Race counts

More than a half century after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered public schools integrated, justices Monday will hear arguments that pose two central questions: Does race still matter in obtaining an education, and, if so, how much leeway should districts have to address it?

The questions come to the court via two cases, the first originating in Seattle and the second out of Jefferson County, Ky., which includes Louisville. In both cases, the use of race in making school assignments is being challenged. The outcome of both cases could affect some 1,000 districts across the country.

Closer to home, if Seattle loses, it must pay the attorneys fees of the opposing side, an amount considerably higher than the several hundred thousand dollars in legal costs the district has incurred over the six-year battle. At a time when Seattle is closing seven schools to cut costs and plans more closures down the road, a potential million-dollar legal loss is daunting.

The Seattle case revolves around the school system's now-suspended racial tiebreaker, one of three methods used to determine enrollment in oversubscribed high schools. Opponents of the tiebreaker claim it violates the 14th Amendment's equal-protection clause.

But Seattle argued successfully in two lower-court rounds that the tiebreaker is critical to overcome demographic trends that point to the city's growing segregation.

Seventy percent of Seattle's residents are white. But its school system is 60 percent minority. Most African-American and Latino students live and attend school south of the Lake Washington Ship Canal. In south and southwest Seattle, 10 schools are more than 95-percent minority.

Since the district stopped using the racial tiebreaker, some of the city's high schools have also grown less diverse. At Ballard High in the city's north end, 43.2 percent of students were minority in 2001-'02 — the year the tiebreaker was narrowed to affect a minimum number of students. By 2004-'05, that had dropped to 37 percent. At Franklin High in south Seattle, 79 percent of the students were minority in the 2001-'02 school year. By 2004-'05, that had grown to 87 percent.

In education, race matters.

Nonwhite schools tend to suffer disproportionately from resource shortages, overcrowding, discipline problems and teacher apathy. The trend toward neighborhood schools means a school in the wealthy and overwhelmingly white neighborhood of Queen Anne tends to have the best of everything and is accessible only to those living nearby — white and wealthy students. By contrast, a school on Beacon Hill will face a concentration of poor students, and if a student there wanted to attend that school on Queen Anne, he wouldn't have access.

A Florida State University professor of economics and education noted in a New York Times article that the best predictors of a school's achievement are the race and wealth of its students. The professor cited research showing a school of mostly well-off white students has a 1-in-4 chance of academic success. Schools with largely poor and minority students have a 1-in-300 chance.

Those charged with providing equal opportunity and access in education must navigate a thorny thicket in their efforts to educate all children while remaining mindful of the barriers, including race, that challenge academic success.

Seattle has tried many things over 30 years of effort to maintain integrated schools. The system's current plan is called "Open Choice." It allows students to choose any school; a system of tiebreakers is invoked when too many students choose the same school. A point worth noting is that nearly 90 percent of the district's 46,000 students receive their first or second choice.

Seattle's enrollment plan mixed race-neutral criteria and one that recognized race as a factor in determining opportunity and access.

The tiebreakers used to divvy up scarce seats in popular schools currently include where siblings attend school, and the distance students live from the school — nods to families who prefer schools close to home and siblings attending school together.

The now-dormant racial tiebreaker was the district's acknowledgement that strictly colorblind efforts can have terrible consequences, with white students grouped in the better schools in white neighborhoods and minorities attending lesser schools in communities of color — separate and clearly not equal.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Brown vs. Board of Education ruling, diversity efforts have been ongoing in school districts nationwide.

There may have been some sense that such efforts would slow down once barriers to housing and employment were removed, but segregated housing patterns, most notably in large cities, have led to a slow resegregation of public schools.

There is no more perfect time for the high court's clarity over how Seattle and other school districts should address racial challenges in education.

Rising to the challenge of educational inequality lies at the heart of the No Child Left Behind federal law. When President Bush pledged to eliminate the achievement gap between black and white students by 2014, districts rightly interpreted it as permission to target racial and class inequities.

The Supreme Court — including its two newest Bush-appointed members, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito — most certainly is not ignorant of this political landscape. While the court hasn't ruled on the use of race in K-12 enrollment, there is plenty of legal foreshadowing.

Two years ago, the court, led by then-Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, upheld the use of race by universities and colleges in creating robust and diverse learning communities. That case was about higher education, but the logic can extend to K-12, where students are more impressionable and hopefully more amenable to the benefits of diversity.

Three federal appeals courts agreed school districts can consider race as a part of student assignment plans. In the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals' nod of approval to Seattle, conservative Judge Alex Kozinski penned a powerful concurrence, likening the district's racial tiebreaker to a spoon that "gives America's melting pot a healthy stir without benefiting or burdening any particular group."

Moreover, Washington state's constitution made education the state's primary duty, in order to prepare students for "citizenship." In today's age of globalization, preparing for citizenship means mastering diverse relationships and ex-periences, much as students do with reading, writing and arithmetic.

It seems like a simple enough rationale. Indeed, no one blinks an eye as private schools, higher-education institutions and businesses advocate unapologetically for diversity.

Yet, no government charge is so fraught with emotion as public education. School districts must weigh their mandate to offer equal opportunities to all students with the narrower goal of parents to obtain the best for their child. These twin visions can be at odds.

Indeed, this is how Seattle wound up before the Supreme Court.

Magnolia parent Kathleen Brose helped found Parents Involved in Community Schools (PICS), which launched a legal battle against the racial tiebreaker in 2000. Brose was angered that her daughter did not get into her first choice, Ballard High. The daughter did not want to attend Ingraham, the second high school Magnolia students are assigned to. Thus, she was assigned to Franklin, a well-regarded school across town. Other non-racial tiebreakers precluded Brose's daughter from getting into other schools. The racial tiebreaker was merely one of several determinants, not the sole determining factor, for enrollment.

While Seattle School District attorneys have tried to argue that Brose's daughter lost standing in the case when she graduated, there is a non-legal question raised by Brose's experience.

How can parents control their children's access to the things perceived as leading to success? Whether it is buying a house in a neighborhood with good public schools or "managing" the increasingly competitive enrollment process, parents battle by any means necessary for access to the best. The presence of black students in a largely white school will be seized upon as the reason a white student didn't get in, when the reasons are far more complex.

For one, there are simply not enough good schools. Those that are good rely on more than government funding; they use the wealth, savvy and expertise of their well-off constituents. This is more likely to happen in richer, white neighborhoods than in poorer, minority ones. Yet, the role of public education as the great equalizer means leveling bumpy inequities into a smooth road.

Schools are right to make these efforts. They play a special role in our democracy. The values and principles held dear in a civil society are formed at a young age, typically while students are in the K-12 system.

The Supreme Court should defer to these values and to Seattle's efforts. As Kozinski noted, strategies to ensure all children receive an equal opportunity to learn, and that no one is left behind, are the kinds of decisions that should be made closer to home, among the experts and those "who have the power to reverse or modify the policy should it prove unworkable."

Lynne K. Varner's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is lvarner@seattletimes.com