Beyond Busing: Education for All : High court ruling highlights racial inequality

In another bad decision on public education, the U.S. Supreme Court has hastened America’s retreat from equality in the schools.

Millions of minority children remain enrolled in segregated and inferior schools nearly 40 years after the historic Brown decision outlawed “separate but equal” schools. Their choices are limited because they live in old, urban, poor and predominantly minority school districts.

Broader choices are possible for children in the racially and economically diverse school districts that have become increasingly common as more blacks and Latinos move to suburban communities and smaller cities. Would these choices be there without federal prodding?

The decision, authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, allows formally segregated school districts to ignore racial imbalances that result from white flight even as it acknowledges that most whites prefer to live in predominantly white neighborhoods. It also allows local authorities to escape the federal court supervision that has historically provided a prod toward equal opportunity in the classroom.

The impact of the ruling is not readily apparent, but school officials can probably count on conservative judges, appointed by President Reagan and President Bush, to approve incremental release from desegregation orders when one area, such as student assignments, is in compliance, while another, such as teacher assignments, is not.

There is a danger in allowing incremental relief before the task has been completed. Justice David Souter noted, in a concurring opinion, “Even after attaining compliance as to student composition, other factors such as racial composition of the faculty, quality of the physical plant, or per-pupil expenditures may leave schools racially identifiable.”

Certain schools in the Atlanta suburb involved had “an overrepresentation of black principals and administrators, lower per-pupil expenditures, and higher percentages of black students.” Souter cited another distinction in the case: The schools in the black neighborhoods of Georgia’s DeKalb County were the only campuses to use portable trailers as classrooms.

School districts can address equity--without busing--in the physical plant, faculty assignments, per-pupil expenditures and other resources. But, without federal monitoring, how many black or Latino schools would get the best faculty, the best supplies, the best resources and the best campuses in a district?

No parent wants to send a child to a less desirable school when other children have better choices in the same district. Few, if any, parents would put their child on a bus if all schools were equal.

Public schools provide the best hope for Americans. But how can white children learn to achieve in an increasingly nonwhite world if they are limited to segregated classrooms? How can African-American, Latino, Asian and American Indian children learn to achieve in a still predominantly white nation if they are limited to inferior schools? America’s commitment to equality needs strengthening, not retreat.