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Monday, December 4, 2006
Racial balancing in schools
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The problem with having “diversity” as the standard for determining school admissions and school attendance boundaries is that it’s eye-of-the-beholder — and, furthermore, it’s applied by people who have no particular expertise who are measuring only by skin color.
An important case on far local school systems can go to achieve skin-color “diversity” by creating attendance rules that effectively exclude some children from their neighborhood school on the basis of the color of their skin is being argued today before the U.S. Supreme Court. Suit was brought by parents in Louisville, Ky., and in Seattle, who objected after their local systems created admissions policies that effectively froze the black and white mix at arbitrary percentages. In Louisville, system policies are designed to keep black enrollment between 15 and 50 percent. In Seattle, the effort is to maintain a 40-60 ratio of whites to non-whites. In 2000-2001 in Seattle, about 10 percent of 3,000 ninth graders were denied admissions based on their race.
This is one of those instances where schools are used to achieve a social end that most people would regard as desirable — a nation where people are exposed to, and have an opportunity to know and to respect, each other’ s differences. But the problem is that it’s always reduced to skin color — and that becomes the basis for picking winners and losers.
It’s smart business to hire a work force that reflects the marketplace. Colleges and universities, certainly, should do everything possible to leave no child behind, reaching out to offer admissions to every qualified student and even to aggressively recruit poor blacks from families that have no prior exposure to big schools, like UGA or Georgia Tech.
The Bush adminstration backs the parents in today’s U.S. Supreme Court arguments, contending that school boards are well-meaning, but are attempting to race-balance without compelling justification. And in that, parents and the administration are correct.
