Redefining Diversity: Political Responses to the Post-PICS Environment

Abstract

This article examines the federal and local political response to the Parents Involved decision. At the federal level, developments suggest a reaction to Parents Involved that, since President Obama has taken office, has been largely supportive of voluntary efforts to promote racial diversity. The administration has also been seeking to enforce more traditional race-based civil rights cases. Locally, even though reactions to the decision are as varied as the districts themselves, three broad categories of political responses emerge from our review of post–Parents Involved student assignment policies. They are the adoption of multifactor student assignment plans, the adoption of class-based (e.g., race-neutral) student assignments, and the elimination of efforts to pursue diversity. This article is particularly interested in examining the first two categories of responses. In doing so, we argue that some school districts are pursuing a redefined conceptualization of diversity in a challenging legal and political climate.

Notes

As noted in the text, we use Parents Involved and PICS interchangeably to refer to the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District (which was consolidated with the Meredith case from Jefferson County, Kentucky, upon appeal to the Supreme Court). Stakeholders commonly use both PICS and Parents Involved to describe the decision.

The court vigorously contested (perhaps preemptively) those claims suggesting that Parents Involved represented a death knell for Brown's goals. Chief Justice Roberts believed that the plurality decision was in keeping with the goals of Brown, but Justice Stevens's dissent was devoted entirely to dispelling that notion.

Bell (2009), a central figure in Critical Legal Studies, suggested that “the interest of blacks in achieving racial equality will be accommodated only when it converges with the interests of whites” (p. 76).

For example, the district court had already ruled in favor the voluntary integration plan of Lynn, Massachusetts, but revised the decision after Grutter. Although the strict scrutiny analysis used in these cases had not been applied to school integration cases prior to PICS, many of the briefs filed in PICS argued whether Louisville's and Seattle's plans met the two prongs of the narrowly tailored requirement.

Arguably, this first began in the 1974 Milliken decision, which was essentially a reversal of a decision 2 years earlier in which the court said that the effect, not intent, of policy changes was how courts should evaluate desegregation efforts (Wright et al. v. Council of the City of Emporia et al., 1972).

For example, Seattle's voluntary integration plan did little to ameliorate racial segregation in less popular, underchosen high schools, as it only applied when high schools had more student demand than seats available.

When there is no opinion that is supported by a majority of justices, the plurality represents the opinion that received more support than any other.

Of course, state government also helps shape educational policy, at times acting as an intermediary between federal guidelines and local policymaking (e.g., state-level responsibility for formulating and submitting applications—based on local district input—for the recent federal grant initiative Race to the Top). Although it is beyond the scope of this article, it is also important to understand the role of state politics and policy in education.

The Ninth Circuit's decision in Tucson stands in contrast to the overriding trend, supported in the past by the Bush administration, toward granting unitary status.

For example, during the oral arguments, Justice Ginsburg questioned the plaintiff's lawyer in the Louisville case, asking what type of holistic review the district could have implemented for a first grader as an alternative to its existing assignment system (Transcript, 2006).

Class-based plans escape the same strict scrutiny as race-conscious plans receive because, unlike race, economic status is not a protected classification under the 14th Amendment.

Using FRL status reflects a binary conceptualization of poverty. Because students are designated as either FRL eligible or not, the measure fails to take into consideration the wide variation in families above the poverty line, from those who report income just barely above the cutoff to those who are very well-off. A similar issue applies to families below the poverty line, from the extremely poor to who just miss the noneligibility mark.

This policy modification will provide an important opportunity to further evaluate arguments within social science literature about the efficacy of class-based policies in producing diverse schools.

Board of Education of Oklahoma v. Dowell (1991); Freeman v. Pitts (1992); Missouri v. Jenkins (1995).

In addition to the courts, the DOJ oversees a number of desegregation cases. Some estimates suggest that roughly 250 school districts remain on the DOJ's docket. Under the Bush administration, the DOJ actively worked to close desegregation cases under its purview, recommending unitary status for 178 of the 265 cases reviewed (Le, 2010).

It is difficult to estimate precise numbers here because districts may try not to draw too much attention to an often sensitive topic.

Heightened academic achievement, an ability to adopt multiple perspectives, enhanced skills, higher graduation and college going rates, and more cross-racial friendships are all benefits that have been linked to attending a racially diverse schooling environment (see, e.g., Linn & Welner, 2007).