Scholars Gear Up to Defend School Desegregation
By Christina Asquith
As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear two school desegregation cases, a group of more than 600 organizations, legal experts and education scholars are filing briefs supporting what the NAACP calls “voluntary integration efforts.”
“What is at issue is this country’s promise made 52 years ago in Brown v. Board of Education and how much is left of that promise,” says Theodore M. Shaw, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
The Supreme Court will begin hearing oral arguments on Dec. 4 in cases brought on by parent groups in Seattle and Louisville, Ky. In both cases, local education officials designed enrollment plans that encouraged racial diversity while allowing children to attend neighborhood schools and have some measure of school choice. These efforts were challenged by parent groups, who filed lawsuits claiming that the consideration of race was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
The school districts have won in federal, district and appellate courts. However, the Supreme Court agreed to review the issue on appeal. U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has weighed in against using race in admissions, as have officials from the U.S. Department of Justice, arguing that the school districts’ efforts are unconstitutional.
With Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s retirement and President Bush’s appointment of conservative justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito, it is uncertain how the court will rule.
Research by Dr. Gary Orfield, director of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, shows that segregated schools tend to be unequal in many respects: They have higher concentrations of poverty, higher turnover among teachers, fewer well-qualified teachers and fewer Advanced Placement courses.
