An End to Race-Based School Integration?
Brian Doherty | December 5, 2006, 6:05pm
The Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in a couple of cases involving the assignment of kids to public schools based on race. According to
this account in the
Boston Globe, signs point to a possible overthrow of such policies:
The Supreme Court justices, hearing arguments on school integration,
signaled yesterday that they are likely to bar the use of race when
assigning students to public schools. Such a ruling could deal a blow
to hundreds of school systems across the United States that use racial
guidelines to maintain a semblance of classroom integration in cities
whose neighborhoods are divided along racial lines......
Yesterday's argument also might mark the emergence of a five-member
majority on the court that may be determined to outlaw the official use
of racial guidelines in schools, colleges, and public agencies."The
purpose of the Equal Protection clause is to ensure that people are
treated as individuals rather than based on the color of their skin,"
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said.
Three years ago, the
court upheld affirmative action at universities. But that 5-to-4
decision depended on the now-retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
......At issue were the racial integration guidelines adopted
by school boards in Seattle and Louisville, Ky. The two cases are
Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1
and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education.
.......The court will issue a ruling in several months.........The justices who spoke during the argument
all agreed that racial integration is a laudable goal. However, a
narrow majority -- in comments, questions, and past decisions -- made
clear their belief that the Constitution forbids shifting children from
one school to another based on their race.
The very valuable ScotusBlog guides you to lots of other writeups of the arguments, and to MP3s of the arguments, if you want to think about the meaning of equal protection of the law when it comes to race and public education while jogging.
madpad | December 6, 2006, 12:57am | #
CharlesWT...While Derbyshire is an interesting and compelling conservative figure, I'd hardly take this article as a rational realistic assessment of public schools in America.
Derbyshire obviously has nothing more than opinion and hyperbole going for him. My advice? Enjoy his criticisms with a grain of salt and don't take them
too seriously.
In principle, I'm opposed to racial quotas that supplant merit-based systems. But I'm equally dubious of the libertarian dream of completely privatized schools systems.
Successful, productive societies in this world are filled with adults who can read and write and add - and (mostly) learned to do so at public expense in compulsory educational systems.
Failing societies throughout this world are filled with illiterates who had no such opportunities and are easily lead and controlled by folks who learned to read, write and add because their parents were elites and able to afford and justify private education.
I have no problem with school choice or even vouchers as long as a public school system is left intact. I send my own kids to private schools so I obviously have no problem with them.
Our nation did just fine with mostly public schools until the last 2 or 3 decades when high productivity made it possible for theorist dillitants to start screwing with basic education (IOW, trying to fix something that wasn't broken).
Add to this politicians screwing with education and you now have a mess. Things need fixing but that is hardly an indictment against public education.
That said, the reality is that cultural dynamics in most U.S. cities result in de facto segregation and massive inequalities of opportunity between races.
It's disingenuous to suggest that eliminating integration methods AND eliminating public schools will magically solve the problem.
If history is any guide, the reality is that quite the obvious will happen. In the end, I want an effective solution more than I want a principled one. I don't see privatizing all education doing anything but guranteeing and perpetuating racial disparities rather than solving them.
So I can agree with you that the current situation sucks and doesn't work. But to use it as justification for kicking education out from under underpriviledged children in the name of libertarian principles is sick and downright evil.
Paul | December 6, 2006, 1:20am | #
The result- very marginal improvements in testing scores in some districts and no improvement at all in others, notably Newark. My conclusion- the argument that it's all about money misses the mark.
Geof:
In essence, we're both exactly correct.
Me: It is about the money, because wealthy white neighborhoods don't want to lose their 'laptop in every hand' funding. They throw the minorities a bone, and feel good about themselves by wanting 'some color' in their schools.
You: Throwing money at schools has never made dramatic effect on overall performance.
The point: Education issues are far more complex than just moving some darker skins in amongst the lighter ones. Often times, the kids with darker skins whose parents are sending them to the good schools in the white neighborhoods have a common thread. Their parents care enough about their education, have the will, the ambition and the sense of priorities to push their kids in the right direction. The darker skinned kids would probably still do ok, even if they remained in the poorer schools.
Having said that, however, I still think that schools should be evenly funded. I believe this precisely because it's the first step in addressing the overall education gap. No one can claim that this school or that school is underfunded and therefore disadvantaged. Everyone's on even footing. Once that's taken care of, then individual school competency can be targeted. But until you solve the funding issue, the incompetent schools can simply cry foul on their funds.
Solving education is a multipronged approach. Funding is the first stab. Taking a white school with 1000 students, and a minority school with 1000 students, and putting 40 of those minority kids in with the white ones isn't changing the world. It's stroking someones sense of egalitarianism.
Travis:
School districts have different funding because people in those districts vote to pay more taxes for their schools.
If you take that money from the people who are willing to pay more in taxes, and give it to people who aren't, why the hell would anybody vote for more taxes for their district?
I know why schools are funded the way they are, it just needs to change- especially in denser urban districts.
When the City of Seattle puts a school levy on the ballot, it's not for one neighborhood, it's for all the schools in all the neighborhoods. All of this money needs to be put into one bucket and distributed evenly from there. Currently, it's not. That's why I say it's about the money, Travis. The people in the wealthy neighborhoods won't give up their money for the poorer schools. They'd rather throw a bone to the minority community instead of stepping up.
kevrob | December 6, 2006, 10:12am | #
...in the face of dismal test results, the argument has become that the poor districts need even more money because they are dealing with kids from disadvantaged backgrounds and home lives. - Geof
That's why a "money follows the student" model is better. Student A, with no noted developmental disabilities, could get the normal scholarship amount. Student B, who has some documented special needs, can get a premium attached to his.
Back in the real world, our state has tried to deal with the integration problem, but nothing seems to work. Our largest city was under a federal Court Order that demanded that some minority students be bused out of their neignhborhoods into the mostly white areas where the district had built newer schools. This didn't work, as the Order stopped at the city limits, and families fleeing busing and crime exercised the most expensive versions of school choice: they bought a house in the suburbs or sent their kids to parochial school. The City responded by developing magnet schools, and got a limited Open Enrollment bill through the legislature. A minority student from the city district could enroll in a suburban school that participated in the program, and a suburban kid could choose to go to school in the city. State aid based on the number of students participating was supposed to be an incentive. While I'm sure the program improved the education of most students who took part, it had little or no effect on the overall racial makeup of area publik skools. That continues to be an artifact of residential patterns. The city district became "majority minority" years ago. Plenty of white folks live in the city, they just move out of the reach of the awful government school system when they have kids. Plenty of white "empty nesters" sell the big suburban house when the kids graduate college and move back into town. Condo sales to childless professionals and to retirees have contributed to a downtown building boom.
We have one of the nation's few tax-funded private school choice programs. It is restricted to low-income families, so one odd development is that the private schools that in most of the country are seen as a safe harbor for white parents afraid of integration don't serve that function. The racial makeup of the local Catholic and Lutheran schools is probably more in line with what the anti-segregation reformers had in mind a half-century ago than the trainwreck that has been made out of the public system!
Local school systems here already get ~2/3 of their revenue from state aid. It would make complete sense to divorce the government schools entirely from the property tax, and restrict its use to local services more connected to owning property. If we cut the connection between buying an expensive house and assuring a slot in a less incompetent school for one's child, a solution might be in sight.
One big caveat: both the Open Enrollment program and school choice may succeed, to the extent that they do, as much if not more because they give minority parents who give a damn about the proper education of their children something to do about it. The programs may just be acting as a filter that separates the children of involved parents from those whose folks do little or nothing to push their kids to learn. Sitting next to white kids isn't a magic bullet. One of the Catholic Diocese's High Schools that was slated to close in the 1980s was reborn as an independent Catholic shool, with an almost all-minority enrollment. 75%+ of its students are in the choice program. 88% of all their graduates go on to college. I'm sure that's not due to the presence of a few white kids.
As for keeping the publik skools alive, I expect that any privatization program will have to phase them out, rather than close them precipitously. Perhaps they could be transformed into charter schools before they gain complete autonomy.
madpad, as for attendance at publik skools being the result of some theory, aren't you familiar with Horace Mann, John Dewey, or the entire Edublob that spawned in their wake? The Common School, run by arms of the state, was expressly a tool to "Americanize" the sons and daughters of immigrants, socialize them to citizenship, and keep children out of the work force until such time as they were needed to replace their elders. Of course, more modern theorists have stood much of this earlier thought on its head, with the idea of "Americanizing" becoming anethema to many caught in the clutches of the multicult.
As a libertarian, I have my own theory. Education should no more be in the hands of the state than the press, broadcasting or the churches. These institutions form the minds of the citizenry, and in a republic the citizens should choose the government, not vice versa.
Kevin
