Rollback of Affirmative Action Guidelines Could Reshape K-12 School Districts
WASHINGTON—The Trump administration’s recent decision to roll back affirmative action guidelines sent a ripple through the nation’s colleges and universities, but it will also likely have a far-reaching impact on K-12 schools.
Public school districts across the country have long wrestled with how to desegregate their schools in ways supported by the law, which forbids districts from using the race of individual students to determine their placement.
During the Obama administration, their efforts were directed by a set of federal guidelines detailing ways schools could take race into account, such as drawing zoning lines to include racially diverse neighborhoods.
Trump administration officials rescinded that document, along with six others relating to the use of race in college and university admissions, and replaced it with a Bush-era set of guidelines directing schools to adopt non-race-based measures to create diversity.
Despite the rollback, schools are still permitted under federal law to use race broadly as one factor when drawing up voluntary integration plans. In a recent statement, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, whose agency joined the Justice Department in removing the Obama guidelines, said Supreme Court precedent, not direction from the executive branch, should dictate schools’ actions.
“The court’s written decisions are the best guide for navigating this complex area,” Mrs. DeVos said. “Schools should continue to offer equal opportunities for all students while abiding by the law.”
But the administration’s decision to rescind the guidelines signals its legal philosophy, and may indicate going forward that it will investigate complaints or join lawsuits against schools who do use race in their desegregation plans.
“It might be an indication of what direction the administration chooses to go in, which is looking at efforts aimed at increasing diversity and looking at perhaps challenging them,” said Dennis Parker, director of the racial justice program at the American Civil Liberties Union.
In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that districts could continue to use race in determining the makeup of their school populations as long as they didn’t select individual students solely on the basis of race.
At the center of that case was Jefferson County School District, based in Louisville, Ky., which had opted to voluntarily continue integrating its schools after a court order to do so ended in 2000. The district set goals for schools of having African-American populations of no less than 15% and no more than 50%, and bused students to different schools to strike the desired balance.
Following the court’s decision, which struck down that plan, the district opted to seek a racially diverse mix by pulling students into individual schools from varied neighborhoods. That approach formed one of the recommendations in the Obama guidelines.
Barbara Dempsey, the district’s director of student assignment, said bringing together students from different neighborhoods wasn’t as effective as taking race more directly into account, but that “it still provides us more diversity than if students just went to the school closest to their homes.” She said the district’s new plan hasn’t been challenged and enjoys wide support.
Roger Clegg, President of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative think tank that opposes race-based decision making, said Louisville’s plan still amounts to race-based discrimination.
“I don’t think you can avoid the problem by saying, ‘We’re not going to just look at your race, we’re also going to look at the race of your neighbors,’” he said. “It’s still racial discrimination.”
Retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy was the architect of the 2007 Supreme Court ruling that forms the basis of today’s law. That is prompting advocates on both sides to wonder about the result if another diversity or integration plan comes the court, given Justice Kennedy’s replacement by a more conservative justice, possibly nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
Most school districts avoid the risk altogether by using factors other than race, such as students’ socioeconomic status, to integrate their schools. Research suggests that such methods, which the Trump administration is now encouraging, can yield racial diversity but less so than plans that explicitly consider race.
In New York City, where a debate has been unfolding for several months on the best way to integrate schools, some schools give admissions priority to children who are poor, in foster care, affected by incarceration or English language learners.
—Leslie Brody contributed to this article.
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