<font size="5"><center>
Supreme Court Looks at Race and Schools</font size></center>
Sisters Audreyanna, 14, left, and Cassandra Cosby, 16,
discuss desegregation at a high school football game
Friday, Sept, 22, 2006, at Central High School Stadium
in Louisville, Ky. The sisters say the idea of mixing
students from around the county in different schools
sounds like a good idea. They said school integration
provides a social education along with an academic one.
Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled is to hear
oral arguments on lawsuits brought by parents in Louisville
and Seattle who challenged voluntary school district policies
that use race to help determine where children go to school.
(AP Photo/Brian Bohannon)
By MARK SHERMAN
Associaed Press
Dec 4, 9:29 AM (ET)
WASHINGTON (AP) - Pro-affirmative action demonstrators bearing "Fight For Equality" placards descended on the Supreme Court Monday as justices prepared to hear fresh arguments in cases testing when race may be used as a basis for assigning students to public schools.
Parents in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle are challenging school assignment plans that factor in a student's race in an effort to have individual school populations approximate the racial makeup of the entire system. Federal appeals courts have upheld both programs.
On the sidewalk in front of the Supreme Court, hundreds of pro-affirmative action demonstrators marched to dramatize their issue. A parent-teachers group from Chicago and several civil rights groups were among those sponsoring the demonstration.
The school policies in contention Monday are designed to keep schools from segregating along the same lines as neighborhoods. In Seattle, only high school students are affected. Louisville's plan applies systemwide.
"The plan has prevented the resegregation that inevitably would result from the community's segregated housing patterns and that most likely would produce many schools that might be perceived as 'failing,'" the Seattle school district said in its brief to the high court.
The Bush administration has taken the side of the parents who are suing the school districts, much as it intervened on behalf of college and graduate students who challenged affirmative action policies before the Supreme Court in 2003.
In 2003, the court upheld race-conscious admissions in higher education in a 5-4 opinion by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
O'Connor, however, has since retired and been replaced by conservative Justice Samuel Alito. Lawyers on both sides of the issue presume that Alito is inclined to oppose the school plans.
About 400 of the nation's 15,000 school districts are under court orders to desegregate. It is believed that hundreds more voluntarily take race into account.
There are no firm figures, although the Pacific Legal Foundation of Sacramento, Calif., said up to 1,000 districts voluntarily use race as a factor in school assignments, drawing boundaries, deciding where to locate new buildings and in other ways. The foundation opposes race-based policies.
Seattle has tried for years to achieve racial diversity in its schools in the face of persistent segregated housing patterns. The city's schools have never been subject to court order. Seattle put the assignment system at issue in place in 1998, but suspended it after parents sued.
The Louisville schools, with a history of state-imposed segregation, were under federal court supervision for 25 years. The Jefferson County Board of Education, which encompasses Louisville,came up with its own plan to maintain integrated schools shortly thereafter.
But the policy denigrates children's self-worth by color-coding them throughout their school years, said the legal brief for Crystal Meredith, the Louisville parent who sued after her son was denied his first choice of which school to attend.
The cases are Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 05-908; and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, 05-915.
http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20061204/D8LQ31V83.html
Supreme Court Looks at Race and Schools</font size></center>
Sisters Audreyanna, 14, left, and Cassandra Cosby, 16,
discuss desegregation at a high school football game
Friday, Sept, 22, 2006, at Central High School Stadium
in Louisville, Ky. The sisters say the idea of mixing
students from around the county in different schools
sounds like a good idea. They said school integration
provides a social education along with an academic one.
Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled is to hear
oral arguments on lawsuits brought by parents in Louisville
and Seattle who challenged voluntary school district policies
that use race to help determine where children go to school.
(AP Photo/Brian Bohannon)
By MARK SHERMAN
Associaed Press
Dec 4, 9:29 AM (ET)
WASHINGTON (AP) - Pro-affirmative action demonstrators bearing "Fight For Equality" placards descended on the Supreme Court Monday as justices prepared to hear fresh arguments in cases testing when race may be used as a basis for assigning students to public schools.
Parents in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle are challenging school assignment plans that factor in a student's race in an effort to have individual school populations approximate the racial makeup of the entire system. Federal appeals courts have upheld both programs.
On the sidewalk in front of the Supreme Court, hundreds of pro-affirmative action demonstrators marched to dramatize their issue. A parent-teachers group from Chicago and several civil rights groups were among those sponsoring the demonstration.
The school policies in contention Monday are designed to keep schools from segregating along the same lines as neighborhoods. In Seattle, only high school students are affected. Louisville's plan applies systemwide.
"The plan has prevented the resegregation that inevitably would result from the community's segregated housing patterns and that most likely would produce many schools that might be perceived as 'failing,'" the Seattle school district said in its brief to the high court.
The Bush administration has taken the side of the parents who are suing the school districts, much as it intervened on behalf of college and graduate students who challenged affirmative action policies before the Supreme Court in 2003.
In 2003, the court upheld race-conscious admissions in higher education in a 5-4 opinion by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
O'Connor, however, has since retired and been replaced by conservative Justice Samuel Alito. Lawyers on both sides of the issue presume that Alito is inclined to oppose the school plans.
About 400 of the nation's 15,000 school districts are under court orders to desegregate. It is believed that hundreds more voluntarily take race into account.
There are no firm figures, although the Pacific Legal Foundation of Sacramento, Calif., said up to 1,000 districts voluntarily use race as a factor in school assignments, drawing boundaries, deciding where to locate new buildings and in other ways. The foundation opposes race-based policies.
Seattle has tried for years to achieve racial diversity in its schools in the face of persistent segregated housing patterns. The city's schools have never been subject to court order. Seattle put the assignment system at issue in place in 1998, but suspended it after parents sued.
The Louisville schools, with a history of state-imposed segregation, were under federal court supervision for 25 years. The Jefferson County Board of Education, which encompasses Louisville,came up with its own plan to maintain integrated schools shortly thereafter.
But the policy denigrates children's self-worth by color-coding them throughout their school years, said the legal brief for Crystal Meredith, the Louisville parent who sued after her son was denied his first choice of which school to attend.
The cases are Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 05-908; and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, 05-915.
http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20061204/D8LQ31V83.html
