each other about what to build in the blocks area, and when someone knocks it down against the others’ will. Hurtful words are “I don’t want to be your friend anymore,” and these occur between some children and not others, regardless of race.

When I went to Hammond Elementary School, a yellow bus picked me up and drove past cornfields, a dairy plant, and houses and townhouses surrounded by little yards. My classes were overwhelmingly white and Christian. I remember Sumitro, the only Indian child in my class, because he was the only child with parents from India, a very foreign seeming place at the time. My father came in and played dreidel with us before Hanukkah every year; that way kids would know what Judaism was.

In sixth grade I entered Hammond Middle School, where my elementary school joined with the kids from Laurel. The first apartment building I ever visited was in Laurel; the one friend I made from the other elementary school lived in one. Laurel was a lot more pavement and a lot less farmland. It was also a lot more black and brown and a lot less white. What I remember about those early middle school years is that the kids from Hammond stuck together and the kids from Laurel stuck together.

Was our self-segregation a result of our earlier, separate educations? I remember feeling a bit overwhelmed at the beginning of middle school. For one, there were just more kids and, maybe also, it was the fact that the kids from the other school looked different. No matter that my parents taught me to treat everyone the same, regardless of race or class: this didn’t change the fact that I had spent the formative years of my life playing, arguing, and learning with mostly white kids.

Children’s thoughts will always be shaped by and reflective of the greater society in which they live. And our society remains divided. But when my students play together, argue together, learn together, regardless of color, they are learning to function with people who look and come from very different places. To echo Langston Hughes’ words—For America to be America again, for it to be America to those for whom it never was, we need, desperately, to learn to live together in those early years, when we can learn to ignore the color codes that abound in society.

School Diversity Based on Income Segregates Some

2007-07-15T07:00:00.000-04:00

The New York Times analyzed integration plans in place in San Francisco, Raleigh, Wake County, and Cambridge, to determine whether such plans, which use socio-economic status as the primary measure of student integration, achieve racial diversity. The sad truth, according to Times reporters Jonathan Glater and Alan Finder, is that districts which implement income diversity plans instead of race based diversity plans often experience racial resegregation.

The article focuses on San Francisco, where "David Campos, the general counsel to the school district, said the resegregation was so disappointing that the school board might try to test whether Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s opinion in the recent Supreme Court case left open the possibility of using race if other methods of integration fail.

“We stopped using race at some point,” Mr. Campos said. “And then for a number of years we have tried to use a number of race-neutral factors to achieve racial diversity, which methods haven’t worked. Should the board decide to use race, and they may or may not, we are a very good test case."

Transferring Up

2007-07-11T14:04:00.000-04:00

In today's New York Times, bestselling education writer and fervent integration supporter Jonathan Kozol offers a suggestion for how to promote quality education for students in failing schools that has the added benefit of furthering integration. Encouraging Congress to beef up the transfer provisions for such students in the No Child Left Behind Act when NCLB is up for reauthorization later this year, Kozol writes of his proposed amendment:

"First, states should be required to ease transfers across district lines for children now in chronically low-performing schools.

Second, schools and districts must not be permitted to reject these students so long as they have space available in existing classrooms, which most suburban districts do.

Third, states must pay the added costs incurred by the receiving districts; they must not, however, compel hard-pressed urban schools to reimburse their wealthier suburban counterparts.

Fourth, states must pay for transportation.

Fifth, in order to ease the burden on states, Congress should create a federal fund to be used to underwrite some of the costs of complying with the law.

Sixth, Congress should enact specific fiscal penalties for states that drag their heels or defy the terms of this amendment altogether."

Schools and Integration: Picking Up the Pieces

2007-07-10T14:21:00.000-04:00

In the Seattle Times, Larry Gossett and john a. powell wrote about the positive side of the Supreme Court's decision in the Seattle and Louisville cases -- namely that "for the first time in history, the majority of the court recognizes a compelling government interest not only in ending state-sponsored (de jure) segregation, as in Brown, or in pursuing diversity in higher education, as in the University of Michigan affirmative action case Grutter v. Bollinger, but also in remedying racial isolation, regardless of its cause."

Gossett and powell go on to state, "The majority of the court has now explicitly recognized the serious harms of racial isolation in our communities and classrooms. The court also recognizes the impact of these arrangements on the promise of liberty and equality on which the nation was founded.

It is imperative that policymakers and the public not misread this case and overlook the opportunities this unprecedented acknowledgement opens up to achieve integration in our schools and neighborhoods."

What Will We Tell Our Children?

2007-07-06T13:42:00.000-04:00

By: Amy Stuart Wells

Amid the lawyers, policymakers and pundits debating the implications of Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down the Louisville and Seattle voluntary school integration plans, came the soulful plea of an African-American mother. Interviewed on National Public Radio, Mary Myers of Louisville explained how the ruling against her local officials’ efforts to racially balance their schools may well jeopardize her two children’s school assignments and educational opportunities.

Ms. Myer’s children, ages 13 and 16, had benefited from the defeated desegregation plan because it had allowed them to attend racially diverse public schools outside of their community. Had they and their peers attended neighborhood schools, Ms. Myers noted, they would not have been exposed to people of different racial and cultural backgrounds and they would not be prepared for the incredibly diverse and global society they will soon inherit. When asked about her response to the decision, this 49-year-old mother sounded fed up: “Leave these children alone. Let them go to school together…. They have to go into the workforce and work together.”

What made the plea of this one mother so poignant in the midst of many legal arguments about what school districts can and cannot do in light of this complicated decision is that it came from her heart, it echoed the sentiments of millions of Americans, and it put the children and their experiences at the center of this controversy. Ms. Myers, who attended mostly segregated schools, could see the benefits of school desegregation first hand, and she knew the potential costs of such a ruling. “This country is on a bad road with this; This is a bad decision,” she said.

The decision clearly states that school districts cannot take individual students’ racial classifications into account when assigning them to schools. School officials can use other, generally less effective, measures to integrate their schools, however, including locating new school sites between racially distinct neighborhoods, redrawing school attendance zones (not an easy thing to do politically), or racially targeting recruitment of students or faculty to schools of choice. What the ruling means for Ms. Myers children or any of the other students in the estimated 1,000 school districts that use race-conscious policies to integrate their schools will be decided in the coming months. Some of them will be grandfathered and allowed to remain in their racially diverse schools until they graduate, but it seems likely that our schools will become more racially segregated, which goes against what millions of parents like Ms. Myers want.

In fact, Ms. Myer’s sentiment echoes that of the vast majority of parents in this country; 66% of whites and 80% of black parents say that educating their children in a racially diverse setting is either somewhat or very important. Their sentiments are backed by reams of social science research -- documented in more than 50 amicus briefs filed in these cases -- demonstrating the innumerable benefits of racial integration in public schools for students of all races.

In particular, research my colleagues and I have conducted on the long-term effects of school desegregation on the adults speaks to Ms. Myer’s central point. Since 2000, we have studied more than 300 graduates of 12 racially diverse public high schools across the country, including six schools in Louisville and Seattle. We interviewed black, white, Latino and Asian adults who graduated from these schools in the early to mid-1980s.

Now middle aged with work experience and children of their own, these graduates were not shy about sharing their stories with us. There were hardships – some long bus rides, some racial tension, some re-segregation within diverse schools in both the classrooms and lunchrooms, and some misunderstandings that were not resolved by educators who were often trying to be “colorblind” while teaching students for whom race and inequality were very salient. But despite these hardships, all but two of the graduates we interviewed said that attending a racially diverse school was worth any headaches or inconveniences and that if they could do it over again, they definitely would. In fact, the majority of these graduates said that attending these diverse public schools was one of the most valuable experiences of their lives.

When asked why their school integration experiences were so valuable, these graduates said first and foremost that it made them far more comfortable around people who are different in terms of race or ethnicity – a skill they find infinitely helpful as adults. As a white woman who graduated from Garfield High School in Seattle and now works as a social worker explained, “I definitely think that being at Garfield, in a very racially diverse school, impacted my whole sort of worldview, and it’s something I look back at all the time, and I feel like it gave me lots of benefits that people I know who were in… racially less diverse schools don’t have.”

A white male graduate of Franklin High School in Seattle explained that in his job with a global corporation he manages workers in 60 different countries. He travels to these different countries and supervises and trains this workforce. Even though his high school, with its mix of Asians, blacks and whites, was not as diverse as the mix of people now works with, he said his schooling experience provided a “step down that path of being comfortable with people of a variety of races.”

Unfortunately, fewer children will have the opportunities that these graduates had. We know from our history and from research on white flight and resegregation that the more limited measures that districts can now use to diversify their schools will likely accomplish less than Louisville and Seattle’s more pro-active choice-based assignment plans, which assured all students had choice and no school was too distinct from the demographics of the districts as a whole. Such plans help to integrate all schools across a district and thus create greater equality and stability. But they are now outlawed, and we need to think of what we will tell our children – Ms. Myer’s, mine, yours – when they ask, as my 8-year-old did on June 28th, what this decision means for them and their diverse public schools. Perhaps Justice Roberts has an answer for them. I am speechless.

Voluntary Desegregation Plan Challenged in Lynn

2007-07-06T09:29:00.001-04:00

On Tuesday, lawyers challenging the voluntary desegregation plan in Lynn, Massachusetts filed papers asking the U.S. District Court to issue a new decision in light of the Supreme Court's ruling in Parents Involved in Community Schools. The First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Lynn plan two years ago, and the Supreme Court denied the plaintiff's petition for review, even after it had accepted the Seattle and Louisville cases. Both SCOTUSblog and the Boston Globe have detailed stories on the new challenge.

The Lawyers who Represented Black Schoolchildren in Brown React to the Chief' Justice's Interpretation of their Words

2007-07-02T17:27:00.000-04:00

On page 40 of his opinion in the Seattle and Louisville school cases, Chief Justice Roberts quotes directly from the 1952 oral argument transcript in Brown v. Board of Education to support his notion that the Constitution is colorblind:

"As counsel who appeared before this Court for the plaintiffs in Brown put it: ‘We have one fundamental contention which we will seek to develop in the course of this argument, and that contention is that no State has any authority under the equal protection clause. . .to use race as a factor in affording educational opportunities among its citizens.’ There is no ambiguity in that statement."

Don’t tell that to the actual lawyers who represented the black schoolchildren in Brown. In response to the ruling, these lawyers have stated that the Chief Justice has, “misinterpreted the positions they had taken in the litigation [and] misunderstood the true meaning of Brown." The New York Times, in a June 29 article entitled, “The Same Worlds, but Differing Views,” gathered these responses from the Brown lawyers themselves:

-Robert L. Carter, the lawyer who Roberts quotes directly (and now a 90-year-old senior federal judge in Manhattan) explains how the Chief Justice distorted the purpose of and historical context behind his words:

"All that race was used for at that point in time [the 1950s] was to deny equal opportunity to black people. It’s to stand that argument on its head to use race the way they use is now."

-Columbia Professor Jack Greenberg, who worked on the Brown case for the plaintiffs, called Roberts’ interpretation “preposterous.” He explained that,

“The plaintiffs in Brown were concerned with the marginalization and subjugation of black people. They said you can’t consider race, but that’s how race was being used. . . Following Brown, there was massive resistance. This is essentially the rebirth of massive resistance in more acceptable form.”

-William T. Coleman Jr., a lawyer in Brown who now works as a lawyer in Washington, explained that,

“The majority opinion is 100 percent wrong. It’s dirty pool to say that the people Brown was supposed to protect are the people it’s now not going to protect.”

Two Approaches to Equal Educational Opportunity: Integration and School Funding

2007-07-02T13:40:00.000-04:00

In a June 30 New York Times article, entitled, "Money, Not Race, Fuels New Push to Buoy Schools" the longstanding conversation about racial integration and school finance litigation as dual approaches to increasing educational equity continues.

Because "fiscal-equity litigation and integration need not be either-or propositions," the real question is why this 'debate' exists in the first place. Advocates of both integration and school finance are working to increase educational equity and, as the Supreme Court opinion highlights, there are powerful forces working to undermine this goal. While it is true that the legal "tools to address racial inequities" are dwindling, education lawyers from both camps must nevertheless work in tandem towards their shared goal. American schools are segregated and American schools are underfunded. They need all the help they can get.

Op-Ed Roundup

2007-07-02T12:43:00.000-04:00

The op-ed pieces in this weekend's newspapers reveal the national debate surrounding the Supreme Court's decision.

Bruce Shapiro in The Nation: Supremely Bad Decisions
Senator Ted Kennedy in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
Still Seeking Equality
Kansas City Star: Supreme Court Turns Its Back on the promise of Brown
Wall Street Journal: Race and the Roberts Court
New York Post: Beyond Brown -- Race Blind Roads to Diversity
Boston Globe: Still Unequal
Benjamin Wittes in The New Republic: Multiple Choice--Anthony Kennedy Punts on the Question of School Diversity
Newsday: Regrettable Decision
Ellis Cose in Newsweek: A Sliver of Hope

News Roundup: School Reactions

2007-07-02T12:15:00.000-04:00

School districts around the country are appropriately weighing the legal implications of the Supreme Court's ruling in the Seattle and Louisville cases on Thursday. While many districts appear confident that the rulings will have little effect, as the superintendant of Norwalk, Conneticut, stated, "The only thing I can say for sure is that I can't say anything for sure."

See more school district reactions after the jump.

Madison, WI
Columbus, GA
Little Rock, AK
Chicago, IL
Mobile, AL
Los Angeles, CA
New York, NY
Philadelphia, PA
Newport News, VA
Wichita, KS
Berkley, CA
Stamford, CT
Seattle, WA
Worcester, MA
San Francisco, CA
Knoxville, TN

Guest Blogger: The New Four Horsemen, Circumruling Precedent

2007-07-02T12:00:00.000-04:00

by Pamela S. Karlan, Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law, Stanford University

The two big social issues that the Supreme Court confronted this Term were abortion, in Carhart v. Gonzales (Carhart II) and school integration in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1 (which decided cases from both Seattle and Louisville). In both cases, it seems clear that the replacement of Justice O’Connor by Justice Alito made a decisive difference: Carhart II “circumruled” (the Court didn’t outright overrule) Stenberg v. Carhart, in which Justice O’Connor was the decisive fifth vote, on the question whether the government can ban a particular abortion procedure without providing an exception for cases where the pregnant woman? health is at stake, and to some extent Planned Parenthood v. Casey (in which Justice O’Connor was in the three-Justice bloc that determined the outcome), on the way in which the undue burden standard is to be used.

Parents Involved circumruled School Committee of Boston v. Board of Education and Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg -- two venerable school desegregation precedents -- as well as Grutter v. Bollinger, the Michigan race-conscious admissions case, in which Justice O'Connor was again the crucial fifth vote. (One snarky aside: Parents Involved reads Grutter extremely narrowly, as a case about "diversity in higher education" -- one wonders, after the Chief Justice is done explaining an opinion he almost certainly would not have joined, and which the four remaining Justices who did join read in an entirely different way, why he didn't confine it further to "diversity at the University of Michigan Law School." According to the Chief Justice, "universities occupy a special niche in our constitutional tradition" due to the "expansive freedoms of speech and thought associated with the university environment." By contrast, in Morse v. Frederick, decided earlier this Term, the Court circumruled a series of cases recognizing that public school students also enjoy freedom of speech.)

Rather than rehash points that I imagine scores of other folks will be making, I want to focus on an additional similarity between Carhart II and Parents Involved before turning to a more specific doctrinal point: the utter gulf in language between the two sets of Justices. In Carhart II, the majority repeatedly refers to the women involved as "mothers," the fetus as the "unborn child," and the doctors as "abortionists." By contrast, the dissenters use quite different language. Similarly, in Parents Involved, the plurality repeatedly refers to the school boards' goal as "racial balancing" -- with Justice Thomas going so far at one point as calling it "forced racial mixing" (which sounds far more like the Jim Crow era segregationists than anything modern -- as if any student had a legally cognizable interest in attending a monoracial school). By contrast, Justice Kennedy and the dissenters use phrases like "working together," "integration," and "desegregation." As for differences between the two cases, why were the New Four Horsemen content in Carhart II to resolve ostensible uncertainty in the medical community over the health imperatives in favor of the government (in fact, the consensus cut entirely against the purported congressional ? findings?) and against the substantive due process rights of the women involved while in Parents Involved Justice Thomas goes precisely the opposite way, claiming that because social scientists ostensibly disagree on the educational benefits of integrated educations, the government has no compelling interest that can override a student's interest in race-blind school assignments? Could it have more to do with values that with doctrinal frameworks?

The pivotal vote in Parents Involved is, of course, Justice Kennedy's. And here, too, there's a similarity to Carhart II. In both cases, Justice Kennedy objects not so much to ends, but to means. His opinion for the Court in Carhart II does not challenge a woman's right to decide for herself whether to terminate a pregnancy, but he objects to her undergoing a procedure that disgusts him. He is confident -- without much empirical support -- that there are alternative procedures that would protect both the woman?s right to choose and the government's interest in preserving a particular moral tone. Similarly, in Parents Involved, Justice Kennedy's concurrence and concurrence in the judgment accepts -- indeed, celebrates and commits him to respecting -- the communities' desire to achieve racially integrated schools. He objects instead to the means they have chosen: race-conscious assignment of a relatively few students to attain, or maintain, integrated schools. Again he is confident -- without much empirical support -- that equally race-conscious, but less explicit, action could produce the same result.

This leads to my doctrinal point. The core of Justice Kennedy's opinion is his distinction between school board actions that look at individual students and equally race-conscious, integration-pursuing actions that operate on a more wholesale level. The critical passage appears on pages 8-9 of the slip opinion:

"School boards may pursue the goal of bringing together students of diverse backgrounds and races through other means, including strategic site selection of new schools; 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. These mechanisms are race conscious but do not lead to different treatment based on a classification that tells each student he or she is to be defined by race, so it is unlikely any of them would demand strict scrutiny to be found permissible."

Many folks, I imagine, will fasten on this passage as a roadmap for continued efforts to dismantle segregated schools and produce what Green so aptly called "just schools." Of course, we should do that. Justice Kennedy has rejected the enterprise of dismantling the ideal of integration or barring the government from pursuing equality through inclusion. Here, as with Justice Powell and Justice O'Connor before him, Justice Kennedy leaves open a variety of mechanisms for pursuing desegregation, and we need to assist the public, school boards, and lower courts to develop and reinforce these strategies.

I want to focus on something else: this passage illustrates why the entire enterprise of strict judicial scrutiny for racial classifications has turned out badly. As I've pointed out in earlier work, strict scrutiny was the consequence, not the cause, of the Warren Court's great antidiscrimination decisions. It wasn't until 1964, in McLaughlin v. Florida, that the Court applied what's come to be known as strict scrutiny and by then, the Court had essentially finished the job of eradicating explicit racial classifications. The reason for this is that the Court rejected the clearly discriminatory purposes behind the explicit racial classifications it confronted in the 1960's. Does anyone seriously think that Virginia's criminalization of interracial marriage would have survived rationality review had that been used in Loving? Indeed, the only case I can think of where strict scrutiny has made a difference in protecting the rights of African Americans is the recent prison segregation case, Johnson v. California, and there Justices Scalia and Thomas would not have applied strict scrutiny because their commitment to deference to prison officials (who somehow seem more worthy of such respect than democratically elected school boards) outweighed their commitment to a color-blind Constitution.

Strict scrutiny has been essentially beside the point for the kind of equal protection cases African Americans and other persons of color have brought since its adoption. These cases usually involve challenges to facially neutral laws -- for example, the use of admissions tests that screen out minority applicants or the staggering disparities in criminal sentencing. In such cases, to trigger strict scrutiny, under Feeney v. Personnel Administrator of Massachusetts, plaintiffs must first prove that the government "selected or reaffirmed a particular course of action at least in part 'because of,' not merely 'in spite of,' its adverse effects upon an identifiable group." But the Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that "if the constitutional conception of 'equal protection of the laws' means anything, it must at the very least mean that a bare ... desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot constitute a legitimate, -- let alone a compelling, 'governmental interest.' " Thus, proof of an invidious motive by itself strips a law of its presumptive legitimacy. Once the plaintiff has shown a discriminatory purpose, the burden shifts to the defendants to prove that the law would have been enacted even without that purpose. As a practical matter, though, proof of an invidious intent to injure blacks or Hispanics is the ballgame. Few courts, having found that sort of malevolence, are likely to uphold a law anyway.

On the other hand, strict scrutiny has proved invaluable in the assault on race-conscious affirmative action. That is perhaps what drives Justice Stevens in his dissent to reiterate his 'one equal protection clause' theory -- a theory that Justice Marshall, who must be spinning in his grave at the misappropriation and willful misreading of his arguments in Brown, also adopted. And it may also explain Justice Breyer's reshaping, in the principal dissent, of what strict scrutiny ought to mean in context.

Oh, everything has been turned upside down, when Justice Thomas can write that "if our history has taught us anything, it has taught us to beware of elites bearing racial theories," seeing popularly elected, community based schools boards as the 'elite' and casting himself and the other New Four Horseman as the true representatives of the people. But as the Chief Justice says "history will be heard." And it will not be kind to Parents Involved.

Presidential Candidates Release Statements in Response to Court's Decision

2007-07-02T11:35:00.000-04:00

The following Presidential Candidates (Democrat and Republican) have released statements on last week's ruling:

Hillary Clinton
Chris Dodd
John Edwards
Barack Obama

Click here for a link to Tavis Smiley's audio from the Democratic presidential debate last Thursday. The debate opened with a question on race and the school cases.

The Congressional Black Caucus Denounces Supreme Court Opinion in School Race Cases

2007-07-02T10:31:00.000-04:00

On June 28, 2007, Congresswoman Carolyn C. Kilpatrick (D-MI), Chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), released the following statement on the Supreme Court ruling:

"Today, the Supreme Court rejected reason, rationality and respect for all Americans in its decision limiting access to education for all Americans. In rejecting school diversity plans that made race a factor - but not the sole or most important factor - in Louisville and Seattle, the Court tears at the very fabric of unity in our nation. We can, and we must, do better for our children and grandchildren.

As a former teacher, a mother, and a grandmother, I understand the value of education. Access to education is one of our most sacred privileges. Education is the linchpin of achievement, success and stability in our country. If you were not born of privilege, education and hard work can earn you privilege. This heinous ruling not only topples more than half a century of progress achieved under the Brown v. the Topeka, Kansas Board of Education decision, it encourages separation and segregation in private industry and government as well as in education.

We applaud the remarks of Supreme Court Justice Breyer. Justice Breyer, in his dissenting opinion, said that "this is a decision that the Court and the Nation will come to regret." The Congressional Black Caucus will continue to fight for quality education for all children; will confront the crises posed to us by the Supreme Court ruling, and will continue the legacy established by NAACP attorney and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall to ensure that all American children attend and receive a quality education.

The Congressional Black Caucus, made up of 42 Members, representing more than 40 million Americans from 26 states, will continue the legacy and ensure fairness, justice and equality for all."

National Academy of Education Issues Report on Race-Conscious Policies for Assigning Students to Schools

2007-07-02T00:32:00.000-04:00

The National Academy of Education issued a new report following the Supreme Court's decision. The report, entitled "Race-Conscious Policies for Assigning Students to Schools: Social Science Research and the Supreme Court Cases" summarizes and analyzes the existing body of research related to race-conscious student assignment policies, building upon the amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs filed with the Supreme Court in support of both petitioners and respondents. The Academy found that 27 of the 64 amicus briefs filed in the two cases contained substantial discussions of social science research.

The National Academy of Education "advances the highest quality education research and its use in policy formulation and practice. Founded in 1965, the Academy consists of up to two hundred U.S. members and up to twenty-five foreign associates who are elected on the basis of outstanding scholarship or contributions to education. Since its establishment, the Academy has sponsored a variety of commissions and study panels that have published influential proceedings and reports." More information on the Academy can be found on its website at www.naeducation.org.

Getting to Work to Achieve Equal Educational Opportunity

2007-07-02T00:20:00.000-04:00

Lia Epperson, Assistant Professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, urges "schools, parents, community leaders and policy-makers" to "take your marching orders and get to work. Start by using the tools outlined by Justice Kennedy and make real the promise of Brown to achieve true equal educational opportunity." Her op-ed, entitled Equal Educational Opportunity - We're Not There Yet, was published today in the San Jose Mercury News.

Forgetting the Segregated South

2007-07-01T23:28:00.000-04:00

In this piece entitled "The High Court in Race Case Forgets History," Ann Woolner reflects on her own education as a white 1968 high school graduate in the segregated South, and suggests that Chief Justice Robert's invocation of Brown v. Board of Education to strike down efforts to integrate schools misses "the reality of what race meant and still means in this country." Indeed, Woolner concludes that "53 years after Brown, if any are still breathing, [the Southern segregationists] are getting a hearty last laugh at the new interpretation of that old decision they so hated."

Brown's Legacy Lives, But Barely

2007-07-01T22:46:00.000-04:00

Charles Ogletree, professor at Harvard Law School and executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, published this op-ed in the Boston Globe on June 29, 2007. Professor Ogletree somberly remarks:

While this decision is neither as damaging nor as far-reaching as many feared it might be, there is no cause for celebration. This ruling removed a successful tool for combating the racial segregation that is a ubiquitous feature of the nation's public schools.

He ends with the following observation:

The unfortunate, but perhaps empowering, lesson of these rulings is that it will be up to the people, collectively, to determine what sort of schools we maintain and what moral lessons to teach there. Only time will tell whether the principles embraced in Brown continue to guide us in achieving racial integration, diversity, and equal opportunity in quality education.

For more information on the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute and its efforts to ensure equal opportunity in quality education, please visit the Institute's website at: http://www.charleshamiltonhouston.org/.

A Call To Vote

2007-07-01T20:54:00.000-04:00

Bob Herbert, in his June 30 column entitled "When is Enough Enough," (click here), reflects briefly on the Supreme Court's decision, and the importance of voting to ensure that the Justices appointed to the Supreme Court do not continue to be "relentlessly hostile to the interests of black people":

For black people, especially, the current composition of the Supreme Court should be the ultimate lesson in the importance of voting in a presidential election. No branch of the government has been more crucial than the judiciary in securing the rights and improving the lives of blacks over the past five or six decades.

Equal Opportunity and Diversity: A Teacher's Perspective

2007-06-29T14:11:00.000-04:00

In response to yesterday’s Supreme Court rulings on school integration, Michael Petrilli of the National Review published a 10 item “to do list”, directed towards educators and activists who “really care about the future of black and brown students.” Petrilli argued that surest way to achieve an integrated society is to improve the quality of education in urban school districts by hiring better teachers, giving principals control of budgets and hiring, implementing strict discipline programs, and holding both teachers and schools accountable for their academic results. Such an approach, he argues, will “make more difference to [minority] kids than the skin color of those in the adjoining desks.” As a former teacher, I agree with many of Petrilli’s recommendations for improving the quality of urban school districts,but I disagree with his proposition that the goals of integration and educational excellence are mutually exclusive.

I spent the entirety of my teaching career in segregated schools, many of which produced outstanding students. I taught for three years in a public school in a large city that was 100% African American and Hispanic, but my students scored higher on the state achievement tests than any urban students in the state, and as high as students in the wealthy suburbs nearby. The school I taught in had a small student body, complete control over hiring and finances, a strict discipline policy, and teachers from Ivy League universities. I cannot say that my students’ ability to learn reading or math was compromised by the fact that there were no white students in the school. However, I am certain that their cultural understanding was limited as a result.

I taught world geography and culture, and was constantly amazed by how isolated my students were from other cultural groups. Many of them had never eaten Chinese food and had no idea that Judaism even existed, despite the fact that there were large Chinese and Jewish neighborhoods less than 1 mile away. Though my African American and Hispanic students were curious and eager to learn about the world around them, I always felt that their understanding of other cultures and experiences was purely academic. With no personal connections to what we were learning, other cultures remained profoundly foreign.

I had similar experiences when I taught for a year at a private school in Seattle with no African American or Hispanic students. One day, my students were studying imperialism and reading Rudyard Kipling’s poem The White Man’s Burden. We talked about Kipling’s use of the n-word in the poem, a conversation which I concluded by saying, “But, of course, we don’t use that word today.” One of my students, a bright, kind, and funny kid, raised his hand, and said, in all earnestness, “Why not? There aren’t any black people here.” Though I expected that my students would want to discuss the statement, they were completely disinterested in the impact of racial slurs on society as a whole. Without any contact with people of other ethnic or racial groups, my students had no clear sense of empathy for them, and no desire to delve deeply into the experiences of other people.

What scares me most about the rollback on Brown’s promise of school integration is not the impact it may have on academic achievement (although I do think that school districts, spooked by this ruling, will be reluctant to even talk about race in schools, thus making it extremely difficult to provide at risk students with the additional resources they need). Rather, I’m troubled by the possibility that more children in this country will be educated in a segregated environment, lacking the understanding, empathy, and personal connection to people of other backgrounds which is necessary to participate in both American democracy and a global society.

In light of yesterday’s ruling, those of us who truly care about the education of students of color must continue to advocate for BOTH educational excellence in our schools AND for diverse and integrated learning environments. To reach one goal and not the other would be a specious victory.

Press Releases--School Segregation Cases

2007-06-29T13:40:00.000-04:00

-The Civil Rights Project, UCLA
-NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
-United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries
-National Organization of Women (NOW)
-Minority Corporate Counsel Association
-Ms. Magazine
-National School Boards Association
-Equal Justice Society
-Legal Momentum
-Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
-Magnet Schools of America
-Public Education Network (PEN)

Joint Statement of Nine University-Based Civil Rights Centers on Today’s Supreme Court Rulings on Voluntary School Desegregation

2007-06-28T22:14:00.000-04:00

June 28, 2007--This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged the well-documented benefits of racially and ethnically diverse schools, but severely limited the very tools school districts need to achieve integration and avoid segregation.

Ironically, today’s decision comes at a time when, more than ever, social science research offers powerful evidence of the strong benefits of diversity for students, communities, and a democratic society. Similarly, research has also long demonstrated the detrimental effects of segregation and its ever-present attendant, concentrated poverty, in our public schools on educational opportunity, race relations and the psychological development of young people.

Public policy, thus, should encourage rather than hamstring local educators who have come to recognize both the benefits of desegregation and racial/economic diversity and the harmful effects of segregation. Like educators in Louisville and Seattle, so many local educators across the country had voluntarily taken action to foster diverse learning experiences in public schools, usually through choice-based programs that allow parents greater opportunities to choose their children’s schools. Educators took such actions voluntarily and not because any court had ordered “busing” or “mandatory” desegregation.

Today’s decision striking down the student assignment plans in these two districts is inconsistent with the ever-growing body of research accumulated during a half century in studies of both segregated and desegregated schools. The ruling comes at a time when school segregation rates for racial minority students are rising in every region of the nation following earlier Supreme Court decisions leading to the termination of desegregation court orders. It is a trend lamented by experienced educators who have not merely studied the research, but who have decades of on-the-ground experience with the harm of racial and economic segregation.

Although today’s ruling is a disappointment, the majority of the Court recognized that integration is a compelling interest and that there are some legally acceptable techniques including zoning and site selection and that choice plans that consider multiple factors could be upheld with appropriate educational justification. In reviewing today’s decision, it appears that several avenues for maintaining diversity are still open and legally permissible. Also, courts generally grant communities time to come into compliance with rulings such as this.

Each one of our centers, located across the nation, pledges to work in the coming months and years with educators and advocates in local communities who wish to foster integration, avoid segregation and keep the uniquely American aspiration of Brown alive. Permissible options may include race-conscious efforts that do not single out any one student on the basis of his or her race such as siting schools in areas that would naturally draw students from a mixture of racial/ethnic backgrounds or magnet schools that have special programs that draw students from different backgrounds. Some communities have crafted assignment plans that bring together students from various geographic areas of cities (or metropolitan areas) into individual schools. Similarly, under the No Child Left Behind Act, children in schools in need of improvement are permitted transfer to other schools within their district. If interdistrict transfers were permitted, this too, might be lead to greater racial and economic diversity.

School districts under existing court orders to remedy racial discrimination are not affected by this ruling. Districts should continue to thoughtfully consider the consequences of ending their desegregation plans given today’s decision. School districts should also investigate the experience of other districts, the consequences of abandoning integration policies, and carefully consider all their options before deciding how to change their existing policies. We will make every effort to put districts in touch with legal and educational experts from their region to think about ways to comply with the Court decision with the least adverse consequences.

Similarly, we will collaboratively document the effects of the Court ruling on rates of segregation, student achievement, graduation rates and the nature of educational opportunity in what we expect will be an increasing number of racially segregated schools. Just as important, our centers will continue to study and report on what is known about how to construct successful multiracial schools. In our increasingly multiracial, multiethnic and multi-linguistic nation, it is more crucial than ever that we continue to develop and promote working models of educational institutions that approximate the larger society students will someday join. Although the Court has spoken, the American people and their elected representatives have not yet responded. When they do, it is our hope and firm belief that today’s decision will be regarded as ill-reasoned, ill-advised, but not insurmountable obstacle to realizing our cherished ideal of a vibrant integrated society.

A variety of academic institutions and research organizations, including the American Educational Research Association and the American Psychological Association, had submitted briefs to the Court in these cases about the benefits of diversity and harms of segregation. The general findings bear repeating.

Generally, students in segregated, high-poverty schools -- disproportionate numbers of whom are African-American, Latino and economically disadvantaged -- are taught by less qualified, less experienced teachers. The course offerings in such schools are generally severely limited, including a lack of college preparatory instruction often required for college entry and the levels of academic competition are usually not nearly as rigorous as a student would experience in predominantly middle-class more diverse schools. Further, these schools have far lower relative graduation rates (research strongly suggests that concentrated poverty and segregation itself – as independent variables – contribute to low relative graduation rates). Such schools are often overwhelmed with myriad social problems that are symptoms of poverty. In addition, both white and nonwhite students lose increasingly critical opportunities to deepen understanding of complex social and political issues and to prepare for successful life, work and citizenship in our profoundly changing society. Research demonstrates that racially and ethnically mixed schools promote cross-racial understanding in ways not possible in segregated school environments, making integrated student bodies essential ingredients in preparing children for citizenship and work in a society where whites are projected to be a minority group by 2050.

In the 2004-05 school year, more than 42 percent of students in our public schools are nonwhite. Our two largest regions – the South and West – have a markedly multiracial enrollment with white students in the minority. Experience has long shown that increased racial segregation brings with it increased economic segregation. In many cases, it also brings linguistic segregation.

Cutting off remedies to segregation, in the manner that the Court has done today, will not make these inequalities disappear. There exists no evidence that current educational policies will significantly reduce the large racial and economic gaps in achievement and graduation rates. The concomitant rise of segregation and educational inequality has long been evident in districts that had been forced by lower federal courts to drop desegregation policies. Civil rights groups and local communities will, and should, aggressively pursue every permissible route to provide more equitable opportunities for students in resegregated schools.

The nation's highest court upheld the sham of Plessy v. Ferguson’s "separate but equal" doctrine for 58 years until it held in Brown v. Board of Education that it was unworkable where schools were concerned. As a result of today’s decision, and in light of the Supreme Court’s devastating 1973 holding in Rodriguez, that there is no Constitutional right to equal funding of public education, the Court more deeply institutionalizes “separate and unequal” for minority children.

As Justice Douglas observed in 1974, dissenting in Milliken v. Bradley, limiting the scope of permissible desegregation “puts the problem of [minorities] and our society back to the period that antedated the ‘separate but equal’ regime of Plessy v. Ferguson.” The legal standard now, it seems, is “separate but nothing.” This policy accepts racial and ethnic inequality and leaves minorities at the mercy of state and local politics, in much the same way we did before Brown. As segregation deepens, communities and citizens should closely monitor what happens to achievement, graduation levels, college access and persistence, and success in adult life.

Brown v. Board of Education has long been widely celebrated as the greatest Supreme Court decision of the last century. It recognized that "separate but equal" was a legal fiction and it was the trigger for the dismantling of hundreds of apartheid laws of the Southern and Border states. After Congress enacted the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Supreme Court in Green v. New Kent County supported mandatory and comprehensive desegregation, the schools in the South became the most integrated in the nation for the next third of a century. The legacy of the widely celebrated Brown decision, though, has been undermined in a series of Supreme Court decisions over the past three decades which includes today’s ruling. We have already lost much of the progress in desegregation achieved in the last 40 years for black students. Latino students, now our largest minority group face even more extreme isolation and educational inequality, often facing triple segregation by ethnicity, poverty, and language.

When the Court handed down Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, there were no civil rights research centers in the nation's great universities documenting the negative results. A small cadre of dedicated lawyers and scholars at the preeminent historically black Howard University Law School, aided by a few researchers led to the legal theories and cases that culminated with the triumph of Brown.

The national debate on this issue is far from over. Today, ever more researchers and advocates are watching. As civil-rights research centers, we consider it our duty to carefully document the consequences of today’s ruling and to assist school districts struggling with decisions about what direction to take now. We stand even more strongly committed to making the aspiration of equal life chances, most clearly manifest in the Brown decision, alive in our time.

-Campaign for Educational Equity, Teachers College, Columbia University
-Center for Civil Rights Center, University of North Carolina School of Law
-Center for Multicultural Education, University of Washington
-Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
-Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, Harvard University
-The Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity, University of California at Berkeley
-The Civil Rights Project, Harvard University and University of California at Los Angeles
-Institute for Race and Poverty, University of Minnesota
-Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, Ohio State University

Louisville: The Response

2007-06-28T20:29:00.000-04:00

For school districts around the country worried about the future of diversity in their own schools, take heart: Louisville, whose integration plan was invalidated by the Court's decision today, has declared their intention to remain a committed role model in finding a way to give all of their children the inclusive, integrated education they deserve.

Among the voices speaking out about this commitment:

Incoming JCPS Superintendent Sheldon Berman states here that the district will not allow its schools to lapse back into segregation.

Raoul Cunningham, president of the Louisville branch of the NAACP promised his organization's support here.

Pat Todd, the district’s director of student assignment, emphasizes that Louisville will take its time determining how to make their plan in line with the decision here.

The Louisville Courier-Journal provides a question and answer sheet based on a Louisville School District press conference here.

JCPS school officials issue a post-decision press release here.

New York Times Editorial ("Resegregation Now") Blasts Roberts and Majority

2007-06-28T19:14:00.000-04:00

"The Supreme Court ruled 53 years ago in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated education is inherently unequal, and it ordered the nation’s schools to integrate. Today, the court switched sides and told two cities that they cannot take modest steps to bring public school students of different races together. It was a sad day for the court and for the ideal of racial equality."

"Since 1954, the Supreme Court has been the nation’s driving force for integration. Its orders required segregated buses and public buildings, parks and playgrounds to open up to all Americans. It wasn’t always easy: governors, senators and angry mobs talked of massive resistance. But the court never wavered, and in many of the most important cases it spoke unanimously."

'Today, the court’s radical new majority turned its back on that proud tradition in a 5-4 ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts. It has been some time since the court, which has grown more conservative by the year, did much to compel local governments to promote racial integration. But now it is moving in reverse, broadly ordering the public schools to become more segregated."

Click here for the full editorial.

Also, click here for an informative Linda Greenhouse analysis in the NYT.

MALDEF Condemns Narrow Supreme Court Ruling

2007-06-28T18:45:00.000-04:00

Today, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) condemned the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling overturning circuit court decisions that allowed the limited use of race in voluntary school integration plans. Ruling against plans by the Seattle, Washington and Jefferson County, Kentucky public schools, " a fractured majority of the U.S. Supreme Court deprived Latino children - and all American children - the hope of quality education in a diverse environment to prepare them for the 21st century," stated John Trasviña, MALDEF President and General Counsel. "Four Justices, led by Chief Justice Roberts, have turned their backs on the promise of Brown v. Board of Education and held that achieving racial diversity in public schools is not a compelling government interest and is never constitutionally sound.

MALDEF submitted a brief to the Court in support of the limited use of race in voluntary local school integration plans. MALDEF's brief was joined by 16 Latino organizations urging the Court to take into account the cases' effect upon Latino students, who are more likely than other students to be enrolled in segregated public schools.

"At the same time, Justice Kennedy, the key swing vote on the current Court, held that such plans may be constitutionally sound as long as race is only one limited factor among other considerations used in making school assignments. Justice Kennedy's opinion leaves the door open for schools to consider race in a limited way to foster diversity," stated MALDEF Litigation Director Cynthia Valenzuela. "Schools should take that opportunity and design integration plans that use race as one of several factors in making school assignments."

"Our nation's public schools are more segregated than they were before the Court\'s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education," added Peter Zamora, Washington, D.C. Regional Counsel and Co-Chair of the Hispanic Education Coalition. "MALDEF will work with local school districts to reverse this disturbing trend and ensure that schools create school integration plans that reflect our national commitment to desegregation while complying with the strict constitutional limits set forth in these cases."

Louisville Courier Journal: "Thwarting Equity"

2007-06-28T18:27:00.000-04:00

The Louisville Courier Journal's editorial eloquently expresses that community's disappointment in today's decision and its determination to continue the struggle for integration. The passages below are stirring:

"Faced with a choice between continuing or ending Jefferson County’s opportunity-enhancing, popularly supported and nationally acclaimed plan for keeping its once-segregated schools racially integrated and equitable, the Court chose, 5-to-4, to end it.

In doing so, the majority declared unconstitutional the very same race-conscious assignment practices that its civil-rights minded predecessors had deemed constitutionally necessary.

It declared impermissible the very same achievement of integration that those earlier jurists had so wisely required, with such profoundly gratifying results for our society.

As a result, the near total racial isolation and educational despair that pervade so many American cities today are considered constitutionally just; the racial diversity and educational opportunity that Jefferson County has voluntarily and proudly attained are rejected as constitutionally unjust.

A more bitter or unjustified blow is hard to conceive.

The only thing worse would be for people of good will here to stagger under that blow and give up.

What we have gained for our children and for our community’s social health is far too important to lose, and despite the callous, ideological lockstep of this decision, there remains a glimmer of hope.

School authorities may still “find a way to achieve the compelling interests they face without resorting to widespread governmental allocation of benefits and burdens on the basis of racial classification.”

That is precisely the challenge that the school board, its new superintendent and federal District Court Judge John G. Heyburn must accept and meet.

Other means must be found to preserve both the diversity and choice that families of both races value so highly. Simply returning to segregated neighborhood schools would sacrifice far too much of both.

As Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in the stirring minority dissent, “This is a decision the Court and the Nation will come to regret.”

The same shouldn’t be said of our response."

More "Grutter-ization" of Schools

2007-06-28T18:08:00.000-04:00

Jack Balkin joins the growing crowd of voices who, in trying to make sense of Justice Kennedy's pivotal concurrence, have labeled it an extension of Grutter in elementary and secondary schools. He also notes that Kennedy is in some ways an unlikely proponent of Grutter:

"Grutter becomes the model, if not in the plurality opinion, then in Justice Kennedy's...And that is quite interesting, precisely because Kennedy himself did not join the majority opinion in Grutter. In one stroke he has signalled that he is more or less on board with Grutter. That is good news for people who were worried that all affirmative action policies were now in danger following Justice O'Connor's retirement. Kennedy may not uphold the next affirmative action policy that comes before the Court. But his position on affirmative action is not the same as the plurality's, much less that of Justice Thomas."

Ted Shaw to Appear on News Hour with Jim Lehrer Tonight

2007-06-28T17:35:00.000-04:00

On Friday, he will appear on Friday's Democracy Now with Amy Goodman and NPR's Tell Me More.

Original Plaintiff in Louisville Desegregation Case Decries Today's Ruling

2007-06-28T17:25:00.000-04:00

Suzy Post, the mother of five children in Louisville public schools and the only living plaintiff from the original Louisville desegregation lawsuit published this piece in the Louisville Courier-Journal

Today's Supreme Court decision undermining Jefferson County’s student assignment plan, adopted after a federal court of appeals ruled in 1975 that our schools were racially segregated, is a massive step backwards for all of our parents and children who prize educational excellence.

The 1975 lawsuit was brought by the Kentucky Civil Liberties Union and then merged with another brought by the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights. The reason the lawsuit was brought was that Louisville and Jefferson County public schools were racially identifiable. That is, you could look at a school’s student population and identify it as white or black by the racial preponderance in a specific school.

Experience has shown that segregating students in this manner insures inequity to the student population with the fewest resources. For example, white students in white schools disproportionately came from relatively financially secure families. However black students in black schools came disproportionately from families with fewer financial resources.

This inequity translated into unequal school resources. For example, when the lawsuit was filed, Central High School had broken or missing seats in its auditorium. Many of its windows were broken, and there was no vegetation surrounding the school. After U.S. District Court Judge James Gordon ruled that the board must design a student assignment plan that allowed schools to escape from the racially identifiable tag, white parents whose children would be bused to Central got busy, and voilà! Almost overnight the chairs had seats, the broken windows were replaced, and trees were planted on the school playground.

Maybe more important, students who had had no experience with kids of different races were going to the same classes together. The busing plan, which was implemented three years after the filing of the lawsuit, was one that the majority of this county’s population soon endorsed.

Yes, there was white flight, and some kids left public school altogether. But the vast majority stayed, and after a tense opening, and some minor problems related to the busing of students, the plan was accepted by our community. The present Supreme Court’s treatment of Brown v. Board of Education — in which the Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that “separate was not equal” when it came to the delivery of public education — is in a word, despicable.

This decision will undo years of good community relations among different races in our city, it will adulterate our educational goals once again, and it will be a tragic step back to a time when we lived segregated lives, with segregated schools and segregated relationships.

Make no mistake: Black, white, Latino and Asians interacting on a daily basis has a profound relationship to the vitality of our community and to positive community growth. Just as immigration has made this country vibrant, so has integrated education made it more possible. We will not be grateful for this decision or for the capriciousness of the lawsuit that produced this outcome. Tragic may be too dramatic an adjective to use in describing this giant step backward, but to my mind, it fits.

Council of the Great City Schools Views Ruling as a "Pronounced Step Backwards"

2007-06-28T17:06:00.000-04:00

Statement by Michael Casserly. Executive Director, Council of the Great City Schools

The Council of the Great City Schools, the coalition of the nation’s largest city school districts—including Louisville and Seattle, denounces today’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down student assignment plans in Louisville and Seattle designed to promote racial diversity in their public schools.

Today’s troubling decision will make it harder for these and other cities to maintain an integrated student body, prevent racial resegregation, improve academic performance, and build a more equitable and competitive America. The ruling now forbids school systems across the nation from using the same strategies that the federal courts once ordered them to implement.

The Council is heartened that a majority of the Court reaffirms that there is a compelling interest in achieving diversity in public school classrooms, and that race-conscious strategies can be consistent with the Constitution. As a practical matter, however, the Court has left school districts across the land with few viable alternatives for using race in pursuit of that interest. School districts now have even fewer options to achieve the racial diversity that was possible before the decision.

Therefore, the Council decries the court’s ruling in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District and Crystal D. Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education as a deliberate and pronounced step backwards in the nation’s long march toward racial equality. And the Council views the Bush Administration’s stance in promoting this outcome as deplorable.

Campaign For Educational Equity at Teacher's College Condemns Court's Ruling

2007-06-28T17:02:00.001-04:00

The Campaign for Educational Equity, based at Teachers College, Columbia University, has denounced today’s decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court in the school diversity cases, Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education (Louisville, KY.) and Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District. While the Court’s decision to strike down two comprehensive voluntary integration plans was blunted by Justice Kennedy’s separate opinion that some use of race in assigning students to schools is permissible, school districts’ options for implementing comprehensive integration plans have been narrowed considerably, Campaign leaders said.

“While Kennedy’s decisions is significant in guarding against a legal precedent that race cannot be considered at all, school officials across the country will be more challenged in their effort to achieve racial integration in practice. This is a setback on the road to a more racially integrated and equal society, but not as bad as it could have been,” said Amy Stuart Wells, Deputy Director of The Campaign and Professor of Sociology and Education at Teachers College.

An amicus brief written by Dr. Wells, one of the nation's leading experts on desegregation, was part of the evidence the Court considered in the case.

“By holding that two well-conceived and comprehensive plans for undoing racial isolation in large urban school systems are unconstitutional, a majority of this court has tied the hands of hundreds of locally elected public education officials trying to balance and stabilize their schools,” Wells said. “Such a ruling is clearly out of touch with the values of our increasingly diverse society and the overwhelming evidence of social science research.”

Despite the legal precedent established by the Court in its landmark 1954 decision, Brown v. Board of Education, American schools have steadily re-segregated since the 1980s, as many standing Court orders to districts to integrate were lifted. Today’s decision limits integration efforts even further by making it more difficult for local school officials to devise and implement voluntary – as opposed to court-mandated -- efforts to racially balance their schools.

“Although we strongly disagree with the interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment adopted by Chief Justice Roberts and three other members of the Court, we are heartened by Justice Kennedy’s concurring decision which leaves the door open for pursuing alternative methods to avoid racial isolation in the public schools,” said Michael A. Rebell, Executive Director of The Campaign for Educational Equity. “Kennedy represented the key swing vote in this 5-4 decision, and that means that his interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment will be the key precedent in this area.” Justice Kennedy agreed with the Chief Justice and three members of the Court that the particular voluntary desegregation plans in Louisville and Seattle were not “narrowly tailored” and thus, that they did not pass constitutional muster. However, Kennedy wrote clearly in his separate opinion that “To the extent the plurality opinion suggests the Constitution mandates that state and local school authorities must accept the status quo of racial isolation in schools, it is, in my view, profoundly mistaken...”

Enacted in 2001, the Jefferson County plan, which includes the city of Louisville, stipulates that all schools -- including magnet schools -- must have a minimum black enrollment of 15 percent and a maximum of 50 percent. The Seattle “Open Choice” plan is designed to make high schools mirror, as closely as possible, the city's overall racial composition of 60 percent minority and 40 percent white.

Wells’ brief -- filed through the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) and co-signed by Jay Heubert, also of Teachers College; Linda Darling-Hammond, of Stanford University; Jomills Braddock, of the University of Miami; Jeannie Oakes of UCLA, along with Rebell – documents the benefits of integrated schooling, both to graduates themselves and society as a whole. It also chronicles repeated previous rulings of by the Court that support precisely the kinds of integration efforts undertaken by the Seattle and Jefferson County districts. Federal appeals courts had previously affirmed the validity of the Jefferson County and Seattle plans.

Kennedy’s decision, while striking down the Louisville and Seattle plans, would allow districts to use other measures, such as strategic “site selection of new schools; drawing attendance zones with general recognition of neighborhood demographics; allocating resources for special programs; and recruiting students and faculty in a targeted fashion.”

Such measures, Wells notes, are helpful, but are less likely to have kind of comprehensive, systemic impact on racial integration that the Louisville and Seattle plans have had. “This will be the new challenge for school districts and our society,” she said. “To accomplish an important societal goal – racially integrated public schools – via far more limited means.”

Teachers College’s Campaign for Educational Equity was founded in 2005 to further the College’s commitment to assuring all children access to a more equal and meaningful education. The mission of the Campaign is to study the barriers to greater equality in education and to advocate for policies and practices that assure students from all racial/ethnic and social class backgrounds have equal educational opportunities. Through its research initiative and policy programs, the Campaign is helping to broaden understanding of such opportunities by examining, among other things, the role of community, segregation, and concentrated poverty in the lives of children and in their school experiences.

In November, the Campaign will host a major equity symposium, which will explore the implications of Justice Kennedy’s decision in depth and will consider the broad variety of avenues for helping school districts achieve and maintain racial diversity that are allowed under that ruling. Speakers and presenters will include Legal Defense Fund Director Ted Shaw, Harvard Law School’s Lani Guinier; and Hoover Institute scholar and frequent court critic Eric Hanushek.

The Symposium will also highlight the research and legal theories that contribute to understanding of Chief Justice Roberts’ decision which, according to Wells, ignores not only solid social science evidence, but also the beliefs of the vast majority of Americans who say that diversity in public education is important for the future of U.S. democracy and America’s standing in a global economy.

“The overwhelming body of evidence shows that integrated education provides benefits not only to minority students, but also majority students and the population at large,” Wells said.

Both Rebell and Wells vowed the The Campaign will work with educators and political leaders to continue to identify constitutionally appropriate methods for helping school districts achieve and maintain public school diversity, since there are strong benefits to the students and society for doing so…

“We stand committed to partnering with local leaders in Louisville, Seattle and other community around the country in pursuit of the crucial goal of diverse, inclusive quality education for all of our children,” said Rebell. “In addition we plan to work with the U.S. Congress to strengthen the No Child Left Behind Act and with state courts which are enforcing educational guarantees in state constitutions to continue to implement the vision of equal educational opportunity which was articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown.”

School Integration and Grutter

2007-06-28T16:30:00.000-04:00

While advocates and analysts on both sides of the Seattle and Louisville cases have been debating what they mean for the legacy of Brown, Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSblog examines how today's rulings follow in the steps of a more recent education case, Grutter v. Bollinger:

"One reading of today’s decision in the race cases is that the Supreme Court has outlawed programs that seek to increase racial diversity in the schools. Justice Kennedy’s concurrence does not adopt that view, however. And because his is the fifth vote, it is controlling. The better view, I think, is that the Court today has come close to extending the Grutter model to the lower school context, holding that school districts may account for race as one factor among many in student placement."

Goldstein goes on to discuss what the decision leaves open:

"Here is what is not perfectly clear, and regrettably so. Justice Kennedy leaves open the substantial prospect that schools can use the Grutter model of employing race as one of many factors, even absent a showing that other efforts that do not involve the express use of race have failed. But he does not clearly decide the issue, which is the major open jurisprudential question."

In a later post, Goldstein expands on his conclusions:

"So, progressives may be relatively sanguine about the decision. (And conservatives may be disappointed.) For liberals, it could have been – indeed, after argument, it was widely expected to be – much worse." On the other hand, he notes, "Justice Kennedy’s proposed alternative that schools consider race as one among many factors in admissions (a la Grutter) strikes me as impractical. K-12 school assignment is not comparable to the admissions process for college and graduate programs. For resource reasons at the very least, school districts must paint with a much broader brush."

Equal Justice Society: Critical but Optimistic

2007-06-28T16:11:00.000-04:00

(June 28, 2007) - The Equal Justice Society issued the following statement today regarding the Supreme Court decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education:

"We're encouraged that school districts may continue to use available tools to achieve the critical goals of equal educational opportunity and inclusion that a majority of the Court endorsed today," said Charles Ogletree, Harvard Law School Jesse Climenko Professor of Law, founding and executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, and board chair of the Equal Justice Society.

"Just as race can still be considered to achieve the goal of attaining integration and diversity in K-12 education," continued Ogletree, "this decision continues to endorse the core ruling of the University of Michigan affirmative action decisions and the ability to use race as a factor to achieve the compelling interest of diversity in education."

"Although the Court struck down the specific school integration plans, a majority of the Justices recognize and acknowledge that educational diversity and eliminating segregation in all its divisive forms remains a compelling governmental interest. Fortunately, school districts can continue to take race into account to achieve these important ends," said Kimberly Thomas Rapp, EJS director of law and public policy.

"While we disagree with the ruling since it limits options available to school districts to eliminate racial segregation, we agree with the majority of Justices that believe school districts can affirmatively consider race as a factor among many when pursuing diversity and inclusion in our schools. Many options remain open to schools that allow districts to take race into account, including factors such as site selection, drawing attendance zones and magnet schools," said Thomas Rapp.

"It's troubling that four members of the Court -- including the two most recent Justices nominated by President Bush -- would have outlawed almost all effective efforts to promote inclusion in our nation's schools. They would have preferred to tear apart Brown v. Board of Education, which ended de jure segregation, from its historical roots and would have used it to blind school districts to existing racial segregation in their communities. The extreme position taken by these Justices highlights the importance of closer scrutiny of justices and judges nominated by the President."

National School Board Assocation Press Release--Disappointed but not Defeated

2007-06-28T15:54:00.000-04:00

"NSBA Disappointed, but Hopeful, as Supreme Court Strikes Down Seattle, Louisville School District Voluntary Integration Plans"

Alexandria, VA – June 28 - The National School Boards Association (NSBA) today expressed disappointment in the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision to strike down the voluntary integration plans of the Seattle and Louisville school districts, but maintained hope that a majority of the court recognized the ability of school boards to continue to maintain racial diversity as a legitimate educational goal. The cases were Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District #1 and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., who wrote the majority opinion in the combined cases, said that the two school districts have "failed to provide the necessary support for the proposition that there is no other way than individual racial classifications to avoid racial isolation in their school districts."

“Despite the majority opinion, we are pleased with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s separate concurrence that explicitly rejected the plurality’s contention that racial diversity constituted racial balancing, which is constitutionally impermissible,” said NSBA General Counsel Francisco Negrón. Justice Kennedy and four other members of the court constituting a majority recognize that diversity as an educational goal remains a compelling government interest.

"We hope that school boards will continue to pursue those educational priorities through careful race-conscious policies,” said NSBA Executive Director Anne L. Bryant. These measures could include school site selection, magnet programs, and attendance zones. NSBA is also advising school boards to engage their local communities and meet with experts to devise specific policies to meet their goal of classroom diversity.

“I see hope in this decision because Justice Kennedy left open the possibility of the use of race to achieve classroom diversity,” Negrón said. “He did not give us a lot of guidance on how the plan must be devised, but he expressed confidence in the ability of school boards and communities to bring the kind of creativity and energy that is essential to the very important goal of diversity as an educational goal."

“School districts have a compelling reason to create a diverse learning environment because it helps improve student achievement and prepares students to live and work in an increasingly diverse society,” Bryant said."

NSBA’s complete amicus brief, as well as more resources on the cases, can be found at www.nsba.org/diversitycases.

The National School Boards Association, a federation of state school boards associations representing more than 95,000 local school board members, closely monitors the courts and regularly files friend-of-the-court briefs in cases that affect the nation’s 50 million public school students.

Statement from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund on the Supreme Court's Rulings in Seattle and Louisville School Cases

2007-06-28T15:45:00.000-04:00

Today's decision striking down voluntary school integration plans in Louisville, KY and Seattle, WA is a step backward from Brown v. Board of Education. LDF is deeply disappointed that five Justices of the Supreme Court today struck down the voluntary racial integration plans of the Seattle, Washington, and Louisville, Kentucky, school systems as unconstitutional because they were not "narrowly tailored" to take race into account to the minimum extent necessary.

We stand with local governments, school boards, and families committed to providing a high-quality, inclusive, integrated and diverse education for all students. Americans have long understood, and the courts, Congress and local governments have repeatedly recognized that to strive for anything less would do a grave disservice to our children and to the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education and that unanimous decision's mandate to end racially-segregated schools.

We believe that the four dissenting Justices, who joined in an opinion authored by Justice Stephen Breyer, explained the compelling necessity for the measures pursued by these school systems to avoid racially isolated schooling and unequal opportunities for children -- especially but not solely minority children -- that inevitably accompany those circumstances.

It is critically important to realize that today's decision does not categorically reject the use of race-conscious measures, or hold that it is unconstitutional for school districts to take steps, including steps that have a racial component, to create racially and ethnically diverse schools. While this split decision has both positive and negative implications for our nation and Constitution, we are very pleased that a majority of the Justices recognize educational diversity and overcoming our history of segregation to be compelling governmental interests -- among our country's highest priorities -- that can be pursued through careful race-conscious efforts.

Although Justice Kennedy concurred with the Chief Justice John Roberts's opinion in finding the specifics of the plans at issue to be unconstitutional, Kennedy refrained from joining them in their conclusion that the school districts did not have an interest in providing their children with an inclusive, integrated education. "My views do not allow me to join the balance of the opinion by The Chief Justice, which seems to me to be inconsistent in both its approach and its implications with the history, meaning, and reach of the Equal Protection Clause [of the Fourteenth Amendment]," he wrote.

Instead Justice Kennedy stated unequivocally: "To the extent the plurality opinion suggests the Constitution mandates that state and local school authorities must accept the status quo of racial isolation in schools, it is, in my view, profoundly mistaken..." Further, he wrote, "A compelling interest exists in avoiding racial isolation, an interest that a school district, in its discretion and expertise, may choose to pursue."

To achieve such a goal, a majority of the Justices made clear that a range of other, affirmative measures remain available to communities committed to diversity in schools. Justice Kennedy delineated a number of these options, including, strategic site selection of new schools; drawing attendance zones with consideration of neighborhood demographics; allocating resources for special programs; recruiting students and faculty in a targeted fashion; and tracking enrollments, performance and other statistics by race.

Even Chief Justice Roberts's opinion reaffirmed the holding of Grutter that "[t]he importance of . . . individualized consideration" in the program was "paramount, and consideration of race was one factor in a highly individualized, holistic review."

In 1954, the Brown Court spoke in one voice of the importance of education in the battle against prejudice and inequity, as the foundation of "our most basic public responsibilities... of good citizenship." It also stated that education "is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment."

Instead of speaking with one voice, today a deeply divided Court has narrowed the voluntary integration options for schools seeking to fulfill Brown's promise.

Today, the nation's public schools are more segregated than they were in 1970. It is of vital importance for communities to identify ways of fashioning solutions to this problem and to put these plans into action. These decisions have made their job much harder and, as a result, put America that much further away from providing the kind of educational experience necessary for America to not just compete but also thrive in the 21st century.

We call on communities and leaders around our country to pursue the tools that remain available to achieve the important goals of equal educational opportunity and inclusion that a majority of the Court endorsed today.

Americans value the differences that have made our nation as technologically, culturally, and ideologically innovative as it is today. We will remain a country committed to diversity -- no court decision can change that.

Reactions to the Opinions

2007-06-28T15:04:00.000-04:00

The Associated Press publishes reactions to today's opinions in the school segregation cases. Some examples include:

"This is a very lame excuse to tell a school system that they don't have to use race as an arbiter to help kids achieve and get a fair deal. In a world that still has the vestiges of racism, that's a ridiculous rational." - Warlene Gary, CEO of the National Parent Teacher Association.
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"Today's decision turns back the clock on equality in our schools... Today's decision is false to Brown's promise of equality, making it far more difficult for local school boards to voluntarily bring students of different races together in the classroom. Fortunately, the Court's ruling does not entirely close the door on progress, and school districts must find a way to ensure that it continues."" - Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.
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"I'm confident the Jefferson County Public Schools leadership team will develop new guidelines for student assignment that will continue this community's commitment to diversity and educational excellence." - Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson.
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"The Supreme Court decision in the school desegregation cases is appalling. Ever since Brown v. Board of Education, it has been settled law that the Constitution requires racially mixed schools. Today's decision turns Brown upside down and ignores decades of constitutional history. If this isn't judicial activism, I don't know what is." -Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.)
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"The premise is laid for the resegregation of America and the denial of opportunity. ... Inheritance and access will not be counterbalanced by equal protection." - the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
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"It so limits what the districts can do, this decision. ... You need some mechanism to more assertively balance school enrollment." - Amy Stuart Wells, professor of sociology and education at Columbia University.
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"A majority of the court still agrees that racial diversity is a boon to education, yet every time schools reach for that goal, the Supreme Court moves the goal posts." - Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
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"Today's Supreme Court ruling has placed a serious obstacle in the way of achieving the vision of America first outlined in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education, where we see racially integrated education as the best way to reflect our great diversity, unite our nation, and make real our promise of equal opportunity for all." - Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.
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"These decisions take away the right of local communities to ensure that all students benefit from racially diverse classrooms. Recent evidence shows that integrated schools promote minority academic achievement, and can help close the achievement gap." - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.
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"I believed so much in what we are doing I just felt we had to win. The goal here is to make sure all kids have access to great schools." - Kathleen Brose, president of Parents Involved in Community Schools, who sued the Seattle school district after her daughter failed to get into a highly regarded high school.

Guest Blogger: Seattle Schools and Bakke

2007-06-28T14:19:00.000-04:00

by Professor Jim Ryan, UVA Law School

A quick reaction to today’s decision in the Seattle and Louisville cases:

It is easy to conclude that today’s decision is a defeat for those interested in maintaining or increasing racial integration in public schools. After all, a majority of the Court struck down two plans – one from Seattle and the other from Louisville – that used race in an attempt to integrate schools. But this reaction misses the more important and surely more enduring principle contained in today’s opinion: school districts can use race-conscious measures to achieve integrated schools.

That principle is contained in Justice Kennedy’s opinion, which is the controlling opinion for the Court. Justice Kennedy accepts that achieving diversity and overcoming racial isolation in public schools are compelling interests. He concluded that the use of race by Seattle and Louisville was too crude, involving individual classifications that divided students into white and black, or white and other. He explicitly endorses, however, a host of other means by which race can be taken into account, including race-conscious drawing of attendance zones, race-conscious siting of schools, and recruiting students in a “targeted fashion.” He also endorses the consideration of race of students as one of a number of factors when determining student assignment.

If this sounds somewhat familiar, it should. In many ways, Kennedy’s opinion is like Justice Powell’s opinion in Bakke. Powell, like Kennedy, disagreed with all of his other colleagues, and wrote an opinion for himself that was nonetheless controlling. Powell rejected the notion that race-based affirmative action programs should trigger little scrutiny, and he rejected the notion that race-based affirmative action programs should never be allowed. Instead, he concluded that race could be taken into account when admitting students to universities, provided that students were considered on an individualized basis and race was one factor among many.

At the time Bakke was decided, it, too, was easy to interpret as a defeat. After all, the Court struck down the immediate plan at issue in that case, just like it struck down the plans at issue in the Seattle and Louisville cases. Over time, however, it became clear that Justice Powell’s opinion provided ample opportunities for universities to take race into account, in a careful and narrowly tailored way, when admitting students. Affirmative action admissions programs on college campuses not only survived, but flourished and still exist today.

In thinking about the Seattle Schools case, one would do well to keep Powell’s opinion in Bakke in mind. At the end of the day, the real story here is not that these plans were struck down, despite what tomorrow’s headlines might say. The real story is that the Court, through Justice Kennedy, approved the careful and considered use of race-conscious measures to achieve integrated schools. The Court, in other words, did not prohibit the use of race, but explained how it could be used. On a day when many who champion school integration will find reason to feel dismayed, I should think the example of Justice Powell’s opinion in Bakke should give them cause for cautious optimism. After all, Powell’s opinion ultimately mattered more than the specific plan struck down in Bakke. So, too, I would predict, will Justice Kennedy’s opinion matter more than the specific results in these cases.

Boalt Hall Releases Media Advisory

2007-06-28T14:12:00.000-04:00

Berkeley, CA—June 28, 2007.

The United States Supreme Court today sent school districts “back to the drawing board” in devising student assignment plans to promote racial integration, even as it recognized the compelling importance of avoiding racial isolation and achieving a diverse student body in public schools, according to Goodwin Liu, assistant professor of law and co-director of the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law.

Although the Court held unconstitutional voluntary school integration policies in Seattle, WA, and Louisville, KY, the cases ended in a “4-1-4” split among the nine Justices. Four Justices, in an opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, endorsed a broad rule against the use of race in student assignment. Four other Justices, in a dissenting opinion authored by Justice Stephen Breyer, would have upheld the plans. Justice Kennedy, in a separate and controlling opinion, strongly endorsed the goal of racial integration in public schools while significantly limiting the use of race to classify individual students on the basis of race.

“Today a five-Justice majority of the Court recognized that racial integration of public schools remains a compelling and enduring aspiration for our society,” said Professor Liu. “Justice Kennedy’s controlling opinion leaves open several avenues for race-conscious measures to achieve integration, including strategic attendance zoning and school siting decisions as well as magnet schools and special programs. The upshot is that the Court has sent school districts literally back to the drawing board to devise creative assignment plans to integrate our public schools.”

“It is significant that a majority of the Court—Justice Kennedy and the four dissenting Justices—rejected Chief Justice Roberts’s attempt to read Brown v. Board of Education as a categorical rule of colorblindness,” according to Professor Liu. “It is remarkable that the Chief Justice of the United States would cite Brown to defeat not defend school integration, and five Justices rejected this view as deeply a historical.”

Guest Blogger: Louisville Mother Responds

2007-06-28T13:50:00.000-04:00

by Fran Ellers, mother of two children in Jefferson County Public Schools, ages 9 and 11

I’m so disappointed – for my two kids, for our school system, and for students and families across the U.S. My son has six or seven running buddies at his elementary school, only one of whom is from our same neighborhood. The rest are from throughout the county and include children of other races and socioeconomic backgrounds. If we return to a system of neighborhood schools, that learning experience will be lost.

My middle-school daughter’s reaction: “You mean we don’t have to have integrated schools anymore? That sucks!”

I’m sure our school board and new superintendent will look closely at alternatives to promote diversity in schools, but I’m not sure what would be legal or workable. Because Louisville neighborhoods are so segregated, I’m wondering if the school system could substitute zip codes for race to ensure that schools are integrated. Even if that’s legal, however, I’m not sure our community would accept it. It could be more easily attacked by both white and black parents as inconveniencing families based on where they live.

Guest Blogger: Roberts v. Kennedy in the School Integration Cases

2007-06-28T13:02:00.001-04:00

by Samuel Bagenstos, Constitutional Law Professor, Washington University, Saint Louis

At the end of his opinion in the school integration cases today, speaking for himself and Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, Chief Justice Roberts reduces the matter to a simple point: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Here, he echoes Professor William Van Alstyne’s retort to Justice Blackmun’s famous statement in Bakke that “[t]o get beyond racism, we must first take account of race.” In response to that statement, Professor Van Alstyne wrote that “one gets beyond racism by getting beyond it now: by a complete, resolute, and credible commitment never to tolerate in one’s own life—or in the life or practices of one's government—the differential treatment of other human beings by race.”

But there is a disconnect here. The Louisville and Seattle school districts did not claim that they needed to engage in race-conscious student assignment to keep themselves from discriminating on the basis of race. As Chief Justice Roberts explained, the Louisville school district had already been declared unitary by a federal court, and there had never been any finding or admission of discrimination by the Seattle school district. The school districts contended instead that (among other things) racially identifiable housing patterns—themselves significantly the result of private discrimination—led to racially identifiable schools. Does a school system help us get beyond racism if it is forced to rely on and entrench the results of private housing segregation in school assignments? Do schools that are de facto segregated, as a result of these patterns, help us “stop discrimination on the basis of race”?

Chief Justice Roberts gives us no reason to believe that a rule of formal governmental race-blindness, that entrenches and enforces the results of private racial discrimination, will “stop discrimination on the basis of race.” He gives us nothing more than the platitude that when the government takes race into account it “reinforce[s] the belief, held by too many for too much of our history, that individuals should be judged by the color of their skin.” (Here he quotes from a 1993 opinion involving racial gerrymandering in redistricting.) Chief Justice Roberts is making an awfully doubtful empirical assertion here, without providing any empirical evidence. And the normative premise that school districts must take private discrimination as they find it, with their hands tied from responding to it, seems to me totally unjustifiable. Remember that here we are dealing with school districts that voluntarily chose to adopt integration plans—this isn’t a case involving court-ordered integration.

Justice Kennedy, by contrast, gets this key point: “To the extent that the plurality opinion suggests that the Constitution mandates that state and local school authorities must accept the status quo of racial isolation in schools, it is, in my view, profoundly mistaken.” Justice Kennedy’s concurrence in the judgment is far from perfect, but it is the first time that he has made clear in an opinion his understanding of the problem of private discrimination.

Chief Justice Roberts’s opinion will draw a lot of attention and criticism today—as well it should. The idea that school integration is at all the same as dividing students into different schools on the basis of race is offensive and blinkered. But Justice Kennedy’s opinion will be more important at the end of the day: It recognizes that school districts have a constitutionally permissible role in alleviating the effects of private discrimination—and that they may take account of race in doing so, so long as racial classifications of individual students are used only as a last resort. Given what might have happened in this case—and what Chief Justice Roberts wanted to have happen in this case—Justice Kennedy’s separate opinion leaves school districts a lot of space to do the right thing.

Where do we go from here?

2007-06-28T12:26:00.000-04:00

In the immediate wake of this morning's decisions, school districts around the country are understandably concerned about their future ability to design, or continue to implement, plans to provide all of their students with an integrated education. An article in the Cincinnati Enquirer illustrates the worries of many communities: "Cincinnati Public Schools uses race as one of several factors in assigning students to its magnet schools, elementary schools that use specialized styles of education such as Montessori or Paidiea methods, or focus on particular subjects such as foreign languages." Given the reversal of the Seattle and Louisville plans today, what does the future hold for districts like Cincinnati?

It is important for these districts to realize that there is no need to be overly hasty in responding to these decisions, nor is there need to despair entirely. Certainly, the Court's dismantling programs that were the result of two communities' hard work and commitment to equal opportunity is a disappointment. But today's rulings were not a complete loss for those committed to fighting segregation and racial isolation in schools. A majority of the Court did recognize the importance of racial diversity in education, and found the pursuit of such diversity to be a compelling governmental interest. Although the particular combination of strategic elements in the Seattle and Louisville plans were found to be unconstitutional, five justices agreed that race can be used as a component of school integration efforts. Some options still available to schools were delineated by Justice Kennedy (in addition to several race-neutral strategies, which a majority of the court found to be unaffected by today's decision), and in the coming days and weeks, communities, local governments, and civil rights experts should take their time in working together to find effective, permissible plans to implement for their students.

Majority of Court Finds School Diversity a Compelling Interest

2007-06-28T11:02:00.000-04:00

Along with Stevens, Breyer, Souter, and Ginsburg, Kennedy, in a separate opinion, finds that there is a compelling interest in diversity and integration in America's schools.

Despite his concurrence in the judgment of the plurality opinion that the particular school plans at issue did not have enough justification for their consideration of the race of individual students, Justice Kennedy wrote in favor of the ability, and, indeed, importance of school districts to pursue integrated schools. In his opinion, Kennedy stated that the racial diversity of particular schools could be considered in this pursuit:

"The plurality opinion is too dismissive of the legitimate interest government has in ensuring all people have equal opportunity regardless of their race. The plurality's postulate that "[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race," is not sufficient to decide these cases. Fifty years of experience since Brown v. Board of Education should teach us that the problem before us defies so easy a solution. School districts can seek to reach Brown's objective of equal educational opportunity. The plurality opinion is at least open to the interpretation that the Constitution requires school districts to ignore the problem of de facto resegregation in schooling. I cannot endorse that conclusion. To the extent the plurality opinion suggests the Constitution mandates that state and local school authorities must accept the status quo of racial isolation in schools, it is, in my view, profoundly mistaken...

In administering public schools, it is permissible to consider the schools' racial makeup and adopt general policies to encourage a diverse student body, one aspect of which is its racial composition. Cf. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306. School authorities concerned that their student bodies' racial compositions interfere with offering an equal educational opportunity to all are free to devise race-conscious measures to address the problem in a general way and without treating each student in different fashion based solely on a systematic, individual typing by race. Such measures may include strategic site selection of new schools; drawing attendance zones with general recognition of neighborhood demographics; allocating resources for special programs; recruiting students and faculty in a targeted fashion; and tracking enrollments, performance, and other statistics by race." (emphasis added)

Civil Rights Project website

2007-06-28T11:00:00.000-04:00

The Civil Rights Project has moved its website to UCLA. For links to CRP research on school integration and other statements that will be posted throughout the day, please visit:
http://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/policy/court/voltint.php

Supreme Court Issues Decision in School Race Cases-- Roundup

2007-06-28T10:45:00.000-04:00

-Click HERE for a copy of the Supreme Court's decision in the school race cases, issued this morning. Please visit us throughout the day for responses to the opinion and analysis of what it means for the future of school integration in America.

-The Associated Press, in the NYT, offers a preliminary description of the ruling here.

-The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has a website devoted to school integration, with a resource center, links to legal documents, and more.

-Below, you will find links to background information on these cases and school integration generally:

Seattle - Louisville Briefing Paper

Louisville Fact Sheet

Seattle Fact Sheet

Race-Neutral Alternatives Fact Sheet

State of Segregation

Social Science Findings on School Integration

Voluntary K-12 School Integration Manual

-To send us a post, email scblogger@gmail.com

Court strikes down school integration plans

2007-06-28T10:25:00.000-04:00

Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion; Justice Kennedy did not join all of the majority opinion, but did join the result. The opinion will be available shortly.

Walter Dellinger on Brown and the School Cases

2007-06-28T10:13:00.000-04:00

This morning, Slate features Walter Dellinger, in an email conversation with Dahlia Lithwick, titled "How Brown v. Board of Education Changed the South Forever"

Dellinger wrote earlier for Slate about the "mistake of historic proportions" that would be made if the Court struck down the Seattle and Louisville plans, noting that "[a] majority of the justices seem to believe that striking down these plans would relocate school assignments to some race-neutral Garden of Eden, a wondrous, mythical place in which race plays no role in which public schools pupils attend."

Decisions Expected To be Released Shortly

2007-06-28T09:59:00.000-04:00

We will keep you posted as information is made public.

News Roundup: The Value of Integration

2007-06-27T18:42:00.000-04:00

Two recent stories in the news illustrate what's at stake in the Seattle and Louisville cases.

The St. Louis Post Dispatch recently reported that 16 school districts involved in a voluntary student transfer program have unanimously voted to extend the program for five years. Under the St. Louis program, over 8000 African American students from St. Louis attend school in the surrounding counties, and hundreds of white students from the counties attend magnet schools in the city. After reauthorizing the program, one superintendant hailed the program as a "very special thing."

Democratic Presidential candidate former Senator John Edwards also released a statement highlighting the importance of diversity in America's schools. Edwards stated, “On top of the damage the Court has already done this term, the decision expected tomorrow in the school diversity cases could set back the cause of ensuring that every child has an equal chance to succeed. As someone who grew up in the segregated South, it hurts me to say that more than 50 years after the Brown decision, we still have two school systems - one for people who live in the right neighborhoods and one for everyone else. We used to believe the Constitution required school desegregation, but now this Court is on the verge of making the radical decision that the Constitution prevents elected school boards from voluntarily desegregating schools.”

Guest Blogger: Intent Doctrine--Its Relationship to Seattle and Louisville School Cases and the Need to Preserve Brown's Legacy

2007-06-27T17:06:00.000-04:00

by Nicholas Espíritu

For more than 30 years, the Supreme Court has advanced a constricted view of discrimination that all but prohibits redress of significant racial and social inequities. This constricted view has led us to question if it is constitutionally impermissible to actively seek racial integration in our public schools, given that a scant few decades ago the Constitution was interpreted as compelling governments and localities to remedy such racial inequities through race conscious plans.

Many of the problems stem from a Court-imposed ideology -- color-blindness -- that combined with the "intent doctrine" blinds government to a wide range of social inequality and racial discrimination. Under this jurisprudence, the Courts treats any use overt uses of race with its highest level of scrutiny, regardless of whether it is used for good or ill.

Actions that have a known harmful effect on racial groups, but do not overtly mention race, almost always survive constitutional scrutiny.

Recent events -- from Katrina to the recent school desegregation cases in Seattle and Louisville -- bring back into stark relief the continuing and lasting effects of entrenched inequality that remains unaddressed by the Court's cramped understanding of discrimination.

Without the ability to use race-conscious remedies, the oppression of opportunity caused by discrimination, including the resegregation of pubic schools, will remain inadequately addressed by law.

Read EJS's paper, "Relationship of the Intent Doctrine to Seattle and Louisville and the Need to Preserve Brown's Legacy" at http://motleyfellow.org/archives/13.

"Tearing Brown from its Historical Roots"

2007-06-27T14:46:00.000-04:00

In a June 24 LA Times Op-Ed, Edward Lazarus anticipated that, in deciding the school segregation cases, the Court would: "read Brown not as mandating integration, or even as neutral on the point, but as affirmatively prohibiting voluntary measures to achieve integration if they involve race-conscious government action."

With tomorrow's opinion, the very meaning of Brown vs. Board, widely regarded as the most important case of the 20th century, is at stake. Lazarus explains:

"Under Roberts' [likely] reinterpretation of Brown, the decision's central message is that government must be strictly 'colorblind' because all racial classification is inherently pernicious. In this view, there is no legal or moral difference between a school assignment program (like those at issue in Brown) that enforces racial segregation and others (like Seattle's and Louisville's) that are designed to ensure some measure of integration."

Thus, "By flipping Brown from a decision outlawing racial exclusion into one outlawing racial inclusion, it would place the court's powerful moral and legal force behind the idea that the abstraction of colorblindness is of greater constitutional value than the ideal of racial diversity."

Guest Blogger: Worlds Apart

2007-06-27T13:06:00.002-04:00

by J.S., 6th grade history teacher in New York City

I'm not generally a politically minded person, but I am a teacher who has worked in two vastly different types of educational settings. It is upsetting to me, given how segregated our public schools are, that policy-makers are being discouraged from finding viable and voluntary ways to solve this problem. And it IS a problem.

Two years ago, I taught at a public school with a student body that was 30% black and 67% hispanic in the neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn. The school was run by an inefficient administration that was nonetheless bent on reminding the faculty at all times that they were subject to each and every administrative edict, no matter how nonsensical or inconvenient. The faculty was either inexperienced or burnt-out, with very few falling in the middle of that spectrum. New York City Teaching Fellows in their first two years of teaching comprised at least one-third of the faculty; I was one of them. Attendance was a significant issue, since at least a third of any given class was usually absent from school that day, and a significant proportion of students were classified as LTAs, or long-term absences, meaning that we hadn't seen them in months. Test scores also posed a problem, since only a slight percentage of the student body was equipped to legitimately pass the Regents each year. As a Special Education teacher, I taught 15-to-19-year-old students who read at 1st-5th grade levels and expended the majority of their energy on staying away from situations where they might "look dumb." This, of course, included actively engaging and learning the material, or even coming to school at all.

In the absence of a supportive administration or sufficient resources (we had to bring our own photocopy paper and guard it with our lives), the school hardly felt like a place where education was a priority. One of the most difficult consequences of this environment was how deeply the students had internalized the message that their education was not valuable. They knew that the school was not designed with their best interests in mind; moreover, they knew that attending all of their classes and working hard would not necessarily amount to much after graduation. Especially for the students in my Special Education classes, life in a gang was potentially more rewarding than the kind of low-paying work they would be eligible for upon graduation, if they made it that far. My students had come to believe, over time, that they did not deserve a good education. One of them asked me, upon learning that I had graduated from an Ivy League university, "What you doin' in a school like this? You shouldn't be here." Ignoring for the moment the fact that one's undergraduate degree has very little to do with one's merit as a teacher, my student's inference was clear: I live in the 'hood, so I'm not supposed to get the "good" teachers.

That was hard to take; it was even harder to face when I did in fact decide to leave for a school that was more supportive of its teachers and its students and where students had significantly more resources, both financial and educational, at their fingertips. My students now are mostly white, and they take for granted the luxury of attending a school that will furnish the resources, support, and experience to convey them smoothly into a bright future, if only they apply themselves. They do not know what it is to be disempowered or left behind. I can't help but feel that I abandoned the students at my first school, who were truly in need. If anything, students in inner-city schools need more resources, better teachers, and more love and support; not less. If we are not willing to distribute funds disproportionately to the schools whose students need these resources most, we at least need to support the efforts of those school districts that are willing to work to solve this problem in other ways. This is not an issue of race as much as it is an issue of investing in a common humanity, so that all children can grow up knowing that they deserve a good education. So long as the virtual apartheid in our schools persists, and so long as we continue to resist efforts at change, we are betraying ourselves. And if that argument is too "bleeding-heart liberal" for you, then consider this: what is going to happen to the army of less-well educated graduates without the skills or the experience to support themselves? The labor market has changed substantially in the last few decades; most types of work require a college degree at the least. What course of action will these abandoned students take when they find that the system has deserted them in almost imaginable way?

Guest Blogger: Democracy, Integration, and the Classroom

2007-06-26T16:49:00.000-04:00

by Cara Furman, New York City Elementary School Teacher

Since I began teaching, the first questions that people ask me about my school are where I teach, is it public, and what is the racial demographic. My impression is that when people are asking this, their interest is connected to what each answer connotes. When I explained that I worked at a private school on the Upper East Side, people asked about facilities, famous families and spoiled students. When I described my work at a public school in Harlem, people asked about behavior problems and test scores. They often offered consolation.

Now, when I share that I teach in the East Village, people seem less clear on how to categorize, which typically elicits questions about demographics. When I explain that my school is mixed racial and mixed income, people seem shocked and unable to categorize. "What is that like?" they ask, "I didn't know there were schools like that in New York." In fact, when my father came to visit my first and second grade classroom, he spoke later in awe to a friend: "its amazing, there's everyone, children with nannies and the children of nannies. About 17 different countries represented in a class of 21!"

In my current classroom, my students are learning about diversity and human relations from each other. After one student told another that he “didn’t like black people,” my class spent two hours (their choice) trying to figure out why the student had said that, what he meant, and what such comments mean in our society. For the first time all year, some of my shyer African American students rose to the center of the classroom articulating frustrations and hurt. White students who often dominate conversation took a back seat, listening and processing. These six and seven year olds, who typically start to fidget after 15 minutes, listened, spoke, and processed the incident instead of having free time. Within the conversation, for the first time in my teaching experience, Martin Luther King (who we had discussed months earlier) came alive for them in important ways as they debated whether anger was a fair response to the comment and then worked past their anger to try to explain to the student why he had hurt them. The conversation ultimately ended when the student refused to apologize and we seemed to have hit a stalemate. Yet, despite this result, my African American students (and their parents when told) expressed pride and some feelings of success. They had explained themselves and defended themselves. Nevertheless, I went home concerned that maybe I should have defended the African American students and punished the child for his comment. Yet, when the next day, the child returned to school prepared to apologize, I became convinced that dialogue in safe places--where students of different races share power--is the most effective tool against injustice.

Today, I am horrified that diverse classrooms, which teach children how to be human in a diverse world, are at risk. My research, conversations, and experience have made clear to me that, where the white community holds the power, there will never be equality when there is not integration. While we remain a nation just as representative as the students in my classroom, we are not a democracy where the people of these nations necessarily interact. In a country where, according to public school advocate, Debra Meier, schools provide one of the last places for people to have sustained interaction with those from a different background, schools are crucial to maintaining the interaction necessary for the democracy to viably exist. If we do not integrate our schools, if our human sense of community does not cross racial lines, then as long as one community has power and another does not, separate will always be unequal.

California school system also at risk

2007-06-26T16:11:00.000-04:00

In the Los Angeles Times, Charlotte Hildebrand reminds us that the Supremes aren't the only ones pondering the future of voluntary desegregation plans. Read about the legal challenges to LAUSD's magnet school program here.

And a progressive desegregation decision of a different sort was rendered by the Huntington Beach Fourth of July parade board.

Not Integrated Enough: New York City Schools

2007-06-26T15:54:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, in anticipation of the Supreme Court’s decisions in the Seattle and Louisville cases, the New York Post’s headline story, “NOT WHITE ENOUGH,” described an eleven year old student denied entry from IS 239, Mark Twain School. The article stated that the student would have been admitted to the magnet school but for “racial quotas established in 1974 by a federal judge who ordered the school’s desegregation” and attempted to connect the story to the Seattle and Louisville cases. The Post noted that “The U.S. Supreme Court currently is considering a case that could end racial quotas in schools nationwide, including Mark Twain.”

Despite the Post’s contentions, the history of integration in IS 239 is substantially different from Seattle and Louisville. IS 239 was ordered to integrate after District Court Judge Weinstein found both de facto and de jure segregation. Both Seattle and Louisville implemented voluntary programs to combat de facto segregation in districts where they was either no history of de jure segregation, or where de jure segregation had fully disappeared. Therefore, the Supreme Court’s decision in the Seattle and Louisville cases will have little or no bearing on the IS 239 court order. It is also clear that under the court order, IS 239 has become a relatively integrated school. The majority of schools in New York City, not under such orders, have become increasingly segregated over the past thirty years.

IS 239 was ordered to desegregate by federal court order in 1972. In the ten years preceding the order, white enrollment at the Mark Twain School had dropped from 82% to only 18% of the total enrollment. The judge in the Mark Twain case, Hart v. Community School Board of Brooklyn, N.Y. Sch. D #21, attributed this change to both housing patterns and series of rezoning and school assignment decisions which had the “the natural and foreseeable consequence of decreasing the white student enrollment at Mark Twain.”

In order to counteract this combination of de jure and de facto segregation at IS 239, the court directed the involved parties to develop plans which would insure that the racial balance at Mark Twain remained within 10 percentage points of the district wide average. Two years later, the court accepted the plan proposed by the school board, under which the board would revise its school assignment policies to ensure a uniform racial balance throughout the district and establish IS 239 as a magnet school.

Thirty years after the court order in Hart, racial diversity at IS 239 has increased and remains constant. According to statistics published by the New York State Department of Education, approximately 53% of the school’s eighth grade class is white, 25% Asian, 12% African American, and 11% Hispanic. The situation at IS 239 stands in sharp contrast to the rest of New York City Public Schools. According to Association of the Bar of the City of New York’s (ABCNY) amicus brief in the Seattle and Louisville cases, New York’s public schools are the sixth most segregated in the nation for African American students, and the third most segregated for both Hispanic and Asian students.

The New York City Public Schools have, for the most part, failed to end segregation and its students suffer as a result. Segregated schools, points out the ABCNY, are “institutions of concentrated disadvantage that systematically fail minority students.” According to the New York Court of Appeals, public schools with the highest percentage of minority children “have the least experienced, the most uncertified teachers, the lowest-salaried teachers, and the highest rates of teacher turnover.” Indeed the majority of New York City Public Schools illustrate “what a twenty-first century American city’s school system may look like, absent the ability to consider race” to avoid segregation in the public schools.
To learn more about the effects of segregation on New York City Public Schools, read
http://www.nycbar.org/pdf/report/NYCBAR_Amicus_Brief.pdf

Social Science Findings about School Integration

2007-06-22T18:31:00.000-04:00

Last fall, 553 social scientists from more than 200 institutions across the country signed a social science statement which summarized decades of research about: 1) the benefits of integrated schools for students and communities; 2) the harms of segregated schools; and 3) what is known about the efficacy of race-neutral student assignment plans. From that social science statement, we have put together a sheet of summarizing these findings: http://www.naacpldf.org/content/pdf/voluntary/social_scientists/SSSTalkingPoints.pdf.

For anyone interested in more detail or looking for some summer reading material, the social science statement (with citations to research on each of the points above) can be found here.

This social science statement, incidentally, is the fifth filed in school desegregation cases considered by the Supreme Court. The first statement was filed in the cases that led to the Brown v. Board of Education decision, which cited social science evidence in footnote 11.

Oral Arguments from Seattle and Louisville: Audio and Transcripts

2007-06-22T10:29:00.000-04:00

Supreme Court oral arguments from the Louisville case:
-Transcript
-Audio

Supreme Court oral arguments from the Seattle case:
-Transcript
-Audio

Home Alone -- For Good?

2007-06-21T10:48:00.000-04:00

In last Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Erica Goode's "Home Alone" reports on the recent work of Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam and colleagues, in examining the effect of racial and ethnic diversity on community interaction. Putnam's findings as reported by Goode appear surprising, counter-intuitive and bleak: "What if, at least in the short term," Goode asks, "living in a highly diverse city or town led residents to distrust pretty much everybody, even people who looked like them? What if it made people withdraw into themselves, form fewer close friendships, feel unhappy and powerless and stay home watching television in the evening instead of attending a neighborhood barbecue or joining a community project?" This, according to the article, is a pretty accurate description of (some of) diversity's effects. Diversity leads to discomfort, which leads to "social isolation and a weakening of civic bonds."

Using information from the 2000 Census in conjunction with a survey of almost 30,000 residents of 41 communities nationwide, Putnam and his colleagues found diversity to be inversely proportional to levels of trust, community engagement, and even reported quality of life. The immediate reaction from dyed-in-the-wool liberals -- or "Sesame Street" types, as labeled by Goode -- at least judging from my own response and that of friends with whom I discussed the study, was not unanticipated. "I bet they didn't take community size/crime/transience/whatever into effect," you might say, but for the most part, they seem to have done so. The age, affluence, poverty, citizenship, ethnicity, language, commuting time, education level, residential mobility, homeownership, gender, financial satisfaction, work hours, area of the country, census tract population density, and comparative income of all survey respondents was also taken into account statistically, and the findings still held. For anyone who still thinks something has been left out or miscalculated (and my friends have some ideas, largely centering around poor self-reporting and underestimation-- "living in New York makes me want to go home and watch Entourage on TV constantly, and I might tell a statistician that I do, but I'm really too busy doing community things"), Goode reports Putnam to be glumly confident that these factors, too, can be examined and ruled out.

It is a reluctant conclusion for Putnam, according to Goode, because he is in fact a big proponent of the value of diversity himself. Goode closes her article with a reference to Putnam's "optimistic" hope that people's views of and reactions to diversity may change over time, and quotes him as saying that "people like me, who are in favor of diversity, don’t do ourselves any favors by denying that it takes time to become comfortable." It is left to the reader, however, to imagine how such a shift might occur in a population of listless, depressed recluses, shunning outside contact in favor of quality time with the television. Wouldn't it be easiest if we all just relocated to rural South Dakota, where we would be twice as likely to trust people from different racial backgrounds, right up until they actually moved into the neighborhood?

As a matter of fact, an entire third of Putnam's paper is devoted to the topic of "Becoming Comfortable with Diversity," a portion of the study almost uniformly overlooked by news reports on his findings. (The Saguaro Seminar, Putnam's research collective at the Kennedy School, openly criticizes many news articles as biased or otherwise inaccurate, although Goode's is not among them.) In this section, Putnam observes that racial and ethnic "diversity," as social constructs, are fairly malleable concepts to begin with. Arguing not for a glorified melting pot but for a society where individuals identify themselves in a wider range of ways, Putnam envisions reducing the social divisions caused by racial and ethnic identities while preserving the personal importance of the identities themselves. In other words, Putnam believes, we need to figure out how to create strong identities that are shared across racial lines.

In examining institutional ways to forge such permeable shared identities, Putnam singles out two: the evangelical "megachurch," and the United States Army. Both, he suggests, have changed greatly in the past several decades to move from uniquely segregated environments to powerful forces of social integration. In the Army, which Putnam describes as having been in the not-so-distant past "not a race-relations success story," today's soldiers have been found to have many more and closer interracial friendships than their similar civilian counterparts. This reduction of divisive social boundaries to the point that the US Army has become a "relatively color-blind institution," Putnam says, is evidence that "something that the Army has actually done...has had the effect of reconstructing social identities and increasing social solidarity even in the presence of ethnic diversity."

Putnam demurs as to possible causes for this, but the Army's success in creating these "bridging" bonds is especially relevant to the school integration debate. In fact, the military has worked extremely hard to integrate every aspect of its soldiers lives, from their barracks to their service academies to their children's schools. As detailed here, the military was a pioneer in the fight for school integration, desegregating its own schools before Brown v. Board, and their unique voice had special power in the fight to keep America's colleges and universities diverse. If the experience of the military is to be an example, a big part of the process towards becoming comfortable with diversity is simply to be immersed in it.

Putnam does, indeed, believe that in the long run, whatever negative effects his study found to result from exposure to diversity are far outweighed by the long-term benefits of a diverse society. In the meantime, it is more important than ever that Americans overcome what Putnam may have proven to be a serious hindrance to success in that society as fast as possible. How do we get there? "To strengthen shared identities, we need more opportunities for meaningful interaction across ethnic lines where Americans (new and old) work, learn, recreate, and live," Putnam concludes. "Community centers, athletic fields, and schools were among the most efficacious instruments for incorporating new immigrants a century ago, and we need to reinvest in such places and activities once again, enabling us all to become comfortable with diversity."

To learn more about the Saguaro's research on social capital and diversity, go to http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/saguaro/saguaroresearch.htm

New Study Finds Segregated Schools Hinder Reading Skills

2007-06-20T23:22:00.000-04:00

CHAPEL HILL – Children in families with low incomes, who attend schools where the minority population exceeds 75 percent of the student enrollment, under-perform in reading, even after accounting for the quality of the literacy instruction, literary experiences at home, gender, race and other variables, according to a new study.

The majority of black and Hispanic children in the United States attend such “minority segregated” schools, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

The study, by the FPG Child Development Institute (FPG) and the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, examined reading development from kindergarten to third grade for 1,913 economically disadvantaged children. The children were part of the Children from Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Kindergarten Cohort, a nationally representative sample of more than 22,000 children enrolled in approximately 1,000 kindergarten programs.

To read more, see http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/jun07/fpgminority062007.html

A Diversity Leader – Berkeley’s Student Assignment Plan

2007-06-18T10:00:00.001-04:00

A California court recently held that the Berkeley Unified School District (“BUSD”), one of the first school districts in the nation to desegregate voluntarily, could consider the racial composition of a student’s neighborhood in a student assignment plan designed to maintain racial diversity in Berkeley public schools.

The History: Following the Brown decision, a citizens’ commission concluded that Berkeley suffered from severe housing segregation that led to racial isolation in its schools. In 1968, BUSD became one of the first school districts in the nation to voluntarily integrate its schools. In 1995, BUSD adopted a comprehensive plan to preserve integration in its schools in light of continued residential segregation in the city.

In April 2004, in Avila v. Berkeley Unified School District, the Alameda Superior Court ruled that BUSD’s plan to preserve ethnically and racially integrated schools does not violate Proposition 209, the 1996 initiative that banned the use of racial preferences in government, public education and employment. Judge James Richman said in the Avila ruling, “although Proposition 209 specifically applies to public education, its text does not mention voluntary desegregation plans or otherwise indicate that prohibited discrimination or preferential treatment includes a race-conscious assignment plan that seeks to provide all students with the same benefit of desegregated schools.”

The Current Plan: BUSD’s current plan, adopted in February 2004, assigns each neighborhood a diversity rating as a means to promote diversity at the city’s 11 elementary schools and in Berkeley High School’s small schools program. The current plan seeks to ensure that the student population in each elementary school reflects the racial and socioeconomic diversity of the total elementary school population of the school’s attendance zone within a target range of plus or minus 5-10%.

The Elementary Student Assignment Plan is founded on BUSD’s belief that: “diversity in our students population enriches the educational experience of students; advances educational and occupational aspirations; enhances critical thinking skills, facilitates the equitable distribution of resources; reduces, prevents or eliminates the effects of racial and social isolation; … and promotes participation in a pluralistic society.”

The Mechanics: The Elementary Student Assignment Plan (“Plan”) divides the district’s 11 elementary schools among three attendance zones. The entire district is further divided into 445 planning areas, of between 4 and 8 city blocks in size. Each planning area is assigned a diversity category designation of 1 to 3. The diversity category number assigned is calculated based upon three factors: the percentage of “students of color” in the planning area; the planning area’s level of parent income; and the planning area’s level of parent education. Each factor is weighed equally in calculating the diversity category number. Parents of elementary school children submit a preference form, indicating their top three elementary school choices.

BUSD assigns students based on six priority categories:

Currently attending the school and residing in the zone;

Currently attending the school and residing outside the zone;

Sibling currently attending the school (in category 1 or 2);

Not currently attending and residing within the zone;

Not currently attending and residing outside the zone;

Inter-district transfers.

Within each priority category, a student is assigned to a particular school based upon their preference, as well as the diversity category number assigned to the planning area in which the student lives.

The High School Small School Assignment Plan applies to the one high school in the district, Berkeley High. In addition to the regular high school curriculum, Berkeley High offers students the opportunity to pursue a more specialized curriculum either in one of its four “small schools” or in one of its two academic programs. The district selects students for the regular high school and the small schools based upon several diversity characteristics: the diversity/planning area category numbers used in the elementary school assignments; English-language learners; and special education needs. As with the elementary schools, assignment to the small school programs is partly determined by the diversity category of the neighborhood in which the student lives.

Assignment and Race: In April 2007, an Alameda Superior Court ruling held that neither the Elementary Student Assignment Plan nor the High School Small School Assignment Plan violate Proposition 209 because no assignment decisions are based upon the race of an individual student. Instead the assignment criteria take into account multiple factors related to the geographic area in which a student lives, only one of which is race-conscious. In other words, the racial makeup of the entire student population in a given planning area – not an individual student’s race – is a factor in assignment decisions. The court further held that the “integration plan” developed by the school board, in which the diversity of a student’s neighborhood is a factor in assignment decisions, does not offend Proposition 209 because it does not discriminate or grant preferences on the basis of race or ethnicity.

San Francisco’s Socioeconomic Desegregation Plan: A Touted Model, Worth Reexamining

2007-06-16T13:03:00.000-04:00

San Francisco Unified School Districts (SFUSD) is often cited as an example of a school district that has successfully adopted a socioeconomic status based desegregation plan. Yet, the story of desegregation in San Francisco instead demonstrates how the reliance on socioeconomic factors fails to achieve racial desegregation.

History

As a result of litigation aimed at desegregating the San Francisco schools, the San Francisco chapter of the NAACP, the SFUSD, and others entered into a consent decree in 1983. U.S. District Judge William Orrick approved the settlement prohibiting student enrollment more than 45 percent of a single racial or ethnic group at any school, requiring each school’s staff to reflect district-wide student racial and ethnic composition, and taking additional steps to desegregate 19 historically segregated schools.

The two central tenets of the consent decree were (i) to “eliminate racial/ethnic segregation or identifiably in any SFUSD school, program, or classroom and to achieve the broadest practicable distribution throughout the system of students for the racial and ethnic groups which compromise the enrollment” and (ii) to avoid disproportionately burdening any racial or ethnic group regarding transportation, special program site selection, and facility utilization.

By 1993, the desegregation goals had largely been achieved but academic performance gaps persisted for African American and Latino students. The decree was thus modified at that time, but the language stating that the decree was to eliminate segregation and avoid a disproportionate racial burden remained. Over time, the focus of the consent decree shifted from desegregation toward academic achievement.

In 1983, Judge Orrick stated that the major goal of the consent decree was to eliminate racial and ethnic segregation. By 1992, Professor Gary Orfield, an expert assisting the SFUSD, identified “two related goals” of the consent decree as desegregation and educational equity. By 1999, SFUSD Superintendent Waldemar Rojas defined the goal of the consent decree as “excellence for all,” based on a definition of “academic achievement” tied primarily to test scores.

In 2001, in response to a suit filed in 1994 by Chinese-American parents that race-based student assignments were no longer constitutional. The parties again modified the consent decree. Following settlement, race was deleted as a factor in assignment decisions, and socioeconomic status was substituted in its place.
In the wake of the 2001 settlement, SFUSD developed a five-year comprehensive plan to achieve educational equity, entitled “Excellence for All,” which included the diversity index concept. The diversity index considered non-racial factors in student assignment decisions such as socioeconomic status, academic achievement, English-language learner status, mother’s educational background, academic performance at prior school, home language, and geographic areas. The 2004 Department of Education report entitled “Achieving Diversity: Race-Neutral Alternatives in American Education” featured San Francisco as a model of the connection between socioeconomic integration and racial desegregation.

In 2005, U.S. District Judge William Alsup terminated the consent decree, stating that the involvement of the legal system absent the use of race as a factor may only be increasing segregation. Since 2001, when the consideration of race was eliminated, segregation in San Francisco schools sharply increased. Judge Alsup indicated that the district’s new system “has not achieved diversity in any meaningful sense” and instead “has allowed, if not caused, resegregation.” Indeed, Stuart Biegel, the consent decree monitor, found that the assignment decision absent racial considerations contributed to consistent and unabated resegregation from 1999 to 2005.

Furthermore, the academic achievement gap persisted when considered in assignment decisions for African-American and Latino children, and it was worst at segregated schools. Biegel noted that while SFUSD as a whole had the highest percentage of students scoring at proficient or above when compared with seven major urban districts in California, San Francisco’s African-American students scored the lowest overall when compared with their African-American counterparts in these same seven districts. Judge Alsup also noted that this academic achievement gap persisted for African American and Latino children.

The San Francisco model demonstrates the distinct lack of congruence between use of the diversity index factors and the goals of eliminating segregation and avoiding a disproportionate racial burden. In fact, the data exhibits a steady desegregation of the district schools with the consideration of race in assignment decisions, followed by a consistent resegregation upon the elimination of the consideration of race in assignment decisions.

It is interesting to note that Biegel cited the Louisville, Kentucky plan, described in McFarland v. Jefferson County Public Schools, as a possible model for refashioning San Francisco’s failed attempt to achieve continued racial desegregation using socioeconomic status. In the 2004 consent decree monitoring report, Biegel wrote that “the most successful plans appear to be those where geographical borders are delineated, diversity guidelines (including race) are established, and parents are given choices within those borders and guidelines…choices that are typically enhanced by the opportunity to also seek admission to a range of special schools with special programs.”

The SFUSD submitted an amicus brief with the Council of the Great City Schools in the McFarland v. Jefferson County Public Schools case before the U.S. Supreme Court to argue that a student assignment plan may properly take account of race to further racially integrated schools. In fact, the brief cited San Francisco as an example where race-neutral alternatives are insufficient to achieve racial integration.

Hope, Bowles Notwithstanding

2007-06-14T22:08:00.000-04:00

Last Fall, when the school integration cases were fully briefed, I willed myself to believe that the Court would surprise us with a 7-2 decision -- nay, a 9-0 sweep! -- upholding the student assignment plans in both Louisville and Seattle. You realists may scoff, but I say this: Put aside all of the mechanics and details of the two plans for a moment. It is true that opponents of voluntary integration have simplistic, sound-bite formalism on their side -- you can't use race to segregate, they say, so you can't use race to integrate. Period. There is appeal to this kind of position, I admit. But for the reflective, deliberate thinker, the person willing to engage in, wrestle with, and reconcile the history and the relevant case law, such formalism strikes me as hollow and disingenuous. By every measure -- moral, historical, philosophical, and jurisprudential -- it seems to me that the only right and honest interpretation of the Constitution you can reach is one that permits public school systems to adopt voluntary integration policies. Period. Indeed, exclamation mark!

So, my view in the Fall had been that justice would prevail. These cases were way too big, way too important for the Court to fumble at the goal line. It's 2007 -- we are more than 50 years beyond Brown. Even if the Court were to cabin its ruling in a way that greatly limited the ability of public school systems to engage in voluntary integration, I simply could not bring myself to believe that it would deny us even the Pyrrhic victory of some flowery language, right? Justice O'Connor realized the importance lip service in Grutter, the relevant portions of which even Justice Kennedy joined. Surely Justice Roberts (rumored to be the author of the forthcoming majority opinion) is not looking to go down in history as the man who finally put Brown to rest.

Besides, I saw no reason in hanging my head before there was a certain reason to do so. You have to believe. What do those of us standing on the sidelines have at this point, if not hope?

I must confess, the Court is doing all it can to steal even this glimmer hope. Many expected the Court would issue its decision on the voluntary integration cases this past Thursday -- it didn't, but it sure has heck did issue a zinger of a ruling in Bowles v. Russell. A 5-4 decision (usual suspects), Bowles held that a habeas petitioner's appeal, which was filed within the time afforded to him by a federal district court order, was appropriately denied by the Sixth Circuit because, as it turns out, the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure (Rule 4(a)(6), to be exact) actually allowed him three fewer days to file than the court's order did. Thank you for your notice of appeal, Mr. Bowles; you complied with the order, but we will not be able to afford you any review.

Bowles couldn't have actually held that, could it? Having read the opinions, I cannot quite say that either the facts or the legal analysis gave me much insight into the minds of Justice Thomas and his colleagues in the majority, and what they believed is to be accomplished by denying Mr. Bowles an opportunity to be heard based on his and his lawyers' reliance on a federal district court order. The majority opinion often returned to the idea that it was Congress, not the courts, who created these jurisdictional rules, and thus Congress, and not the courts, who must be petitioned to make them more just. "If rigorous rules like the one applied today are thought to be inequitable," writes Justice Thomas, "Congress may authorize courts to promulgate rules that excuse compliance with the statutory time limits" (emphasis mine).

But this abdication of authority -- the suggestion that the Court's hands are tied because Congress and only Congress has the ability to modify jurisdictional requirements -- strikes me as a bit disingenuous when, in the same breath, Justice Thomas dismisses with the back of his hand an argument grounded in the "unique circumstances" doctrine, which could very well have provided the Court a basis for granting relief. After reviewing the case law discussing unique circumstances, he states: "We see no compelling reason to resurrect the doctrine from its 40-year slumber. Accordingly, we reject Bowles’ reliance on the doctrine, and we overrule [two Supreme Court decisions] to the extent they purport to authorize an exception to a jurisdictional rule." Sounds like it was a fielder's choice to me.

In the end, the legal issues raised in Bowles were not very complicated. The real question was where the sympathies of the Justices lie. Justice Souter's dissent summed it up like this:

"The District Court told petitioner Keith Bowles that his notice of appeal was due on February 27, 2004. He filed a notice of appeal on February 26, only to be told that he was too late because his deadline had actually been February 24. It is intolerable for the judicial system to treat people this way, and there is not even a technical justification for condoning this bait and switch."

Intolerable? Yes. Bait-and-switch? You bet. But is it the law? It is now.

You might be wondering what Bowles has to do with voluntary school integration. Well, perhaps (and hopefully) nothing, but for me, the take-away is this: Many had previously speculated that, with Justices Roberts and Alito, there is a new, more solidified and emboldened majority on the Court. I had been reluctant to jump to any conclusions, holding out hope that the experts would be proven wrong. I endured many other of the closely-watched decisions of this term strongly suggesting that my hold-out was futile, but for some reason, it was Bowles that pushed me over the edge. Yes, we are indeed witnessing a shift even further right. George W. Bush has gotten what he wanted. Uncle.

But, that said, until we get the final word on Louisville and Seattle, I shall maintain hope. The promise -- even if not yet the reality -- of racially and ethnically integrated quality public schools has become part of the fabric of this nation, and not without long decades of struggle, sacrifice, violence. Whatever their political stripe, the Justices, I must believe, know this, indeed, lived through this. So, until I'm proven wrong, I'll continue to believe that their opinions will recognize and do justice to this history, and to the future.

Besides, what do we have, if not hope?

At Risk: The Power of Local School Districts to Avoid the Harmful Effects of Racial Isolation

2007-06-13T16:50:00.000-04:00

A recent article, posted on the American Constitution Society blog, explains how the Supreme Court cases from Seattle and Louisville could undermine local school districts' voluntary efforts to combat segregation.

You can find the article here.

Desegregation Dollars

2007-06-13T16:13:00.000-04:00

Later this month, the U.S. Mint is making available for purchase special silver dollar coins commemorating the 50th anniversary of the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School, and celebrating the nine brave students who "faced the violence and hatred of a segregated society" and took "an important step in the country’s quest for racial equality in public education." Let's hope that the Supreme Court also honors the sacrifice made by those young pioneers in furtherance of that quest, and recognizes that their dreams are yet unfulfilled. We've got a long way to go, and while the coin is a beautiful tribute, a court decision would be worth more.

Opponents of School Integration Plans Misread Brown v. Board of Education

2007-06-13T15:09:00.000-04:00

Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Goodwin Liu, a Berkeley Law Professor, describes how opponents of the Seattle and Louisville school integration plans are misreading Brown v. Board of Education to stand for the notion that the Constitution is colorblind. In his article, Liu explains that Brown, "did not establish colorblindness as a legal principle" and that there is "no constitutional equivalence between race-conscious efforts to segregate and race-conscious efforts to integrate public schools."

Chief Justice Roberts, who wrote in a 2006 dissent that,“It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race,” appears not to appreciate the importance of educational diversity in an increasingly diverse world. In this article, Liu explains how both the U.S. Government (arguing that Brown, "held that intentionally classifying students on the basis of race violates the equal protection clause") and the Chief Justice ("liken[ing] the children in Seattle and Louisville to the children in Brown because 'they're being assigned on the basis of their race'") appear to miss the point of Brown--namely, that "racial apartheid has no place in public schools or elsewhere in public life."

To read Professor Liu's article, entitled, "The Meaning of Brown vs. the Board," click here.

Study Reveals that All Students Learn More in Integrated Schools

2007-06-13T14:46:00.000-04:00

In "Lost Learning, Forgotten Promises," Douglas Harris found that:

Minority students learn more in integrated schools.
Racial integration improves the equity of learning outcomes in general as well as in the Louisville and Seattle districts that are the subjects of the Supreme Court case.

More specifically, Harris found that:

African Americans and Hispanics learn more in integrated schools. Minorities attending integrated schools also perform better in college attendance and employment.
Controlled choice and other forms of desegregation benefit minority students.
Racial integration is a rare case where an educational policy appears to improve educational equity at little financial cost.

This report is especially noteworthy because of its exhaustive analysis. Harris explained that, "Using test score information required by the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, the study analyzes the effects of segregation in more than 22,000 schools across the country that enroll more than 18 million students. Most previous studies on the subject have included no more than a few thousand students, making this study arguably the largest ever conducted on the effects of segregation."

While the link to the full report is above, you can find a summary here.

"Thurgood Marshall Must be Spinning in his Grave"

2007-06-11T17:32:00.000-04:00

In a November 29, 2006 Washington Post column ("A Slide Toward Segregation"), Ruth Marcus explained how, "A half-century after Brown v. Board of Education, it's come, amazingly, to this: The Supreme Court, in the name of preventing race discrimination, is being asked to stop local schools from voluntarily adopting plans to promote integration. . . .Thurgood Marshall must be spinning in his grave." To read the column in full, click here.

"Leaving Integration Behind"

2007-06-11T17:11:00.000-04:00

Click here for an article published on TomPaine.com, providing a historical discussion of school desegregation, No Child Left Behind, and the "decades-long good faith efforts of many school districts to promote meaningful integration in their schools."

Transcript of Century Foundation Discussion on the Future of School Integration

2007-06-11T16:56:00.001-04:00

Click here for the edited transcript of a Century Foundation event entitled, "The Future of School Integration: Race, Class, and the U.S. Supreme Court."

The discussion features: Theodore M. Shaw (Director-Counsel and President, NAACP Legal Defense Fund), Roger Clegg (President and General Counsel, Center for Equal Opportunity), Richard Kahlenberg (Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation), Patt Todd (Director of Student Assignments, Jefferson County Public Schools, Louisville) and Kathy Slobogin (Managing Editor of CNN Presents and Event Moderator).

Summary of Amicus Briefs in Support of School Districts

2007-06-11T16:51:00.000-04:00

Click here for a summary of the 50 amicus briefs filed in support of the school districts in the Seattle and Louisville school integration cases.

Can Integrated Schools Fight Crime?

2007-06-11T16:41:00.000-04:00

For anyone who's been following the voluntary school desegregation fight, the oft-repeated message from the Louisville and Seattle school districts and their supporters is no doubt familiar: a diverse student body is an important educational tool for teaching tolerance, cultural competence, and practice dealing with people from different backgrounds in the real world. As important as all of these skills are, their relative intangibility can make them hard to appreciate; their complex role in measurably improving test scores or college or job prospects can make them seem like a luxury rather than a necessity. According to law enforcement experts, however, integrated schools provide more than an education in interacting with others. For many Black and Latino students, an integrated school may be their best shot at getting an education at all.

Studies have shown that whether or not a student attends a racially-isolated school with a high concentration of minority students is a good predictor of whether that student will drop out or graduate. While the overall graduation rate nationwide is 68%, students in segregated urban school districts such as Oakland, CA, and Cleveland, OH have graduation rates of only 30%. Meanwhile, in school districts like St. Louis, MO, where segregated schools contribute to the below average Black graduation rate of 60%, a voluntary integration program has raised African-American rates of graduation in two participating schools to 87% and an astounding 100%. Beyond graduation, minority students who attend integrated schools are also much more likely to go on to attend college as well.

At the same time, whether or not a student completes high school is in turn a good predictor of whether or not a young person will become involved in crime. High school dropouts account for a majority of the nation's prisoners, and a third of all male high school dropouts will have spent some time in prison before they turn 25. The median income for high school graduates is close to double the median income for those who did not finish high school, due in part to the fact that high school dropouts face much higher rates of unemployment. Students who have attended college are even less likely to be incarcerated and more likely to have well-paying jobs. Research shows that increasing the average level of education by only one year can reduce arrests by as much as 11%. In these cases, it is not only the students who benefit -- a mere 1% increase in high school graduation rates in 1990 might have saved 400 victims of murder in that year alone. Society as a whole pays the costs of this preventable violence, both in money -- processing offenders through the court system and housing them in correctional facilities -- and in lives.

To learn more about education and crime prevention, go to http://www.naacpldf.org/content/pdf/voluntary/both_parties/Joseph_Brann_et_al._(Law_Enforcement).pdf

Racial Diversity's Major League Benefits

2007-06-11T15:17:00.000-04:00

This year marks the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's first game playing with the Brooklyn Dodgers, an event now widely accepted as having profoundly changed not only the face of baseball and professional sports in America, but the course of the civil rights movement as well. Before the military or the nation's public schools were forcibly desegregated by law, the Dodgers' voluntary signing of Robinson signaled that black players were as skilled and valuable as white players, but more importantly, that the national pastime could no longer function divided with players by race into different leagues. Robinson proved his worth immediately with a stellar season, hitting .297, playing more games and scoring more runs than any other Dodger, stealing more bases than any other player in the National League, and being named Rookie of the Year by The Sporting News. His performance ushered in a wave of other black players on other teams the following season, with the effects of baseball's integration spreading to the National Football League, which began recruiting African-American players by the late 1940's, and the National Basketball Association, which recruited African-American basketball players from college from the days of its inception in 1949.

Robinson's success affected far more than the fates of other black athletes, however. During his first season, the Dodgers played to sold-out stadiums where ever they traveled, with Chicago's Wrigley Field packing in 47,000 fans -- 10,000 more than maximum capacity -- when the Dodgers came to visit. By the end of the season, Robinson had helped lead the Brooklyn Dodgers to the National League pennant and helped the Dodgers set a new attendance record, drawing over 1.8 million fans—the highest single-season attendance in history atEbbets Field. Robinson’s presence and popularity also drove the total attendance for the National League above ten million fans—the highest single-season total to that date. Robinson’s success on the field and at the turnstiles demonstrated beyond any doubt to millions of Americans that African-American players were capable of competing with and working in harmony with the Caucasian players in the Major Leagues.

That the integration of baseball had such an overwhelmingly positive effect not only on black players, but on the popularity and level of competition of the sport as well was much of the reason that the Dodgers voluntary inclusion of Robinson was so monumental. Baseball was the most universally embraced sport in America at the time, and Robinson's highly visible presence was a powerful catalyst in the larger battle for equal opportunity and civil rights. At the same time, athletes on the newly integrated teams and their fans were getting the chance to interact with people of a different race, and finding the experience to be illuminating. As African-American player Ed Charles noted, "It gave us a chance to know each other better. Once you get to know someone, you’re not going to feel as threatened...Any forum that brings people together can lift the cloud of ignorance from all of us." It also brought millions of Americans of different racial backgrounds together across National League cities, in person and in spirit, to root for the same team of players and to learn that they could co-exist with fellow citizens across the color line.

Local communities such as Louisville and Seattle are hoping to harness this same potential in their voluntary integration plans. Children who go to school with one another may share the joys and challenges of growing up, learning, working and playing to an even greater degree than teammates on the field. Additionally, integrated schools bring about integrated sports teams. Like their professional counterparts, student-athletes in integrated settings tend to display a higher level of academic, professional, and athletic success, as well as showing greater levels of teamwork, racial tolerance, and achievement both on and off the field.

Reflecting on the unique power of sports to foster tolerance and multiculturalism, the NCAA states that "Numerous studies have found that sports provide key social contexts for students of different backgrounds to interact “(1) as equals, (2) in a cooperative way, and (3) with shared goals." Of course, integrated elementary, middle, and high schools as a whole provide very similar opportunities for children, as illustrated by the following quote from social scientist T.F.Pettigrew, and cited by the NCAA: "The athletic arena is a domain that requires positive group-based interactions in order for team members to experience success, and in fact is one of the few realms in which all of the essential conditions for reducing prejudice are met. Specifically, the contact occurs between individuals with equalized status in the situation, the contact entails purposeful activity toward common goals fostering interdependence, the contact is cooperative, and the contact is socially sanctioned." The athletic arena is certainly a realm in which all of these conditions are met, but I can think of another.

For more information on the importance of racial integration in sports, check out the NCAA amicus brief at http://www.naacpldf.org/content/pdf/voluntary/both_parties/NCAA_and_NBRPA_Brief.pdf

Briefing Paper on Seattle and Louisville Cases

2007-06-11T14:00:00.000-04:00

Click here to view the Seattle and Louisville voluntary school integration cases briefing paper.

Fact Sheets for Seattle and Louisville Cases

2007-06-11T13:16:00.000-04:00

For a fact sheet on the Louisville case (Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education), click here.

For a fact sheet on the Seattle case (Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1), click here.

Background Information on Voluntary K-12 Integration

2007-06-11T12:12:00.000-04:00

1) For a comprehensive manual on voluntary k-12 school integration, click here. This manual was designed for parents, educators, and advocates and provides:

Historical information on court-ordered desegregation, the contemporary resegregation crisis, and the importance of integrated schools and classrooms.
The kinds of student assignment strategies that districts have adopted to reduce racial and ethnic isolation and promote integration.
Information on how communities and schools can promote integration.
Frequently Asked Questions and links to additional resources.

2) Click here for a fact sheet describing how race-neutral school integration plans impact racial diversity. Generally, the fact sheet explains why race-neutral alternatives do not achieve racial diversity and details specific challenges faced by school districts using race-neutral alternatives.

For more detailed analyses of individual districts' experiences with race-neutral approaches to school integration, see the "SES/Alternative Approaches to School Integration " label.

Kids SpeakOut! Contest Winners

2007-06-10T18:49:00.000-04:00

In the sea of the voices weighing in on the topic of voluntary school integration, the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights still felt someone was missing: kids themselves. Several months ago, the Campaign launched an essay contest for school children on the topic of diversity in schools, hoping to get enough participation confirm the overwhelming implications of the battle in the courts on the everyday lives of students. The outpouring of student work was even larger than they had hoped: thousands of students wrote in, responding to the broad question of "Why Does Diversity Matter?" Writing about their own experiences with the dangers of isolation and the richness of many different kinds of cultural integration, the seven winners and finalists are eloquent ambassadors for those who will be most affected by the court's upcoming ruling.

My personal favorite is "Invisibility" by Kyle Mealand, a 16-year-old from Seattle, WA, whose own school system is at issue in the voluntary integration cases. Mealand, who bases his essay largely on his time spent in post-apartheid South Africa, conceives of segregation as a force for making entire communities invisible to one another. The implications of such group blindness are devastating to vulnerable or disenfranchised populations, and true communication in this environment is impossible.

To read his and the other winning essays, visit the Campaign's "Kids Speakout!" website.

With resegregation, Charlotte, North Carolina has witnessed a critical loss in intercommunity cooperation and support for public schools

2007-06-09T20:04:00.000-04:00

Charlotte’s experience underscores why communities that value robust public support for public education should avoid racial polarization within a school system. Readers can read about Charlotte’s story in the Brief of the Swann Fellowship, filed in Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education and Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 by sixteen individuals and a non-profit called the Swann Fellowship. These seventeen amici include former members of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Board of Education, current Charlotte-Mecklenburg students and parents, and religious organizations that make up the Swann Fellowship, which advocates for a quality, equitable, integrated public school system. Together, these amici have over 40 years of direct experience with de jure segregation, court-ordered desegregation and, after unitary status was declared in 2001, resegregation.

In their brief, the Charlotte amici describe the monumental changes that happened in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools during the era of desegregation. As thousands of parents involved themselves in their children’s newly integrated schools, the public emerged as an unanticipated force in school affairs. Schools benefited from the advocacy of integrated PTAs, bi-racial grassroots advocacy helped tilt school board policies toward more equitable outcomes for African American and less affluent white students, and the business community reversed itself to become a major source of support for an integrated school system. Before 1972, no African American had ever been elected to school board. After 1972, a majority white electorate repeatedly cast winning votes for an integrated school board and no anti-busing candidate was elected to the school board for the next eighteen years.

To the degree that desegregation in Charlotte-Mecklenburg provided a new context for increased racial, social and political cohesion, this cohesion likely would not have materialized if integrated schools had failed to serve the educational needs of CMS students. The evidence shows that CMS students benefited both academically and socially from racially diverse schools. After desegregation the performance of both African American and white students improved, with African American students experiencing the most dramatic progress.

In the 1990s, a new superintendent, explosive population growth, and pressure from new arrivals to Charlotte’s suburbs (who often did not share in the sense of civic investment in Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s successful experience with desegregation) prompted the district to move away from the use of busing as a means to integrate its schools and to rely more on the use of magnet school assignments. Schools became more racially identifiable during this period. Still, only 4% of Black students attended 90-100% minority schools in 1995. Soon, that number would skyrocket.

After a parent challenged the district's race conscious magnet admissions policies in 1997, his lawsuit ultimately resulted in a 2001 decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools had achieved unitary status, a decision opposed by Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s Board of Education. The school board responded to the loss by adopting a “race-neutral” plan in 2002 that sent most students to neighborhood schools. In the very first year of neighborhood assignments, the number of schools with minority enrollment of 91% to 100% more than doubled, and the number of racially identifiable schools jumped from 47 to 81 schools. Two years later, 87 (out of 150) schools were racially identifiable.

Public support for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools soon began to unravel and the discord continues to this day. Predominantly white, middle- and upper-middle class schools are effectively closed to non-white students who live outside of privileged neighborhoods. Achievement data showing inferior academic outcomes in inner city, minority schools has motivated parents of students in overcrowded, majority white schools to stay put and demand that the district prioritize new construction in the suburbs. Parents of students in majority nonwhite undersubscribed schools, angry over chronic low performance in these schools, have demanded that the focus be on addressing the academic crises in racially isolated schools. United only by their anger, voters from Charlotte’s segregated white suburbs and its segregated African American center city recently defeated $427 million in school bonds. Meanwhile, millions of dollars of reform efforts targeting academic performance in racially isolated minority schools continue to fail to achieve the targeted results.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg experience provides a cautionary tale. The costs are high when school districts and communities ignore the connections between racial integration, public support for schools and quality educational opportunities for all students.

Research Links about Segregation

2007-06-08T18:17:00.002-04:00

For many people, it may come as a surprise that school segregation still exists, and is still a matter of contention in many districts around the country. A couple of articles discuss school segregation and why it matters: http://www.tolerance.org/teach/magazine/features.jsp?cid=489 and http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/columns/story/579359.html.

The Civil Rights Project has extensively studied the issue of racial segregation in schools. Racial segregation is increasing today and has been for almost two decades. Black segregation has been increasing in the South rapidly. Nationally, Latino students are the most segregated minority group (I'll discuss this more in a future post). However, white students are more isolated than students of any other racial/ethnic group. For more information, see a fact sheet of segregation: http://www.naacpldf.org/content/pdf/voluntary/State_of_Segregation.pdf

A few other CRP studies are worth mentioning for anyone looking for more information on segregation.
1) The most recent report on school segregation, which discusses the rapid, multiracial transformation of the nation's public schools: http://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/deseg/Racial_Transformation.pdf
2) A report documenting the rapid resegregation of many school districts, including suburban school districts that were formerly all-white: http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/deseg/Race_in_American_Public_Schools1.pdf
3) A report examining the growing segregation and resulting effects on achievement in Denver: http://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/deseg/denver-4_5_06.pdf
4) A report examining segregation across a metropolitan area (Boston) and how segregation across boundary lines can affect the integration of a student's school, their school's educational resources, and the achievement of students: http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/metro/Segregation_Educational_Outcomes.pdf
5) On a related topic, a report examining the segregation of teachers in public schools: http://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/deseg/segregation_american_teachers12-06.pdf

Finally, for more information on research about the benefits of integrated schools and the harms of segregated schools, the social science statement submitted by 553 social scientists summarizes the extensive desegregation literature. It is http://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/deseg/amicus_parents_v_seatle.pdf

The Tangled History of Housing and School Integration

2007-06-08T17:48:00.000-04:00

In 1954, right before the decision in Brown was issued, another integration drama was being played out in Louisville, Kentucky. Andrew and Charlotte Wade, who were black, were looking to purchase a house for their young family in the suburbs of Louisville. They were not having any luck. Although zoning ordinances forbidding the sale of property to African-American buyers had been struck down as unconstitutional years earlier, in practice local realty practices ensured that a couple like the Wades was unlikely to ever move into the neighborhoods they chose. Carl and Anne Braden, two white married journalists who were active participants in the growing civil rights protest movement, knew the Wades through friends. The Bradens offered to buy a house in the all-white suburb of Shively and then sell it to the Wades. On May 15, 1954, two days before the Brown decision, the Wades moved into their new home.

The response in Shively was as violent as any reaction to the Supreme Court decision. The Wades were constantly and dangerously harassed; a cross was burned in the front yard and shots were fired at the house, with several bullets entering through windows. A little more than a month after their arrival in Shively, the Wades' house was bombed while they were away from home. Badly shaken, the Wades returned to the city, fearing for their lives and those of their children. Instead of prosecuting the bombers, local law enforcement targeted the Bradens, whose two cars had been blown up in response to their actions. Amid claims that they were the masterminds behind a massive Communist plot to stir up racial unrest and violence, and thereby overthrow the government of the state of Kentucky, the Bradens were charged under state law with sedition. By the time the charges were dropped when the U.S. Supreme Court nullified state sedition laws, Carl Braden had already served 8 months in jail, and the Bradens continued to be shunned by many even within the civil rights movement.

During the current battle over school desegregation -- in Louisville, the hometown of the Wades and Bradens -- much has been said about the issue of "neighborhood schools." Opponents of voluntary integration extol the importance of a community centered around the physical home, where students can walk to school and play with their classmates on the streets where they all live. Certainly, "neighborhood" connotes something safe and comforting, familiar and intimate, almost like an extended family; no doubt the Wades' arrival in Shively was so disturbing to their close-minded neighbors for precisely this reason. Fifty years later, it is tempting to imagine that the "neighborhood" reaction in Shively was an anomaly, and that diverse neighborhoods could provide a backbone for local, integrated schools.

Unfortunately, the Wades' experience was not an isolated one. For decades after housing discrimination had become illegal, black families experienced a variety of difficulties in trying to move where they wanted. As suburbs developed after World War II, both the Veterans Administration and the Federal Housing Administration (which together financed almost half of all suburban homes in the 1950's and 1960's) initially endorsed the use of race-restrictive covenants and refused to underwrite loans that would introduce ‘incompatible’ racial groups into white residential enclaves. Blacks were systematically denied entrance to these neighborhoods as they formed, and the effect is still evident today. In fact, while cities like Louisville and Seattle have gradually become more integrated over the years, the concentration of isolated, black-majority census tracts in both cities has increased.

Even now, both private and government-sponsored policies and practices in the housing market continue to have a discriminatory effect on minority buyers and renters, and a segregating effect on America's neighborhoods. Public housing has been constructed without an eye to integration of neighborhoods, and indeed often with the intent of further segregating them. As a result majority of African-American public housing residents live in poor, racially isolated neighborhoods. In the last ten years in both the Seattle and Louisville metropolitan areas, more than 68% of Low Income Housing Tax Credit family units were located in census tracts with greater than average minority population. Section 8 tenant assistance program funds are spent disproportionately on affordable housing in racially identifiable, high poverty neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, in the private sector, real estate agents frequently steer people to different neighborhoods based on their race, an illegal practice that has persisted (in up to 15% of cases in which test subjects posed as comparable white, black, or Latino customers) in part because reporting of such methods rarely occurs. Real estate agents have also been shown to give white customers favored treatment over black customers 17% of the time, and Latinos 20% of the time. Mortgage lending and insurance redlining similarly contribute to residential segregation; lenders and insurers offer different terms and policies to minority homebuyers and deny their applications at disproportionately high rates. In both Seattle and Louisville, the rate of rejection of mortgage applications differs by 10% and 11%, respectively, between white and black applicants.

For cities like Louisville and Seattle to strictly maintain "neighborhood" schools, then, is to actively choose segregated schools. Without the countering effect of diversity and multiculturalism at school, most students will not be likely to seek out friendships and opportunities outside their largely homogeneous immediate surroundings. Rather than being safe havens of play and learning, neighborhoods will be incubators for distrust, fear, and intolerance. Conversely, school integration has been shown in studies to directly contribute to stable residential integration. Students educated in integrated environments go on to be far more likely to live in integrated neighborhoods. Families living in cities with integrated schools, especially those with school choice plans like Louisville and Seattle, can be more confident that their children will receive a high-quality education irrespective of where they live. Eventually, residential integration can pave the way to an eventual return – should the cities so choose – to true "neighborhood schools" where diversity will continue to thrive.

To learn more about the connections between integrated housing and integrated schools, read the Housing Scholars and Research & Advocacy Organizations' amicus brief in support of the school districts at http://www.naacpldf.org/content/pdf/voluntary/both_parties/Housing_Brief.pdf

Wake County’s Socio-Economic Integration Plan: Analysis of an Idiosyncratic Landscape

2007-06-08T13:54:00.000-04:00

In a 2004 report, the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, looking to five school districts as models, argued that race-neutral student assignment plans could further the goals of racial integration in elementary and secondary schools. The Wake County Public School System (Wake County), located in North Carolina, was one such district. In 2000, Wake County abandoned its eighteen year-old voluntary desegregation plan in favor of a socio-economic status plan (SES Plan) that eliminated race as a factor in the creation of student assignments. The SES Plan, because it improved student achievement for blacks, whites, Hispanics, and special education students, led petitioners’ amici in the Louisville and Seattle school integration cases to proclaim that racial diversity may be achieved through race-neutral means. In short, they claimed that the story of Wake County demonstrates how socio-economic status is an appropriate proxy for race in the effort to realize Brown’s vision of school integration.

As explained in a 2005 New York Times report, a 2002 Spencer Foundation report, and the briefs of the Wake County Assistant Superintendent responsible for student assignments, 553 Social Scientists, and the Council of Great City Schools, the story of Wake County does not stand for this principle. This analysis examines three factors—Wake County’s unique demographics, increase in racial segregation, and unusually strong and extended commitment to educational diversity and equality—to demonstrate how the Wake County SES Plan is not a viable model for school districts seeking to promote racial diversity through student assignments. Before addressing these issues, it is first important to understand the historical context behind the SES Plan.

In 1976, to expedite the racial integration of the region, the Raleigh City Schools merged with the Wake County School System, combining the city and suburbs into one district. The district operated under a court-ordered desegregation plan until it achieved unitary status in 1982. Between 1982 and 1999, Wake County implemented a voluntary desegregation plan in which each school was required to have a minority enrollment between 15% and 45%. Comparatively, Wake County’s plan was a success: whereas 70% of the nation’s black students attended schools that were predominately black in 1999, only 21% of Wake County’s black students attended predominantly black schools.

In 2000, Wake County adopted a new assignment policy that eliminated race from consideration in student assignments. The new policy established the goal that no more than 40% of a school’s total enrollment could be comprised of students eligible for free-and-reduced-price lunch (FRL) and no more than 25% could be comprised of students performing below grade level on state exams. Under the SES Plan, Wake County’s diversity level, although it decreased slightly, remained comparatively high.

Wake County’s success is praiseworthy, but does not guarantee the viability of race-neutral policies beyond its borders. The New York Times report explained that Wake County’s “unusual circumstances” suggest that its positive results may not be replicable across the country. Similarly, the brief of 553 Social Scientists stated that, “Wake County has a set of special conditions rarely found in major schools districts” and that socioeconomic diversity has created racial integration only in districts that share these precise conditions (553 Social Scientists, Appendix 49).

First, and most importantly, Wake County’s success is particular to its demographics. Wake County is the 22nd largest school district in the nation; as of 2006-2007, it enrolled 128,072 students in 147 schools (http://www.wcpss.net/basic_facts.html). In 2005-2006, the student racial composition was: 55.4% white, 26.9% African American, 9.2% Hispanic, 4.7% Asian, 3.5% multiracial, and .3% American Indian. Id. While a fourth of Wake County students live in poverty, African American students are about ten times as likely to be poor as white students (553 Social Scientists, Appendix 49). According to Walt Sherlin, the Assistant Superintendent, Wake County maintained relatively high racial diversity under the SES Plan because, “its African-American and Latino students are nearly ten times more likely to be eligible for FRL than white students. . . . Put simply, Wake County has relatively few white students who come from low-income families and relatively few African-American and Latino students who come from more affluent families ” (Sherlin, 5). These numbers are unique because “their convergence in one county is rare” (Sherlin, 7). Accordingly, because of the significant racial disparity between poor and non-poor families, socio-economic integration in Wake County necessarily promotes racial integration. This fortunate by-product of the SES Plan would vanish if, for example, more low-income white students were to enroll in Wake County schools.

Second, despite the demographic factors linking racial diversity to socio-economic diversity, Wake County has experienced a decline in racial diversity under the SES Plan (Sherlin, 2). This fact presents a stark and clear warning: if socio-economic integration diminished racial diversity in Wake County, it would likely destroy it in the majority of districts, where “the distribution of poverty does not fall so heavily along racial lines” (Sherlin, 8).

Finally, Wake County’s success is not generalizable because, over the twenty-year period preceding the plan, residents of Wake County demonstrated an unusually strong and cohesive commitment to racial diversity and equality in their schools. This commitment was demonstrated throughout the 1990s, when well-funded anti-busing candidates consistently failed to win a seat on the school board (Silberman, 145). Therefore, Wake County was not starting from scratch in 2000; to the contrary, many parents were accustomed to and supportive of integration in the name of educational equality (Alan Finder, As Test Scores Jump, Raleigh Credits Integration by Income, N.Y. Times, September 25, 2005). Accordingly, in light of its distinctive and storied legacy of integration, Wake County was uniquely positioned to succeed the moment the SES Plan was initiated.

As the amicus briefs for the Council of Great City Schools (“illogical to require use of race-neutral methods when the compelling interest identified has an explicitly racial component. [Furthermore,] the research does not support [the] assertion . . . that socio-economic status could be used instead of race to achieve [racial diversity]”) and the 553 Social Scientists (“[r]esearch further supports the conclusion that race-conscious policies are necessary to maintain racial integration”) reveal, race-neutral policies are not as effective as race-conscious policies in achieving racial diversity. Wake County does not provide the reason to believe otherwise.

A Lifetime Measured in the Struggle for Equality

2007-05-17T10:59:00.000-04:00

A Reflection on the 53rd Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education

One sees a great deal in 100 years. In 1907, Teddy Roosevelt was President, there were only 45 states in the union. And African Americans were locked into an ironclad system of injustice known as Jim Crow. This violent negation of democracy was secured by the Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson and upheld by centuries of brutal custom. Only the most resilient optimist could foresee a day when access to education, public facilities, housing, jobs and transportation were not based on color-coded hierarchy, and the nation could realize a day such as the 53rd anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Fortunately, Oliver Hill was one of those optimists. Hill, who turned 100 years old on May 1, 2007, not only witnessed the demise of that system, but he was one of the legal strategists who helped bring it down. He along with Thurgood Marshall, James Nabrit, Jack Greenberg and others were part of the legal team that brought an end to legalized segregation in 1954.

Time has a way of reducing even the most far-reaching moments of history into thumbnail sketches and in the case of Brown we see simply a case about segregated education. In reality, the Brown decision marked a legal turning point in which the 14th Amendment was returned to its true purpose. Crafted in the aftermath of the Civil War, the Amendment was intended to protect newly emancipated blacks from state laws that sought to virtually re-enslave them. But a series of Supreme Court decisions culminating in Plessy v. Ferguson chipped away at the Amendment and left blacks nearly defenseless against resurgent racism, particularly in the Deep South. In short, achieving racial democracy in America meant finding a way to revive the spirit of that Amendment.

Inspired by their mentor Charles Hamilton Houston, Oliver Hill - and his classmate and close friend Thurgood Marshall understood this reality. When a group of black students marched out of R.R. Moton High School in Virginia to protest the dilapidated conditions of the building, Hill seized the opportunity to attack segregation. When the parents of eight year-old Linda Brown challenged the policy that sent her to a school miles away from her home simply because she was black, Marshall saw a chance to change the course of history. Joined by school desegregation cases from Delaware, South Carolina and Washington, D.C. that became collectively argued as Brown v. Board of Education, their 1954 Supreme Court victory opened more than the doors of schoolhouses. It led to cases challenging racism in transportation, voting rights and housing. Brown provided a legal foundation that energized the Civil Rights Movement.

But again, one sees a great deal in a hundred years - not all of it pretty.

A half-century after the Brown decision, those groundbreaking contributions are in jeopardy of being undermined. Two generations of American children have matured with no knowledge of legally sanctioned apartheid in education. Although our school systems have not achieved the ideal of integration - many districts are more racially homogenous now than they were in the 1970s -- the days of legalized racial separation were banished to a dark corner of history. Or so we hoped.

Unfortunately, the worst elements of our nation's past are always threatening to resurrect themselves. Much of what Marshall and Hill accomplished may be undone by two cases that are currently before the Supreme Court. Recognizing the trend toward resegregation of public education, school districts in Louisville, Kentucky and Seattle, Washington adopted voluntary integration plans. For example, the Louisville school board weighed race along with numerous other factors like proximity and student preference and were still able to achieve a notable degree of diversity in their classrooms. Those plans are now under attack by organizations seeking to turn back the clock on racial progress in America.

If successful, the suits filed in Meredith v. Jefferson City Board of Education and Parents Involved in Community Schools v. the Seattle School District will severely hamper the ability of schools to diversify their student body. The result will be a world that looks disturbingly similar to the one that the Brown legal team was born into, one where democracy stops at the threshold of the classroom and the Constitution is a set of neglected principles.

If successful, the lawsuits could mark the beginning of an era in which the 14th Amendment is once again diminished as a tool for creating equality in America. If Brown helped pave the way for the civil rights movement, undermining Brown will be a harbinger of bad days ahead of us.

In 2007, Oliver Hill has lived long enough to see this nation take a momentous step forward and then teeter backward -- and that is something that none of us, regardless of age, can afford to let happen.

Amicus Briefs

2007-05-15T16:31:00.000-04:00

Last fall, more than 1,000 organizations and individuals - including political leaders, historians, social scientists, educators, corporations, civil rights groups, former Department of Defense officials, former U.S. cabinet secretaries and many others - weighed in with the Supreme Court to support Louisville's and Seattle's voluntary efforts to integrate their schools.

These individuals and organizations filed more than 50 amicus briefs on behalf of the school districts. Some of the briefs highlight the benefits of integration, such as improved academic ability for all students, greater success once in the workplace, and lower drop out rates. Some briefs highlight the need for race-conscious integration of K-12 schools. Others review some of the key history related to integration, including the 14th Amendment’s inclusionary purpose and America’s difficulties in integrating schools.

Collectively, the briefs provide a broad and compelling picture of why America needs integrated schools. (And beyond making sense, many of the briefs also make great reading - something not usually said about legal documents.)

Soon, we'll highlight some of these amicus briefs in separate posts. We’ll also link to a summary of all the briefs. In the meantime, if you just can't wait, the briefs in their entirety can be found here.

[Note: The amicus briefs are pdf files.]

WHY ARE WE HERE?

2007-05-07T17:01:00.000-04:00

Brown v. Board of Education's promise of inclusive, integrated, high-quality schools for all of our nation's children has never been more important. Yet in the 52 years since Brown, the nation has struggled to realize that promise. After a period of massive resistance and foot dragging, our country made real progress toward more integrated and equitable education. Over the last two decades, however, the nation has witnessed disturbing levels of resegregation across the country. Indeed, America's public schools are now more segregated than they were in 1970. Certain school districts have voluntarily tried to fight this trend, and to bring students together across lines of difference.

The Supreme Court will soon decide Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, two critical cases from Seattle, Washington, and Louisville, Kentucky, that will clarify whether school districts may voluntarily continue to integrate their schools using methods that work for their communities. The Supreme Court’s decisions could limit the ability of communities to promote diverse local schools and provide opportunities for their children to learn, play and work together. Every child in these districts has a seat at the educational table. These cases will determine whether that seat must be segregated, or if it can represent the vibrant diversity in these communities.

So, why are we here? We're here to track and analyze the upcoming decisions. We're here to gather relevant news articles, opinion pieces, and commentary. We’re here to serve as a clearinghouse of information about the cases for local communities, advocacy groups, the media, educators, social scientists, attorneys, and others interested in their impact on the educational landscape in America.