You Be The Judge: School Desegregation, Pupil Assignment

Parent Cafe
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School desegregation is often a topic on these boards, and many times the issues before the courts aren’t easy. So I thought it might be interesting to present an actual case and allow anyone who wishes to state how they would rule as a judge, and why. By the way, don’t Google it; I’ll give the court ruling shortly.

FACTS: School district is under long-term court supervision due to desegregation order from the 1960s and is deemed to be making good faith efforts to comply. However, Justice Department takes issue with pupil assignment policy in the elementary schools.

In an effort to stabilize white enrollment, which had fallen to 12 percent, school district allowed for a 20 percent variance by race when assigning students to their elementary school classroom. The effect of this was that instead of having one or two white children in each homeroom there were four to six white children in about a third of the classrooms while the rest of the classes were all black.

The Justice Department maintained that this was impermissible, because cluster grouping of white students, even though limited, had the effect of forcing some black students to be placed in segregated classrooms. The school district responded that without the cluster grouping they feared white enrollment would continue to drop, resulting in increased segregation.

YOU ARE THE JUDGE: Does the racial makeup of the classrooms need to reflect the racial makeup of the school, or may limited cluster grouping be used to prevent drops in enrollment and isolation of students in the minority race?

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If there is that much white flight in the area, it probably does not matter in the long run what the court says or school does.

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@ucbalumnus You may be right. This case was in 2008, McComb, Miss. The court ruled that minority (white) children could not be cluster grouped with a 20 percent variance, as the result was segregated classrooms for more than half the black students. This case was in 2008 when white enrollment was 12 percent. Today it is from four to seven percent, depending on the elementary school. Whether or not the cluster grouping would have prevented the drop in white enrollment is unknown. In my view it would have at least slowed it.

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I would have answered the same way as UCB. At that rate, it was going to happen anyway. And meanwhile, the concept of putting white kids together so they’d be more “comfortable” is so patently offensive that it couldn’t be sanctioned by the court, in my opinion. I went to school in a district with few black kids, and I can’t imagine how it would have gone over, from any side, if it were suggested to cluster them together–well, honestly, many of the white families who would then have been in all white classes would probably have liked it fine, but there would have been an uproar from the white families in the clustered classrooms, I believe.

And what does that say about white families that they “need” other white kids with them or they leave?

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@garland I’ve read where many black parents who send their children to overwhelmingly white schools insist that their child not be the only black child in the class. I understand that. And while I don’t know if the school district’s plan to stem white flight would have worked, it would have been worth a try.

If a school district has as its goal to create an integrated school, then race might need to be taken into consideration when trying to create a setting where integration is possible. That can’t happen if one race leaves.

As for what it says about the white kids, I think it says that they “need” to be around at least a few of their friends and/or relatives during the school day. That doesn’t seem odd or unreasonable to me.

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“As for what it says about the white kids, I think it says that they “need” to be around at least a few of their friends and/or relatives during the school day.”

Is the assumption that students of different races can’t be friends and that all people of the same race ARE friends, then?

Besides, every day plenty of students spend the academic day away from their friends, or at least at the beginning of the school year until they form new friendships.

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Oh, puh-leaze. I’m a lawyer and from a strictly legal point of view the plan probably couldn’t be tolerated. In the real world, it probably would have helped a lot. Things analogous to this have been done many, many times.

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I went to a top law school, females made up just over 10% of my class. This was HUGE news, as it was the first time women made up that high a percentage of the class at this particular law school. For legal writing instruction, we were divided up into small groups of about 20. A survey had shown that the women who were the ONLY female in their small groups scored their first year (of law school) experience much worse than those who had lucked out and had another female in their small group. So, when the cohort of female students reached 10%, the decision was made that NO female would be the only one in her small group, even though this meant that some groups would have no females. Before this, small groups had been based on alphabetical order and due purely to chance, some groups had as many as 3 females, but some females were the only one in their groups.

Though we drifted apart later, the other female in my small group was a friend in law school. There used to be study groups–still are, I suspect–and we joined one together. Yep, it was a LOT easier --not just for us, but for the guys–to have 2 females in the group, not just one.

Fast forward a generation, and my (white) kid goes off to an Ivy League college. That was a lot of years ago now, I admit. At the time, the percentage of “POC”–People of Color–wasn’t as high as it is now. Most of the suites in my kid’s dorm had 4 kids. Parents’ Weekend Freshman year, I noticed that in my kid’s dorm every POC was in a suite with at least one other POC. I commented on this and was informed that it was a college policy. The college had also figured out that URMS were a lot happier during their first year if they weren’t the only URM in their suite.

I can give a few more examples…one from my kid’s law school experience. Another would involve one of the top private, most expensive schools in NYC that figured out that when “Prep for Prep” or " A Better Chance" kids were in a class all by themselves they were a lot less happy–and did worse academically–than when there was another such kid in their class. So, they too started to put the kids into the same class. Often in NYC at least, there are 2 classes for each grade. This meant that both URMs on financial aid were in one class while the other class had none. The schools that did his soon discovered that they were ranked higher on the preferences list by the kids attending Prep for Prep or A Better Chance which meant that they were able to enroll more URM kids on financial aid. Another single-sex private school applied this policy to UMC African-Americans–and today it is THE school for wealthy African-American kids of that sex. No other top private school in NYC comes anywhere near it in terms of the percentage of African-American kids in the student body.

So, yes, I think it should have been allowed–while I understand why it wasn’t.

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White students are going to be pulled regardless of whether they’re 1 of 5 or 1 of 1 white people in the class. Historically, white students and families freak out when they’re the minorities or there’s even a threat of being a minority.

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Note that “POC” and “URM” do not necessarily mean the same thing.

Of course, these days, POC are common enough among students at many colleges that finding two or more in a four person suite would not be unusual.

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“Historically, white students and families freak out when they’re the minorities or there’s even a threat of being a minority.”

Interestingly, one of the best schools in my city is a school which by its charter specifies its student body be divided so it’s 30% white, 30% Latino, 30% black. So whites are the minority… There’s a waiting list a mile long to get into this school with plenty white parents keeping their fingers crossed their kids get in.

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So you’re assuming they wouldn’t have any black friends in their class? And so their only friends would be other white students? They couldn’t make friends with the black kids?

I think anyone would be somewhat uncomfortable if they were the only person of their race in their class.

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Overall demographics of the district and other schools?

Also, not all white (or other race) parents are racist. There may be enough non racist ones interested in the school that makes demand exceed available space.

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The district’s demographics are: 24% white, 56% Latino, 13% black ( the rest is “other”)

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@romanigypsyeyes Maybe all of the whites would have left anyway, but better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all. But the court would not let them try.

@doschicos Yes, students of different races can be friends. But the court ruling specifically forbade friends and relatives from being placed in a classroom together if the result would be that another classroom was left without a white person.

All I can tell you is that there is a long history of white children being very unhappy when they are forced to be the only white child or perhaps one of only two white children in a school classroom. I should note that many black children feel the same way. Everyone can engage in all the high-minded rhetoric they want, but a school that doesn’t find a way to make these white children feel less alienated is soon going to be an all-black school, save for white Special Ed students.

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What EXACTLY is your point in posting something about a case 10 years old? What’s the agenda here?

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My daughter was often the only minority in her classroom. There were 2 classes in each grade. There were 3 Asian girls in the grade, and the other two were always together and my daughter in the other class. It was fine. She also often the only minority on her sports teams. It never mattered.

She’s now often the only woman in a group project and I agree with some of the above comment that that is much more of an issue than being the only minority. Several men treated her poorly in group projects.

A former co-worker was one of the first two women at a law school. I’m sure they stuck together.

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@doschicos My agenda is to point out that in the name of integration the courts frequently hand down rulings that create more segregation, and I might add that this segregation is far more intractable than it was 50 years ago, because all the white people have taken flight. It takes several years to know how things are going to turn out. This case was cited in another, more recent case. Maybe I’ll let people say how they would rule on it, too.

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In other words, the desirable charter school described in reply #9 has a slightly higher percentage of students who are white than the district overall, so it is not great counterexample against the claim made in reply #7.

It also means that a 30%/30%/30% required ratio makes it harder for Latino students to get into that school, slightly easier for white students, and easier for black students, if interest is equal across all of these groups. Also looks easier for “other”, with 7% of the district getting 10% of the desirable charter school.

Latino students and parents have not complained or sued about this?

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I wonder how much “white flight” exists these days, and how must of the discrepancy in racial numbers in schools is a result of different birth rates.

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I don’t know how much birth rates would really matter…

I’d rather look at the clustering of minorities in certain areas/school districts.