Recent Supreme Court ruling highlights key issues under debate today
Fifty years ago in Little Rock, Arkansas, one of the most dramatic events in U.S. desegregation took place when nine African American children enrolled and attended a previously all-white school in order to have a better education. A seemingly simple act. An act that resulted in the governor mobilizing his state’s National Guard to keep the children out and the president of the United States sending an elite airborne division to make sure they could attend that school. The children became known as the “Little Rock Nine.”
When the final ruling of Brown v. Board of Education was handed down in 1954, legal segregation of schools was found to be against the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. Children could not be legally segregated based on race, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, because this resulted in children having less access to an education needed to compete in the workplace. The question today seems to be how schools should respond to situations in which a lack of diversity in their schools is not the result of a legalized system of segregation.
What has happened since the “Little Rock Nine” 50 years ago? Is U.S. society less segregated than it once was? Are schools less segregated? Has integration led to the better test scores that were promised? These are a few of the questions that Reading Today is going to examine over the next few issues.
We hope to spotlight the opinions and personal histories of IRA members who have participated in many of these discussions. We also will look at some of the court-ordered desegregation remedies, including the tutoring and reading instruction that were ordered by various courts and how teaching practices have been affected as a result. This article, however, will focus on some of the legal issues that are affecting the drive of many school districts to encourage “racial diversity” in their schools.
There are two ways in which law is made. The first is through the legislature, and the second is through the courts. In 2007 there are significant examples of each of these ways that will have a major impact on the schools.
First is the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). In this 2002 statute (which is the latest revision to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1964) is the requirement that all children achieve proficiency in reading and mathematics based on their state’s standard. Data are collected and tabulated according to race, gender and other factors, to determine if the school or district where the students attend is making adequate yearly progress (AYP).
The second is the recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District 10. The Court’s findings were handed down on June 28, 2007, and included a second case—Meredith, Custodial Parent and Next Friend of McDonald v. Jefferson County School Board et al.
In both of these cases, the Court ruled 5–4 that race should not be used as a tiebreaker in assigning children to specific schools. The ruling directly involved two school districts that had developed programs to ensure some degree of racial diversity in their schools by using a series of criteria to determine who should go to which school. One of the final items was the criteria of race, and in both systems the number of times this criteria was used was fairly small.
In writing for the majority to overturn the local school boards’ decisions to use race as a tiebreaker in deciding how individual students would be selected to attend which schools, Chief Justice John Roberts said that in both school districts no argument was made that education benefits were the reason for the school desegregation plans. The opinion also found that because neither school district was under any court order to desegregate, using race as a factor to make decisions on individual children was wrong. (See Majority opinion.)
The Court’s findings highlight many of the issues under debate today. Among these are the belief that society benefits simply because of diversity. Another is that test scores are increased because of diversity. In both cases, the opinion outlined the Court’s desire not to resolve these issues.
Justice Stephen Breyer, in his dissenting opinion, wrote that the opinion of the majority is a significant reversal in the Court’s understanding of past history, the Brown decisions, and the Court’s encouragement of state and local school districts to reverse the trend of resegregation of the nation’s schools. Breyer’s opinion stated that progress had been made in integrating the nation’s schools but that over the past 10 years this progress has been eroded.
Breyer cited the fact that today 1 in 6 African American children attends a school that has between 99%–100% minority enrollment. He postulated that while the legal system may not be producing retrosegregation, the nation is producing resegregation in fact and practice. (See Minority opinion.) Justice John Paul Stevens further stated in his dissenting opinion that there is no example of anyone suing to get into a majority black school.
Arguments on the impact of race in the United States and the effort to desegregate schools will continue. Although the Supreme Court is arguing that race should not be used as the “tiebreaker” in determining who should go to which school, schools themselves are being judged because race is used as a factor in determining AYP. And although the Court is arguing for nonrace-based solutions, such as magnet programs or other initiatives in order to overcome the impact of segregation by neighborhoods, the goal of true diversity in schools remains elusive. One of the key purposes of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1964—to ensure that every child has equal access to a basic education regardless of the state they live in—continues to be a challenge.
In September 2007, the 50th anniversary of the 1957 desegregation of Little Rock Central High School will be commemorated in Little Rock, Arkansas. On Monday, September 24, the National Park Service will formally dedicate a new visitor center. On September 25, the city will officially commemorate the 50th anniversary. Visit the National Park Service’s Little Rock Central High School website and the Little Rock Nine Foundation’s website for more information and links to other sites.
As we prepare for further coverage of desegregation for upcoming issues of Reading Today, we seek input from readers. Do you have a brief (250 words or fewer) experience or opinion to share? Would you like to be interviewed for a future article? If so, contact us.
The Court need not resolve the parties’ dispute over whether racial diversity in schools has a marked impact on test scores and other objective yardsticks, or achieves intangible socialization benefits because it is clear that the racial classifications at issue are not narrowly tailored to the asserted goal. In design and operation, the plans are directed only to racial balance, an objective this Court has repeatedly condemned as illegitimate. They are tied to each district’s specific racial demographics, rather than to any pedagogic concept of the level of diversity needed to obtain the asserted educational benefits. Whatever those demographics happen to be drives the required “diversity” number in each district. The districts offer no evidence that the level of racial diversity necessary to achieve the asserted educational benefits happens to coincide with the racial demographics of the respective school districts.
—Chief Justice John Roberts
In both Seattle and Louisville, the local school districts began with schools that were highly segregated in fact. In both cities plaintiffs filed lawsuits claiming unconstitutional segregation. In Louisville, a federal district court found that school segregation reflected pre-Brown state laws separating the races. In Seattle, the plaintiffs alleged that school segregation unconstitutionally reflected not only generalized societal discrimination and residential housing patterns, but also school board policies and actions that had helped to create, maintain, and aggravate racial segregation. In Louisville, a federal court entered a remedial decree. In Seattle, the parties settled after the school district pledged to undertake a desegregation plan.
—Justice Stephen Breyer
Desegregation: Diversity remains elusive. (August 2007). Reading Today, 25(1), 1,4.
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