By Colbert I. King
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Rarely will the names of D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer and Clarence Thomas be mentioned in the same column. But this week's topic is education, and the three figure prominently in the debate over the role of public schools.
Fenty's interest was demonstrated by his takeover of the District's schools and his request to be held accountable for converting a failing urban school district into a "world-class" system.
Likewise, the bitter clash between Breyer and Thomas last week in school desegregation cases reflected their passions on the issue.
And the connecting tissue of their respective positions is race.
Last month, Fenty assumed control of a school system that had been legally segregated until 1954, when the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education (in the District, the deciding case was Bolling v. Sharpe) that governmental segregation of students by race was unconstitutional.
However, in the nation's capital, the unanimous rulings failed to produce the kind of integration the court promised.
A report issued in March 2005 by Parents United for the D.C. Public Schools and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, marking 50 years since the school desegregation cases, declared that "the long overdue promises embodied in Brown and Bolling have not been fulfilled for the children of the District of Columbia. The promise of an end to racial isolation remains unfulfilled."
Fenty inherits a system whose student body is 84 percent black. Most D.C. classrooms east of Rock Creek Park hardly reflect the racial makeup of the city, which is 57 percent black.
Last month I returned to my alma mater, Dunbar Senior High, to deliver the commencement address to the Class of 2007. No white graduates were present. My Class of 1957 had the same look.
Now, as then, there are D.C. neighborhoods where children can attend classes from kindergarten through 12th grade and seldom encounter a white classmate. That's segregation -- maybe not in law, but in fact.
Equally important, Fenty now oversees a system in which overall student achievement levels fall far below those in majority-white school districts in neighboring Maryland and Virginia.
How will he achieve his "world-class" school system? Will it be the system of integrated primary and secondary education the court envisioned in '54? Or will the measure of success be top-quality teachers; renovated buildings; and test scores, graduation rates and college acceptances that match or exceed those in neighboring majority-white districts?
These questions go to the heart of the heated debate between Justices Breyer and Thomas in the schools cases.
By a 5 to 4 vote, the Supreme Court shot down voluntary school desegregation plans of Seattle and Louisville, with a plurality of justices, including Thomas, holding that race cannot be considered in school assignments except in cases of legal segregation, when race-conscious remedies might be acceptable.
Breyer, speaking for the liberal four-justice minority, argued forcefully for the use of race-conscious measures to promote greater racial integration for educational and democratic reasons. His reasons included:
· There are "adverse educational effects produced by and associated with highly segregated schools."
· "Black children from segregated educational environments significantly increase their achievement levels once they are placed in a more integrated setting."
· "Black alumni of integrated schools are more likely to move into occupations traditionally closed to African-Americans, and to earn more money in those fields."
· Our democracy has "an interest in producing an educational environment that reflects the 'pluralistic society' in which our children will live."
· "Both black and white students who attend integrated schools are more likely to work in desegregated companies after graduation than students who attended racially isolated schools."
If all this is true, what is the fate of students in urban districts such as that of Washington, D.C., where integration is demographically challenged (not enough white students to go around)?
Thomas was having none of Breyer's arguments. Acknowledging that race-conscious strategies may be used in remedying legal segregation, Thomas drew the line against applying such remedies in cases where racial imbalances result from private decisions unrelated to schooling, such as housing choices.
Citing other studies, Thomas said there is no guarantee that students of different races in the same school will spend time with one another or that "increased interracial exposure automatically leads to improved racial attitudes or race relations." He resorted to a statement he'd made previously: "There is no reason to think that black students cannot learn as well when surrounded by members of their own race as when they are in an integrated environment."
Which gets us back to Fenty and leaders of other urban and overwhelmingly minority school districts. With the racial integration the court promised in '54 beyond their capacity to deliver, can they still provide equal opportunity for students? And on whose terms? Overcoming the harms that Breyer describes as "a caste system rooted in the institutions of slavery and 80 years of legalized subordination" is still, I maintain, America's moral obligation. But Fenty's immediate challenge is to get District children the schooling necessary for them to make it in this competitive world. That's where his sights must be fixed.
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