Schools grapple with how to integrate
After the Supreme Court's ruling against race-based policy Thursday, support grows for integrating schools on the basis of factors such as income level.
from the July 2, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
As the county has grown, it hasn't completely fulfilled its goals. In 2005-06, 31 of 116 elementary and middle schools were more than 40 percent low-income.
But other large North Carolina districts tend to have many more schools with low-income populations that range from 70 to 90 percent, Kahlenberg reports. Racial integration in the county has waned in certain schools, but has been mostly maintained.
About 60 percent of low-income students in Wake County passed end-of-course exams, compared with 43 to 53 percent in other large counties in the state, and the district's overall graduation rate has been one of the nation's highest. Many newcomers cite the schools' excellence as a key factor in moving there.
Walter Sherlin, a retired associate superintendent of Wake County, says a shift from race to class could give districts a way to ensure a semblance of racial diversity. "I hope that districts that have been committed for a long time to trying to keep schools from being separate and unequal again will not just throw in the towel and say, 'There's nothing we can do.' " he says.
In Louisville, Ky., one of the districts whose race-based plan was struck down last week, school board member Steve Imhoff says public support is broad for finding legal ways to pursue integration. "We can still use race as one of several factors, just not the sole factor, so this is the time to put [socioeconomic classifications] into the mix," says Mr. Imhoff.
It's not clear yet how widespread that determination is throughout the US.
"The biggest question is ... how much integration are communities going to be able to get done and at what cost?" says Neil Siegel, a law professor at Duke University in Durham, N.C. [Editor's note: The original version put Duke in the wrong city.]
Not only do school districts with voluntary integration programs have to determine how to move forward, but court-ordered desegregation plans, many of them in the South, will probably face a flurry of legal challenges, he says.
Debates over busing versus neighborhood schools are also expected to continue. "We have to get away from trying to be social engineers – we're in the business of educating kids," says Lindsey Tippins, chairman of the Cobb County, Ga., School Board.
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