Brown v. Board for the 21st Century...
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments earlier this week about the issue of voluntary integration plans for the school districts of Louisville, Kentucky, and Seattle, Washington.
Advocates, including civil rights groups, argue that racial integration fosters tolerance and better relations across all racial lines, and segregation "reduces academic achievement". Opponents, including the current administration, argue that integration policies violate the equal protection laws of the Constitution and thereby children should not be labeled by race.
In previous Kindling Flames posts, Nicole and I (on this blog and offline) have discussed color-blind policies in higher education and whether racial preferences actually benefit poor minority students (which if you read the posts, do not necessarily). This court case, while different than a higher education discussion, touches on the same issue of equity in education, and what it means to have diversity in our schools. Which begs the question, does voluntary racial integration policies provide equal opportunities in education, especially for those children (from low ses) who need it the most? Or do we need to take a different approach to ensure that all children receive quality education?
The Century Foundation issued a brief arguing that based on socioeconomic status would help close the achievement gap as well as foster diversity in schools. Basically, it will have the same intended results as the voluntary racial integration policies but under a more solid constitutional grounding.
I wanted to hear people's thoughts on this case and the issue of integration. Anyone game?
2 Comments:
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If you’re interested in the research, you should read AERA’s amicus brief on the court case. Good stuff. The research they cite shows that race-neutral assignment (such as by SES) doesn’t result in diverse schools to the extent that race-conscious assignment does. One of the reasons is that residential segregation is often driven more by race than class... many working or middle class minority families are unable to gain residential access to higher income neighborhoods, despite meeting the income thresholds. These families would not be helped by reassignment based on SES, as they are the SES diversity in their majority minority neighborhoods.
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Further--the brief goes on--based on different simulations on data for 89 of the country’s largest districts, Reardon, Yun and Kurlaender (EEPA, Spring 2006) conclude (even if exact family incomes were used instead of Free/Reduced Lunch status—which is highly unlikely) “income and race cannot stand as proxies for one another in school integration. Absent some substantial decline in racial residential segregation, race-neutral assignment policies are unlikely to produce significant racial school desegregation.”
I’m writing a paper on segregation in DC Schools (private, public and charter) for my Urban Sociology class, and the statistics are pretty shocking. Citywide, the average Black child (age 0-17) lives in a census tract that is 90% Black. If she is in public school, her school is 91% Black. In a charter school, her school is 92% Black. Okay—-you say—-this is because there aren’t enough White kids to go around and integrate? Try private schools: Black kids are only 42% of the students there, yet the average Black student’s private school is 75% Black and the average White student's private school is 72% White. These are huge disparities. I hope that the Supreme Court doesn’t outlaw those who are volunteering to correct them.
NMD, at December 07, 2006 3:04 PM
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This is a separate thought, but I think that K-12 is kind of a different beast than higher ed in this one. Assignment patterns for higher ed aren't anywhere as prescribed as they are for K-12--where you live doesn't directly determine where you get to go to college. In general, I think that elite higher ed institutions should consider dimensions of race & class when determing what "diversity" means, but K-12 has some legitimate reason to look at race alone.
By NMD, at December 07, 2006 3:11 PM
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