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.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
San Francisco’s Socioeconomic Desegregation Plan: A Touted Model, Worth Reexamining
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Hope, Bowles Notwithstanding
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?
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
At Risk: The Power of Local School Districts to Avoid the Harmful Effects of Racial Isolation
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
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
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
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.
Monday, June 11, 2007
"Thurgood Marshall Must be Spinning in his Grave"
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"
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
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
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?
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
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
Click here to view the Seattle and Louisville voluntary school integration cases briefing paper.
Fact Sheets for Seattle and Louisville Cases
Background Information on Voluntary K-12 Integration
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.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Kids SpeakOut! Contest Winners
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.
Saturday, June 9, 2007
With resegregation, Charlotte, North Carolina has witnessed a critical loss in intercommunity cooperation and support for public schools
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.
Friday, June 8, 2007
Research Links about Segregation
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
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
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.