Supreme Court School Desegregation Ruling

Brown vs. the Board of Education was a necessary ruling by the Supreme Court in the 50s. Housing was segregated in many places in the country and the schools in the black areas were not getting the funding of schools in the white areas and this led was a factor in the cycle of poverty for African Americans. It is wrong for the government to provide/withhold resources

Things are different now. We don't see the same intentional housing segregation that we used to. States don't keep resources away from school which are primarily African American (or Hispanic). So, here's the crux of the matter: When a school district decides who to admit to a charter or otherwise special school, should race be a factor?

First, schools that do this are disingenuous about their reasoning. They say things like, "It's not a big factor, but it is a tie breaker." Well, when you are doling out resources in a zero-sum game, a tie-breaker is a very big factor.

Second, minority kids are more likely to be stuck in a shitty school. In LA this is the case because white parents, on average, have higher socioeconomic status than blacks or Hispanics. So, the higher income parents take their kids out of the crummy LAUSD and put them in private school (as do black and Hispanics parents who have the money to do so). The public schools in affluent areas of LA have very involved parents who donate lots of money to the school so the school performs better. These areas tend to have more white families than minority families. So, socioeconomic status, rather than race, drives the quality of education in LA.

So, should a school district be able to use race as a tie-breaker (or whatever euphemism they choose) to assign kids to better schools? I say no. If you are going to use merit (however defined) or random selection to choose kids for these schools, then use it. It's about individual rights. The parents of a white kid have and equal right for their kid to be admitted to a public school as parents of a black or Hispanic kid do. Making those kinds of decisions based on race is wrong and hars kids. If you want to talk about improving the economic status of minority families, better education is certainly part of that discussion. I'm thinking that Louisville and Seattle could have better spent their money in the classroom than defending their race-based thinking.