<p>I wanted to get your opinion on the new cases being brought to the Supreme Court from Kentucky and Washington state. The cases concern whether it is constitutional to use race as a factor in determining which elementary school a child is allowed to attend.</p>
<p>What affect do you think this will have on college admissions? And also, what is your opinion on the subject?</p>
<p>Here is a link for those who are unfamiliar with the cases:</p>
<p>lawdy
Seattle schools are about 41% white in a city that is about 77% Caucasian.
The intent is good the effect is not.
Legally the district could assign using economic indicators- which from what I have read would acheive more equity.</p>
<p>Schools do not have enough money for the programs students need- some neighborhoods have strong PTAs who raise money for these programs- other schools don't even have PTAs. I see this as more an economic issue than a racial one.</p>
<p>Parents in the Ballard neighborhood wanted their kids to go to the neighborhood school, parents in the Queen Anne neighborhood didn't have a neighborhood school as the district sold it dirt cheap for condos and the other closer schools were full, so they were assigned to the schools at the south boundary of the city.</p>
<p>Because of I-200 Seattle couldn't assign by race- so they took it to court- again and again and again
( I heard the district attorney say- when a comment was made that because of the racial makeup of the district, it would not change anything and it would just make neighborhoods mad, he said that when they win "they don't have to implement it" they just wanted to win because it was "right")</p>
<p>Recntly the district is dealing with transportation costs being way higher than other districts in the state-and almost 1/3 of Seattle students choosing to go elsewhere other than public schools.
The district is planning to consolidate buildings to save costs, some buildings only have 100 students in them- some less. But when you have heating, custodial, supervisory costs being similar to if you had a full school, it could make sense to consolidate provided that , that wouldn't increase transportation costs.
But they haven't shown this.</p>
<p>Interestingly enough- a high school that is on leased space, that has mostly white kids , that has no free reduced lunch or transportation program AND only has less than 300 students for a high school, was not considered to be closed or consolidated.
But schools that were neighborhood schools, that were doing well, that were in newish buldings were considered. ( and in very diverse neighborhoods)</p>
<p>So I feel like SPS is talking out of two sides of their mouth.
On the one hand they want student achievement across racial lines-
well who doesn't?</p>
<p>But they allow to stay open a pet project from a former superintendent that is clearly not serving as many students or as diverse a group of students as it should be.
They spend probably a million dollars appealing these court cases, when they could just assign by family income level, and put the money into the buildings.</p>
<p>They don't expand successful programs to meet the needs of teh city ( they are slowly changing this- they plan on opening an IB program in the south end of the city this fall)</p>
<p>Programs that could be very successful, they don't support.
My daughter attended a k-12 program that is all city and has about half low income students- howevr it demands strong leadership. They have had 5 principals in 8 years, none of whom were really supported by district and some didn't even want to be there, bu they wanted to get a job with district and it was a way in.
It has been on the chopping block every year for years, and this diverts energy from staff and students.</p>
<p>Bear with me- I think we do need diverse schools- my daughters school is about 43% caucasian- and it is great- we love it.But economically it is only about 25% free reduced lunch, the district is 41%</p>
<p>A school in agreat building on a great site- but ina neighborhood that is close to very high end homes and very low end homes is 7% Caucasian and 62% free reduced lunch.
They only have about 500 students- the building could hold triple that many and they would have more money for programs.</p>
<p>They could assign for economic indicators, but they choose not to- they want to make it about race- and it has gone on for years.</p>
<p>Families if they can are leaving the district- the ones who are left are going to be the ones who cant move and the ones who have resources to supplement their kids or to combine it with other parent resources to put into the schools.
I think that schools should not be segregated, but I have had many converstations with members o f the black community who mourn for the days when the school was the center of the community.
We need equitable education. Not segregation- but if a Vietnamese community develops and dominates a school community, should we really force their kids to be bused all over the city?
Yes every school should have adaquate and equitable resources- but I see teachers with seniority choosing to teach in schools where they know the economics of the parents- not their race- will give them extra support.
So the students who have the most challenges because of economics- have the least expereinced teachers.
That could change</p>
<p>Discrimination based on race is flat wrong. It's even worse when it's government sponsored. If the idea is to provide opportunities, it shouldn't be based on race but rather, as emerald stated, socio-economic status. One shouldn't assume that all people of a particular race are in a low (or high) socio-economic group.</p>
<p>Regarding the effect on college admissions - view the thread on UCLA and its low Af-Am percentage. California doesn't allow discrimination based on race for state college entrance. It definitely had an effect on the college racial makeup. It doesn't allow a school to artificially engineer a school to have a formulaic makeup based on race. Instead, its admission is based mostly on academics and 'life factors' that include socio-economic situation, whether parents went to college, etc.</p>
<p>Well, I agree that elimination of AA would change class sizes. But, technically, do you think the Court's actual RULING on these cases would legally change the way AA is administered in the nation?</p>
<p>Pro-gatsby, the more rulings against affirmative action cases, the less it will be implmented in the country.</p>
<p>The vitality of affirmative action will continue to diminish. From a positive perspective, we an increasingly diverse society and any preferences based on race are going to be harder to sustain. Witness the anecodotal, but likely fairly valid, complaints of Asian Americans re college admissions - there is some basis to believe that they are the victims of discrimination. Whether empirically and wholly demonstrable, the perception alone (and that perception exists along with some reality) is enough to really start unravelling affirmative action. </p>
<p>Witness further my daughter's high school, considered one of the best if not the best public high school in the nation (in Northern Virginia), where the population at that school is incredibly diverse. But there are not very many blacks and hispanics there, which of course bothers many (and me too, to a degree). But that isn't a "diversity" problem, as many people would have it, but rather a black and Hispanic problem, with difficult to address parenting and cultural factors behind it. The school is plenty diverse otherwise, with national origins from all over the globe. And the most common discriminator there is the capacity to study hard and consistently. </p>
<p>Seattle is a tough case for proponents of affirmative action. It isn't like jurisdictions in the South, where state sponsored discrimination reigned. The time honored legal justification for busing (or a variant of the same which is what is being done in Seattle) doesn't exist. Alito's on the court now? Don't see how the racial preference scheme in Seattle passes muster. Louisville might be a different case - it is in the South (albeit not the deep South), and there might be some vitality to an argument that racial preferences are necessary to to redress an historically state sponsored discriminatory regime, even today. I just am not familiar with Louisville - perhaps others can comment. </p>
<p>A few other points: </p>
<ol>
<li><p>It is clear to me that a Supreme Court ruling setting aside these preferences (particularly as to both jurisdictions) will accelerate the demise of affirmative action. It is a very crucial case. </p></li>
<li><p>It is also clear to me that initiatives such as the Michigan Civil Rights initiative will pass and that racial preferences in school admission and state employment and the like will be virtually impossible to sustain in that state. Even the permissible program the UMich law school engages now in will no longer continue. </p></li>
<li><p>Elite private schools will continue to practice AA - but query how they will react as they become increasingly apart from practices in society. They are liberal to the core, and white guilt drives their thinking more than data, but as I say, in an increasingly diverse society, preferences will not be easy to sustain, anywhere. </p></li>
<li><p>None of this should be taken as an effort to trivialize historical patterrn of awful racial discrimination in this country. At some point, though, we will move on and judge people without regard to race, even if some groups find that difficult or unfair. </p></li>
<li><p>I find it offensive any notion that people of color need to study next to a person not of color to learn. This just can't be the case, and one hopes that under the guise of diversity the school systems don't actually have this belief.</p></li>
</ol>
<p><a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/06/06/black%5B/url%5D">http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/06/06/black</a>
This article has some info that may be interesting to the OP and others.</p>
<p>I have no doubt that Linda Chavez and the other anti-affirmative action political organizations will get the Republican-dominated Court and state actions to further erode Affirmative Action.</p>
<p>I have no doubt that the quality of colleges and universities will decline as a result. With just 76 black freshmen (not including recruited athletes), UCLA becomes a very unattractive place, both in terms of competing for top students and serving the public good of its community. That's OK. Stanford and Harvard will be glad to accept the black students UCLA rejects.</p>
<p>"At some point, though, we will move on and judge people without regard to race, even if some groups find that difficult or unfair."</p>
<p>I hope such judgements will not be of the form "well-educated at UCLA" versus "less well-educated at Cal State Los Angeles."</p>
<p>Pro Gatsby,</p>
<p>These are interesting cases and if the Court does limit affirmative action in public primary and secondary schools, I think it will inevitably be extended to public higher education. In that event, I doubt Justice O'Connor's 25-year winding up period for affirmative action set forth in Grutter v Bollinger will last more than 2-5 years.</p>
<p>Without doing a lot of studying of the lower court opinions (but having a fair degree of knowledge about the law and the Supreme Court), I suspect the Court is going to come out strongly against the Seattle plan. With Kentucky, it will be interesting to see how they treat the state's historical segregation, a factor that was significant to Rehnquist and O'Connor but maybe less so to Roberts and Alito. </p>
<p>The Court would not have taken the Seattle case unless there was a clear majority to reverse -- the relative liberals would never vote to take the case at all, and the conservatives would be hesitant to take it if they thought there were any chance they would lose. (It only takes four votes to decide to hear a case, but there is a lot of strategy around how any Justice or group of Justices votes to hear cases or not.) The Kentucky case might have been taken on the same basis, or it might have been taken on the motion of the relative liberals, essentially saying "We know you are going to blow up Seattle, so we're going to force you to reaffirm the remedy for historic de jure segregation doctrine or to take the heat for abolishing it."</p>
<p>Ultimate effect on college admissions: This will tend to produce more segregated public schools, which will increase the popularity of the affirmative action technique that lots of state universities are going to: We'll only look at your class rank, without regard to school strength, and less emphasis on SATs. Somewhat stupid, but it produces a diversified class of relatively motivated kids (and maybe even induces some non-minority kids to attend largely minority schools where they think they have a better chance of ranking high), so not so horrible.</p>
<p>Where's the outcry from the right about judicial activism and legislating from the bench? For years, these folks have complained about the Court meddling in local school board affairs. Now, that they've stacked the Court, what's the first set of cases they hear?</p>
<p>Or is it only "judicial activism" when you disagree with the Court?</p>
<p>As a practical matter, wouldn't striking down the Seattle plan be a mandate from the Supreme Court to return to segregated public schools?</p>
<p>Given the segregated nature of housing in most locations, what other mechanism could a city possibly use to prevent having segregated "separate but equal" schools? By striking down the only realistic mechanism for racial balancing, isn't the Supreme Court essentially mandating segregation in the public schools? Wouldn't this be full circle return to days before Brown vs. Board of Education?</p>
<p>interested - notions of what constitute judicial activism is nice a abstract matter for discussion, but doesn't address the issue. </p>
<p>The fact remains, as Justice O'Connor stated in Gruttinger, that racial preferences will not last forever. And while it is not a happy event that UCLA has so few black students, it is a consequence of high admission (allright, lets be fair, exceedingly high) standards UCLA has adopted. And given that we are becoming increasingly diverse as a society (looking at race in terms of black versus white is misleading), racial preferences are going to be questioned by the courts, activist or not, and absent a compelling historical pattern of state sponsored discrimination, they will by and large be struck down. This is not an argument for affirmative action one way or another, but merely a statement of reality in 2006. A responsible civil rights leader to my mind would be telling people to be prepared for this change. </p>
<p>Note that the lack of AA really impacts selective colleges, and hence very, very few people statistically. I live near DC. The average grade point in the high schools is under 2.0 - SAT's are miserable, percentiles and percentiles behind surrounding jurisdictions, even with a far fewer percentage of students taking them. Drop-out rates are outrageously high, and yet universally regarded as understated with all sorts of arguments about whether GED students (who get diplomas typically years after they should have graduated) should count. Strangely, spending per pupil is higher than in surrounding jurisdictions, and not only are academic results absymal, millions upon millions get wasted so physical plants don't get maintained or upgraded. And the kids by and large come from single parent families where a father in the home is a shocking rarity. The administration doesn't exist to support the kids but spend money like water, the parents aren't around - and no on cares. The superintendent of Long Beach (a very well known administrator with a record of success with minority kids) refused to take the DC job when he observed the DC transportation budget for special education kids (and just for special education kids) was 6 times higher than the entire transportation budget for all of Long Beach (a sprawling jurisdiction). The DC schools, with some exceptions, are a jobs program for the incompetent. That this is so is borne out by the fact that the mayor supports school choice despite being philosophically opposed because they have run out of other options. And I could go on...But the point is that for the vast, vast majority of DC high school grads (or PG County, or Baltimore for that matter), affirmative action at UVa (a comparable school to UCLA) or Maryland (getter better all the time) is irrelevant - completely irrelevant. The level of academic preparation is so poor that the bulk of the kids might as well be on Mars when it comes to college. We have a huge cultural and societal and educational problem - and affirmative action at UCLA or Berkeley or Michigan or Harvard, while it makes many whites feel better and less guilty, is a proverbial gnat on an elephant. The outrage expressed at the elimination of affirmative action (which, as I suggest, affects statistically very few, and those that it does affect still are capable of getting a good education, and likely at a school that is a better academic match) ought to be transferred to outrage at what is happening to generations of black and hispanic kids in K-12. But that's a hard issue - much, much harder than railing simplistically in favor of reduced admissions standards - and will trod upon sensitive issues of culture, educational work ethic, and the big issue in the room - births of children to unwed mothers - the surest route to poverty and misery this country offers. Some food for thought.</p>
<p>I think that since it has reached supreme court that they will have to rule that integrating schools i s a priority- although according to my data- that will not affect Seattle- the racial mix in Seattle schools before and after placement by race varies by only 5% per minority group- since whites make up less than 50% of students in Seattle anyway.
Other cities however, may see a huge difference- and while I do not think that minorities or whites need to sit side by side to get a decent education- I don't want to see segregated schools.
I think they can get more diversity by assigning by economic factors rather than racial- and personally perhaps that is what we should be thinking about, to start thinking about the * economic* divide in this country, which has the potential to become wider than the racial divide</p>
<br>
<p>Or is it only "judicial activism" when you disagree with the Court?</p>
<br>
<p>I realize that you're being facetious, but this is literally true.</p>
<p>Brown v. Board was hugely activist, but you don't hear many complaints about that.</p>
<p>That's what makes the current orchestrated legal attack on affirmative action by Linda Chavez's legal action organization, supported by the Bush Justice Department, so interesting.</p>
<p>They are essentially using the same tactics that T. Marshall pioneered in getting a sympathetic Court to "legislate" civil rights. Find perfect plaintiffs in a series of incremental cases, often following pointers placed in the Court's opinions about productive avenues for the next incremental case.</p>
<p>That is exactly what is going on in these AA cases. The plaintiff in the Michigan undergrad case was actually found through advertisements in Michigan seeking a case with perfectly tailored facts. They specifically wanted a low-income, first-generation white plaintiff so that the case could be narrowly argued on race.</p>
<p>The Michigan cases, although nominally reported as an endorsement of AA, actually contained specific pointers for the next series of legal challenges -- pointers that specfically outlawed using race as a sole factor. Just two years later, colleges have eliminated virtually all race-based scholarship and enrichment programs. And that precedent will provide cover for this current Court to effectively outlaw Seattle's program. That will probably lead to a subsequent challenge of busing in another case down the road.</p>
<p>interested - you seem to be pointing out tactics common to any issues subject to litigation. Not sure I find it persuasive one way or the other. People will use the courts to their advantage, and often adopt an incrementalist strategy when doing so. Witness the significant limits put on Roe v Wade over the years, and emerging and recent pendulum swing in death penalty cases (e.g., no mentally handicapped or juveniles). Those developments occur from both ends of the political spectrum. And you are right - the Michigan case was the result of an ideal "real" plaintiff (unlike in Roe v. Wade) - but again, so what? Smart litigants do what they need to do. And Michigan's undergrad program, giving race the equivalent of either equal to (or more) than a perfect score on the SAT, just wasn't going to cut it in a state with no history of state sponsored discrimination and against thin and non-empirical explanations of the benefits of diversity. Too bad, really - a thumb on the scale program would have passed muster and also would have reduced the groundswell for the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative now on the ballot in Michigan - a likely death knell for even modest affirmative action. The liberals who run academia just overreached - again, too bad - because they could have kept some reasonable variant of aa. </p>
<p>The problem I have with affirmative action (although I never have had a problem with a thumb on the scale, so to speak) is that does so little to address major cultural and societal challenges that exist. Letting in a few URM's here and there by reducing standards makes those in elite institutions feel good, but really, what does it accomplish in the long run other than helping (maybe) a lucky few? I say this because I have seen it work in its best form (one of my clients, a Fortune 20 company - does AA exquisitely) and in its worst - where admissions standards at the top tier law school I attended were so diluted that all that was accomplished was having an unfortunate bottom 10% of the class with incredibly poor pass rates for the bar and huge, huge debt that couldn't easily be repaid because of the same. Lost in all of the aa talk is the need to be reasonable, and in all cases, admit people that not only "can do the work" but meaningfully compete. This doesn't mean that some people (of all races and creeds, by the way) won't wash out here and there but that admission should be designed to choose those that can really compete and do well and not just show up, get through, and in so doing, be defined by their race as opposed to what they can offer.</p>
<p>
[quote]
And Michigan's undergrad program, giving race the equivalent of either equal to (or more) than a perfect score on the SAT, just wasn't going to cut it in a state with no history of state sponsored discrimination and against thin and non-empirical explanations of the benefits of diversity.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Actually, as I listened to the oral arguments and read the decisions, correcting past discrimination was never an issue in the Michigan cases. The defendents argued and the decisions endorsed the notion that diversity for diversity's sake was a sufficient "compelling interest" to allow some "thumb on the scale" affirmative action (for at least the next quarter century.</p>
<p>What got struck down was a rigid points system and/or any other system where race (by itself) was an overriding determining factor. In response, colleges (and even the College Board) have rewritten scholarships previously earmarked for a particular race to be based on more ambiguous qualities, including socio-economic status.</p>
<p>Another example is the 25 year old summer orientation program that Swarthmore, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr have run for minority students. Subsequent to a letter from Linda Chavez (with tacit support from the Justice Department) threatening a lawsuit, the schools opened this program up to all accepted students. Now, every admitted student is invited to apply to the orientation program, but the limited number of slots are filled by a selection committee using non-transparent criteria.</p>