1083 1955, Brown II, empowered lower courts to supervise desegregation in local school districts and held that desegregation must proceed “with all deliberate speed.” A number of Supreme
Trang 1WAR IIto live in the United States He had earned his degree in law from the University of Munich
in 1933 He developed a background in finance while working in a Munich bank, where he helped German Jews transfer their assets out of the country in order to escape persecution In
1938, with the Nazi party gaining strength, Schlesinger emigrated to New York and promptly enrolled at Columbia Law School, where he earned his degree in 1942 He briefly practiced financial law, then served as a professor at Cornell from 1948 to 1975 Upon retirement from Cornell, he joined the faculty of the Hastings College of Law at the University of California
Schlesinger had an enormous impact on U.S and European legal studies Foremost was his pioneering 1950 book on comparative law, which ultimately influenced two generations of readers In 1955, working on behalf of the New York Law Revision Commission, he examined the important question of whether to codify COMMERCIAL LAW His study, Problems of Codifi-cation of Commercial Law (1955), anticipated the subsequent development of the UNIFORM COMMERCIAL CODE In 1995, the American Journal
of Comparative Law published a tribute to Schlesinger that praised his“heroic work” and noted that its influence went beyond U.S law:
“Today’s serious efforts to find and develop a unitary European private law is, consciously or unconsciously, a continuation of Schlesinger’s effort.” Schlesinger died on November 10,
1996, in San Francisco, when he and his wife committed suicide
FURTHER READINGS Buxbaum, Richard M 1995 “Rudolf B Schlesinger—A Tribute ” American Journal of Comparative Law 43 (summer).
Schlesigner, Rudolf B., Hans W Baade, and Peter E Herzog.
2001 Schlesigner, Baade, Herzog and Wise’s Comparative Law Eagan, MN: West.
Winship, Peter 1996 “As the World Turns: Revisiting Rudolf Schlesinger’s Study of the Uniform Commercial Code ‘In the Light of Comparative Law’.” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 29 (April).
SCHOOL DESEGREGATION The attempt to end the practice of separating children of different races into distinct public schools
Beginning with the landmark U.S SUPREME COURT case of BROWN V BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA, 347 U.S 483, 74 S Ct 686, 98 L Ed 873 (1954), the United States’ legal system has sought
to address the problem of racialSEGREGATION, or separation, in public schools In Brown, a unanimous Supreme Court found that segregat-ing children of different races in distinct schools violates the EQUAL PROTECTION Clause of the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT, which guarantees that
“[n]o state shall deny to any person the equal protection of the laws” (§ 1) In writing the Court’s opinion, Chief Justice EARL WARREN stressed the crucial role that education plays in socializing children, and he maintained that racial segregation“generates a feeling of inferiority” in children that will limit their opportunities in life
A related decision, Brown v Board of Education,
349 U.S 294, 75 S Ct 753, 99 L Ed 1083 (1955), (Brown II), empowered lower courts to supervise desegregation in local school districts and held that desegregation must proceed “with all deliberate speed.”
A number of Supreme Court decisions in the decades since Brown have further defined the constitutional claims regarding desegrega-tion first set forth in Brown In many cases,
❖
1914–18 World War I
1909 Born, Munich, Germany
◆
1933 Earned Dr Jur.
from University of Munich
◆
1938 Immigrated to United States
1942 Earned LL.B from Columbia Law School
1939–45 World War II
1942–43 Clerked for Irving Lehman of the N.Y Court of Appeals
1950–53 Korean War
1961–73 Vietnam War
1950 Comparative Law: Cases-Texts-Materials first published
◆
1955 Problems
of Codification
of Commercial Law published
1948–75 Taught at Cornell Law School
1975–94 Taught at Hastings College of Law
❖
1996 Died, San Francisco, Calif.
WHEN MEN RATHER
THAN THE LAW
GOVERN,PEOPLE
USUALLY FIND IT
MORE PRUDENT TO
SEEK A POWERFUL
HUMAN PROTECTOR
THAN TO STAND ON
LEGAL RIGHTS
AGAINST THESTATE
S CHLESINGER
Trang 2schools outside their immediate neighborhood.
Despite such judicial actions, desegregation in
the United States achieved mixed success
Although many more children attend school
with children of other races now than in 1954,
in numerous cities racial segregation in
educa-tion remains as high as ever Faced with the
challenges of shifting populations, segregated
housing patterns, impatient courts, and the
stubborn persistence of racism,
comprehen-sive school desegregation—long a hoped-for
remedy to past DISCRIMINATION against African
Americans—remains an elusive goal
1954–1970: School Desegregation
after Brown
Brown and Brown II inspired a great deal of
hope that the races would soon be joined in
public schools and that the United States would
take a giant step toward healing the racial
animosities of its past THURGOOD MARSHALL, an
African American who led the National
Associ-ation for the Advancement of Colored People’s
Legal Defense Fund in its challenge to school
segregation in Brown and later became a justice
of the Supreme Court, predicted that after
Brown, schools would be completely
desegre-gated within six months
(HEW) study indicated that only 2.4 percent of African Americans in the South were attending largely white schools Such statistics indicated that Brown had led to only token INTEGRATION
By the mid-1960s many observers felt that the Supreme Court, and the United States as a whole, had lost an opportunity to create a desegregated society more quickly DE FACTO segregation (segregation in fact or actuality)—as opposed to
DE JURE segregation (segregation by law)—
remained a stubborn reality, and racism remained its leading cause Whites who did not want their children attending school with chil-dren of another race found many ways to avoid desegregation, from gerrymandering school boundaries (adjusting school boundaries to their advantage) to manipulating school transportation and construction policies And in a phenomenon dubbed white flight, many transferred their children to private schools or simply moved to suburbs where few, if any, nonwhites lived
Congress joined the Supreme Court in its efforts to assist desegregation, by passing the CIVIL RIGHTSAct of 1964 (28 U.S.C.A § 1447, 42 U.S.C.A §§ 1971, 1975a to 1975d, 2000a to 2000h-6) Among its many features, the act authorized HEW to create specific guidelines
White Black Latino
Year
Public School Enrollment, by Race/Ethnicity, 1968 to 2006
SOURCE: Harvard University, The Civil Rights Project, A Multiracial Society with Segregated Schools: Are We Losing the
Dream? 2003, and the U.S Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2009.
34.7
6.3
2.0 0
5
10
20
30
40
29.2
6.4 3.2
28.5
7.1 5.6
29.1
7.7 6.4
28.9
7.9
28.5
8.3 10.5 6.9
15
25
35
ILLUSTRATION BY GGS CREATIVE RESOURCES REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF GALE,
A PART OF CENGAGE LEARNING.
Trang 3with which to measure the progress of school desegregation In 1966, for example, these guide-lines called for specific levels of integration: 16 to
18 percent of African American children in all school districts must be attending predominantly white schools The act also allowed HEW to cut off federal funding to school districts that did not meet integration guidelines However, this pun-ishment proved difficult to use as a means of enforcement
In the mid-1960s a judge on the U.S Court
of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, JOHN MINOR WISDOM, issued a number of influential opinions that strengthened the cause of racial integration
of schools Wisdom’s rulings established that it was not enough simply to end segregation;
Instead, school districts must actively imple-ment desegregation In one of these cases, United States v Jefferson Board of Education,
372 F.2d 836 (5th Cir 1966), he wrote,“[T]he only adequate redress for a previously overt system-wide policy of segregation directed against Negroes as a collective entity is a system-wide policy of integration.” Wisdom’s ruling also detailed measures that the school district must take toward the goal of integration, including deciding how children were to be informed of the schools available to them for attendance, where new schools must be con-structed, where transportation routes must run, and how faculty and staff were to be hired and assigned
In 1968 the Supreme Court again addressed the issue of school desegregation, in Green v County School Board, 391 U.S 430, 88 S Ct
1689, 20 L Ed 2d 716, which concerned the schools of New Kent County, a rural area in eastern Virginia In its opinion the Court
The Busing Debate
Busing is a plan for promoting
school desegregation, by which
minority students are transported to
largely white schools and white students
are brought to largely minority schools
It is intended to safeguard theCIVIL RIGHTS
of students and to provide equal
oppor-tunity in public education Busing is also
an example ofAFFIRMATIVE ACTION, that is,
the attempt to undo or compensate for
the effects of past DISCRIMINATION Such
action is sometimes called compensatory
justice Though busing was a common
practice in the 1970s and 1980s, school
districts have steadily abandoned the use
of busing as a remedy for desegregation
Busing was first enacted as part of
school desegregation programs in response
to federal court decisions establishing that
racialSEGREGATIONof public schools violates
theEQUAL PROTECTION clause of the
FOUR-TEENTH AMENDMENTto the Constitution In
Green v County School Board (391 U.S 430,
88 S Ct 1689, 20 L Ed 2d 716[1968]) and
Swann v Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of
Education (402 U.S 1, 91 S Ct 1267, 28 L
Ed 2d 554 [1971]), the SUPREME COURT established that federal courts could require school districts to implement busing pro-grams as a means of achieving racial INTEGRATIONof public schools
However, busing was nothing new in U.S education Even before these deci-sions, nearly 40 percent of the nation’s schoolchildren were bused to school
Indeed, before 1954, when the Court declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional in BROWN V BOARD OF EDUCATION (347 U.S 483, 74 S
Ct 686, 98 L Ed 873), children were often bused to segregated schools that were beyond walking distance from their homes
With the Supreme Court decisions in Green and Swann, busing became one of the most controversial topics in U.S law and politics, particularly in the 1970s
Although the zeal for busing as a remedy for past racial injustice had waned greatly
by the 1990s, busing remained a
feature—if many times a limited one—
of most school desegregation programs and continued to inspire heated debate Those who are in favor of busing claim, as did the Supreme Court in Green and Swann, that racial integration in and
of itself is a worthy social goal and that busing is an effective means of achieving that goal in public education Supporters point to the harmful legacy of segrega-tion in educasegrega-tion Before Brown, African American children were schooled in separate facilities that were usually infe-rior to the facilities used by whites, despite official claims that they were equal Such segregation worked to keep African Americans at a disadvantage in relation to whites It instilled feelings of inferiority in African American children and seriously diminished their educa-tional achievement and opportunities Supporters of busing also often claim that DE FACTO (actual) segregation exists even decades after the CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENTand the striking down of racial
Trang 4acknowledged that the integration guidelines set
forth in Brown II had not produced adequate
results School districts such as those of New
Kent County—where in 1967, 85 percent of black
children still attended an all-black school—had
avoided meaningful integration It was not
enough, the Court stated, to simply end
segrega-tion and allow a “freedom-of-choice” plan—by
which African American children supposedly had
the freedom to attend predominantly white
schools—to be the only means of combining
the races in an educational setting During the
oral argument of the case, Chief Justice Warren
noted that although the “fence” of outright
segregation had been taken down, socially
constructed “booby traps” still prevented most
children from attending integrated schools
Green also introduced two concepts—dual
school systems and unitary school systems—that
remain a part of the school desegregation debate A dual school system is a segregated school system
In other words, it consists of separate segments—
one black, the other white—existing side by side but with widely different educational conditions and outcomes The Court in Green identified six indicators of a dual system: racial separation of students, faculty, staff, transportation, extracur-ricular activities, and facilities A unitary school system, on the other hand, is racially integrated at every level In a later ruling, Alexander v Holmes County Board of Education, 396 U.S 19, 90 S Ct
29, 24 L Ed 2d 19 (1969), the Court described a unitary system as one“within which no person is
to be effectively excluded from any school because
of race or color.”
Even more important, in its opinion in Green, the Court held that New Kent County would be expected to immediately begin
class and a largely minority, poor
under-class, they argue, are transported,
employed, housed, and educated in
differ-ent settings Often wealthy people live in
the suburbs, and the poor live in the cities
Growing up in their separate
neighbor-hoods, children from higher
socioeco-nomic levels thus have many advantages
that poorer children do not: more space at
home, better nutrition and health care,
greater cultural and intellectual
stimula-tion, and friends and acquaintances with
higher social status providing better job
and career prospects Some even compare
the isolation of impoverished minorities in
U.S inner cities with that of impoverished
blacks under South Africa’s former
apart-heid system
Advocates of desegregation through
busing assert that these existing
in-equalities must not become greater and
that desegregation in education can go a
long way toward ending them and
creating a more just society They also
point out that U.S education has
his-torically worked to ensure a society in
which class hierarchy is minimized and
social mobility—both upward and
downward—is maximized Busing, they
argue, can, therefore, help avoid the
Supporters of busing also maintain that it is an affordable way to achieve school desegregation While admitting that the initial start-up costs of a busing program can be large, they point to statistics that indicate the operating costs
of compulsory busing are generally less than 5 percent of a school district’s entire budget
Those who oppose busing make a variety of different points against it, although they do not necessarily oppose integration itself Opponents claim that busing serves as a distraction from more important educational goals such as quality of instruction Busing, they hold, too easily becomes a case of form over substance, in which the form of racial integration of education becomes of greater value than the substance of what
is actually taught in schools Critics of busing would rather focus on the envi-ronment in a school and in its class-rooms than on achieving a particular number of each race in a school Justice Lewis F Powell Jr echoed these senti-ments in an opinion to the school desegregation case Keyes v Denver School District (413 U.S 189, 93 S Ct 2686, 37
achievement, it is wrong to turn the attention of communities “from the paramount goal of quality in education
to a perennially divisive debate over who
is to be transported where.” Critics also claim that busing causes white flight—meaning whites move their children from integrated public schools
to private and suburban schools that are largely white—which results in an even greater disparity between white and black, rich and poor According to this scenario, busing only exacerbates the current situation, making public schools and cities even more the exclusive province of the poor
Some noted experts on the issue of busing have concluded that although they favor a society that is racially integrated, the social costs of busing and the resulting white flight are too high Others have sought a middle ground on the issue by arguing that judges should choose carefully the dis-tricts in which they decide to implement busing For example, they claim that white flight is more likely to occur in communities and schools where whites form a small minority and that, as a
Trang 5remedying the lasting effects of segregation.
“The burden on a school board today,” the Court said,“is to come forward with a plan that promises realistically to work, and promises realistically to work now” (Green) Thus, the Court abandoned its previous position that school desegregation must proceed “with all deliberate speed” in favor of a call for immedi-ate and prompt action
The Court also held that the Fourteenth Amendment required action to remedy past racial discrimination—or what has come to be called “affirmative action.” It found an “affir-mative duty to take whatever steps might be necessary to convert to a unitary system in which racial discrimination would be eliminated root and branch” (Green) Moreover, school boards would have to provide meaningful statistical evidence that their school district was moving toward the goal of integration
In a footnote to its opinion, the Court advanced suggestions for achieving school desegregation, including combining all children
in a particular age range, white and black, into the same building
Green and subsequent judicial decisions through 1970 caused a remarkable change in school desegregation By 1971 HEW statistics indicated that the South had become the most racially integrated region in the United States HEW estimated that 44 percent of African American students attended majority-white schools in the South, as compared to 28 percent
in the North and West In many communities, however, these changes resulted in white flight
In Mississippi, for example, white public school enrollment dropped between 25 and 100 percent in the 30 school districts with the highest black enrollment
result, busing has higher social costs in
such districts
Another prominent complaint in the
anti-busing opinion is that court-ordered
busing programs represent an abuse of
judicial power According to this view,
busing is an example of undesirable
judicial activism The large-scale social
changes caused by transporting thousands
of children many miles each day should
be imposed only by an elected body of
representatives such as a state legislature
or Congress Moreover, adherents of this
view argue that supervising school
deseg-regation programs only bogs down the
courts and takes time away from other
pressing legal matters
Critics of busing also point out that
many times the same court that requires
busing does not provide guidance as to
funding it, thereby creating financial
headaches for school districts Related to
this issue is the claim that busing is too
costly, especially when school districts are
forced to purchase new buses in order to start a busing program In financially strapped school districts, spending on busing sometimes takes away funding for other educational priorities
Some of those who oppose busing favor racial desegregation but do not view busing as a good way to achieve that goal Instead, they support a gradualist approach to social reform According to the gradualist view, it will take genera-tions to achieve the goal of racial desegregation in education and in society
as a whole Busing only interferes with the overall goal of integration, because of the sudden and disruptive changes, including white flight, which it imposes
on society
Others oppose busing on the ground that neighborhood schools are the best way to educate children In this camp are both those in favor of racial integration in education and those against it Neighbor-hood schools, it is argued, allow parents to
have a greater influence on their child’s education by making it easier, for exam-ple, to visit the school and speak with a teacher Such schools also give children a sense of identity and instill pride in their community Busing children to a school across town, they argue, cannot inspire pride in their school Advocates of neigh-borhood schools also point to statistics that indicate that bused students are more alienated from their school and thus experience greater problems, including poorer academic performance and in-creased delinquency
An even more fundamental question related to busing is whether racial integration is in itself a valuable goal for public schools Those who take opposite sides on this question marshal different sociological evidence In the 1950s and 1960s, the Supreme Court was influenced by the “contact” theory of racial integration According to this theory, the better one knows those of
The Busing Debate
(Continued)
Trang 6The 1970s: Swann and Busing
In SWANN V CHARLOTTE-MECKLENBURG BOARD OF
EDUCATION, 402 U.S 1, 91 S Ct 1267, 28 L Ed
2d 554 (1971), the focus of school desegregation
shifted from largely rural school districts to urban
ones, a change of scene that offered new
challenges to desegregation In the rural South
before the Brown decision, blacks and whites
lived largely in the same communities or areas,
and requiring that their children attend the same
neighborhood schools could resolve segregation
In urban settings, however, blacks and whites
lived in different neighborhoods, so combining
the two races in the same schools meant
transporting children, usually by bus, to
institu-tions that were often far from their homes
In Swann, the Court took the final step
toward making busing a part of school
de-segregation plans, by giving the lower courts
power to impose it as a means for achieving
integration Swann involved the
Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District, in North Carolina,
a district in which African Americans made up
29 percent of the student body After the Supreme Court’s decision in Green, a federal district judge ruled that the school district had not achieved adequate levels of integration:
14,000 of the 24,000 African American students still attended schools that were all black, and most of the 24,000 did not have any white teachers The judge called for the adoption of a desegregation plan that involved busing 13,300 additional children at an initial start-up cost of over $1 million
The Supreme Court upheld the district court’s plans Just as in Brown II, it gave school authorities and district judges primary respon-sibility for school desegregation This time, however, the Court provided more guidance
To create desegregated schools, it encouraged faculty reassignment; the redrawing of school attendance zones; and an optional, publicly
therefore, that integrated schools would
increase understanding between the races
and lower racial tensions
In the same years, many studies
claimed to show that racial integration
would boost the self-esteem, academic
achievement, and ultimately the
opportu-nities and choices of members of
minori-ties For example, a well-known report
issued by sociologist James S Coleman in
1966, Equality of Educational Opportunity,
concluded that minority children improve
their academic performance when they
attend classes where middle-class white
pupils are the majority Coleman’s report
also claimed that the most important
indicator of the academic performance of
minority and lower-class students is the
educational level of their classmates The
report was seized upon by many as a
reason to institute court-imposed busing
plans for school districts
By the 1970s and later, other
sociol-ogists challenged the theories that school
desegregation would lead to greater racial
harmony and improved academic
per-formance by African Americans
Cole-man, too, became more skeptical about
busing and argued that voluntary
school desegregation Others went so far
as to claim that integration only increases hostility and tensions between the races
African American students who are bused, they argued, experience a decline
in their educational achievement in school Some studies have shown that students who are bused grow more rather than less hostile toward the other race or races In addition, some studies have indicated that in many schools where the desired percentages of races have been achieved through busing, students interact largely with those of their own race and thus segregation within the school prevents true desegre-gation
By 2009 the anti-busing viewpoint had clearly prevailed During the 1990s federal courts released many school districts from supervision by declaring these districts free of the taint of state-imposed segregation The 1999 release of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district from court supervision was a symbolic mo-ment, marking the end of an almost 30-year experiment in which the courts used busing to attempt the desegregation of public schools By 2009, the district had
conflict over busing, ended race-based admissions and its busing program in
1999 Even cities such as Seattle, which voluntarily adopted a busing program in the 1970s, abandoned the practice in
1999 The trend continued into the new century, as school districts also faced financial challenges The costs associated with busing led some districts to phase out busing, while other districts returned
to neighborhood elementary and middle schools
FURTHER READINGS Coyle, Marcia 2001 “Court Hears Key Busing Case; Charlotte, N.C., Schools Try to Remain under Supervision ” National Law Journal (March 12).
Douglas, Davison M., ed 1994 School Busing: Constitutional and Political Developments New York: Garland.
Kluger, Richard 1974 Simple Justice New York: Knopf.
Schwartz, Bernard 1986 Swann's Way: The School Busing Case and the Supreme Court New York: Oxford Univ Press.
CROSS REFERENCE Civil Rights Movement.
Trang 7funded transfer program for minority students.
Most importantly, the Court recommended mandatory busing to achieve desegregation It did note that busing could be excessive when it involved especially great distances It also hinted
at an end to court-imposed desegregation plans, stating,“Neither school authorities nor district courts are constitutionally required to make year-by-year adjustments of the racial composi-tion of student bodies” (Brown II) In court decisions decades later, these words would be cited in support of ending court-supervised school-desegregation programs
As a result of Swann, throughout the 1970s, courts ordered busing to achieve desegregation
in many city school districts, including Boston, Cleveland, Indianapolis, and Los Angeles
However, Swann was one of the last desegrega-tion opinions in which all nine justices were in complete agreement The Court’s unanimity on the issue of school desegregation, which had been the rule in every decision since Brown, broke down in the next major case, Milliken v
Bradley, 418 U.S 717, 94 S Ct 3112, 41 L Ed
2d 1069 (1974)
Milliken shifted the scene of school de-segregation from the South to the North—
specifically, to Detroit In Milliken, the Supreme Court addressed the issue of whether courts
could bus suburban pupils to desegregate inner-city schools The case involved federal district judge Stephen Roth’s decision to join the Detroit School District with 53 of the city’s
85 outlying suburbs in a desegregation decree The proposed plan would have created a metropolitan school district with 780,000 stu-dents, of whom 310,000 would be bused daily to achieve desegregation goals The shocked white community, much like others in the South, and its elected representatives denounced the plan Detroit reflected the situation of many U.S cities Although African Americans made up only 23 percent of the city’s population in 1970, they constituted 61 percent of its school-age population Whites were underrepresented in the inner-city public schools for various rea-sons Young white married couples, who constituted the demographic group most likely
to have school-age children, were also the most likely to move to the suburbs The whites who did live in the cities tended to be older people, singles, and childless couples Urban whites who did have school-age children often sent them to private schools
Such a situation caused Judge Roth to ask the question,“How do you desegregate a black city, or a black school system?” (Milliken) Busing within city limits alone would still leave many schools 75 to 90 percent black The only solution was one that took into consideration the entire metropolitan area of Detroit by joining the city school district with the sur-rounding suburban school districts
In support of this position, Judge Roth argued that a variety of causes had led to the concentration of blacks in ghettos Govern-ments, he wrote in his opinion, “at all levels, federal, state and local, have combined, with private organizations, such as loaning institutions and REAL ESTATE associations and brokerage firms, to establish residential seg-regation throughout the Detroit metropolitan area” (Bradley) Residential segregation had resulted from a whole variety of types of discrimination that caused African Americans and members of other minorities to live in segregated neighborhoods and, as a result, attend segregated schools Thus, Roth framed his metropolitan school-desegregation plan as a remedy for past discriminatory conduct Judge Roth’s plan promised to promote class as well as racial interaction, complicating
Based on the Court's
decision in Swann,
courts ordered busing
in many city school
districts to achieve
desegregation during
the 1970s Here, a
policeman stands
guard as African
American students
board a bus outside
South Boston High
School in September
1974.
AP IMAGES
Trang 8mixing of different races Such a plan, its
proponents argued, might also remedy the
funding inequities among different school
districts and even end white flight
In 1974, by a vote of 5–4, the Supreme
Court ruled in Milliken that Judge Roth had
wrongly included the suburbs with the city in
his desegregation decree The district court’s
plan, the Court held, could only be justified if
de jure segregation existed in outlying suburbs;
remedies to past discriminatory conduct must
be limited to Detroit, because it was the only
district that had such policies Disagreeing with
Roth, the Court also held that state housing
practices were not relevant to the case Writing
the Court’s opinion, Chief Justice WARREN E
BURGER argued for local control of school
districts, over court control: “No single
tradi-tion in public educatradi-tion is more deeply rooted
than local control over the operation of schools;
local autonomy has long been thought essential
both to the maintenance of community concern
and support for public schools and to the
quality of the educational process.”
Many saw the Milliken decision as the first
Supreme Court defeat for the cause of school
desegregation Some, including Justice Marshall,
the first African American to sit on the Court,
interpreted Milliken as an abandonment of the
cause of racial justice “Today’s holding, ”
Marshall wrote in his dissenting opinion, “is
more a reflection of a perceived public mood
that we have gone far enough in enforcing the
Constitution’s guarantee of equal justice than it
is the product of neutral principles of law.”
Supporters of the decision, however, pointed
to the myriad potential problems a plan like
Roth’s might impose, including greater
bureau-cratic red tape, more white flight, and even
greater racial tensions
The 1980s and After
In the 1980s the attitude of the public and of
the courts toward activist school-desegregation
programs—and toward other forms of
AFFIRMA-TIVE ACTION, for that matter—became more
skeptical and sometimes even hostile Courts
began to require that busing, for example, be
used as a remedy only in school districts where
there had been “deliberate” or “intentional”
segregation A large busing program that had
where there had been deliberate segregation By the late 1980s and 1990s the Supreme Court, now having the influence of more conservative justices appointed by Republican presidents RONALD REAGAN and GEORGE H W BUSH, estab-lished that court-ordered desegregation decrees, including busing plans, could end short of specific statistical goals of integration when everything “practicable” had been done to eliminate the vestiges of past discrimination
Two court decisions in the early 1990s—
Board of Education v Dowell, 498 U.S 237, 111 S
Ct 630, 112 L Ed 2d 715 (1991), which involved the Oklahoma City School District, and Freeman
v Pitts, 503 U.S 467, 112 S Ct 1430, 118 L Ed
2d 108 (1992), which covered the schools of DeKalb County, Georgia—addressed the manner
in which court supervision of school districts and their desegregation programs might end In Freeman, the Court identified three factors that may be used in such determinations: (1) whether the school system has complied with the desegregation decree’s provisions, (2) whether continued judicial control is necessary or practi-cable to achieve compliance with any aspect of the decree, and (3) whether the school system has demonstrated to the once-disfavored race its GOOD FAITH commitment to the whole of the decree Ultimately, the school system must be held to have engaged in a good faith effort to comply with any judicially supervised desegrega-tion program, and to have eliminated, to the extent practicable, any vestiges of discrimination
Freeman also established that courts may end desegregation decrees in incremental stages, gradually returning administrative functions and decisions to local authorities
In another case—Missouri v Jenkins, 515 U.S 70, 115 S Ct 2038, 132 L Ed 2d 63 (1995), which concerned the Kansas City (Missouri) School District—the Court stopped just short of ending judicial supervision of desegregation programs However, the decision did strike down two requirements imposed by a district court on the state of Missouri, declaring them outside that court’s authority Those two requirements would have attempted to improve the“desegregative attractiveness”—in this case, the ability to attract white students from the suburban school districts—of the school district
Trang 9by requiring the state to fund salary increases for all staff in the school district, as well as
“quality education” programs, including mag-net schools Such “interdistrict” remedies, the Court held, are beyond the scope of the district court The Court, citing Milliken, disagreed with the contention that white flight justifies an interdistrict remedy to segregation The Court also rejected student test scores as evidence for determining whether a school district has adequately responded to judicial desegregation decrees
Those who supported these decisions saw them as returning to local authorities their proper control over their schools They also saw these decisions as guiding the courts back to a more proper and limited social role The courts, they argued, should not be engaged in programs
of“social engineering.” Others, both black and white, simply abandoned desegregation as a goal and instead focused on improving neighbor-hood schools, even when those schools remain largely segregated
Critics of these decisions have seen them as a step backward for the civil rights of minorities in the United States Such decisions, they argued, merely perpetuated racism by returning school districts to those who often do not share the goal
of creating racially integrated public schools
Others have argued that the changing pattern in the judicial response to desegregation has been caused by the legal system’s exhaustion and impatience in the face of complex and protracted desegregation plans Accustomed to seeing more rapid results, district courts, according to this argument, have been eager to return the control
of school districts to local authorities
Others have argued that the Supreme Court decisions on school desegregation have ignored the effect of discriminatory housing patterns
They have maintained that without a change in segregated housing patterns, desegregation, whether in schools or in the larger society, cannot be achieved They claim that by ignoring housing as an issue, the Supreme Court enabled white America to escape its responsibilities in creating the urban ghetto
Still others have argued that school desegre-gation can yet be achieved through the court system, maintaining that social change of the kind required for true desegregation will take many years In the mid-1990s, organizations such as theAMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNIONbegan
to focus on making the case for school
desegregation on the state rather than federal level Some state constitutions, they pointed out, contain language more conducive to their cause Connecticut’s constitution, for example, declares that no person “shall be subjected
to segregation” (Conn Const art 1, § 20), and Minnesota’s requires that all students be given an adequate education Lawsuits based
on state constitutions have met with mixed success, prevailing in Connecticut but failing in Minnesota
By 2009 most school districts had been released from federal court supervision In addition, school districts had abandoned busing
to achieve desegregation The Minneapolis school district, which has a predominantly non-white student population, dropped busing
in the late 1990s, opting instead to emphasize strong neighborhood schools The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district, which was at the center of the school busing controversy, ended its busing program after a federal judge ended supervision in 1999
In 2007 the Supreme Court all but closed the door on efforts by school districts to desegregate schools through placement policies
In Parents Involved in Community Schools v Seattle School District No 1, 551 U.S 701, 127 S
Ct 2738, 168 L.Ed.2d 508 (2007), the Court issued a landmark ruling that struck down the desegregation guidelines used by the Seattle, Washington, and Louisville, Kentucky, school districts, finding that such plans violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment The Court stated that the plans were“directed only to racial balance, pure and simple,” and that the “way to stop discrimina-tion on the basis of race is to stop discriminat-ing on the basis of race.” It made no difference
if the school districts had worthy goals in mind
if they were“free to discriminate on the basis of race to achieve it.”
Though four justices voted to end the use of race in public education to promote diversity, Justice ANTHONY KENNEDY issued a separate opinion that said that race could still be taken into account if the programs were more narrowly tailored The dissenting four justices countered that the majority had made a disastrous decision that would unsettle decades
of decisions that sought to prevent the resegre-gation of public schools
Trang 10Kluger, Richard 2004 Simple Justice Rev ed New York:
Knopf.
Kozol, Jonathon 2006 The Shame of the Nation: The
Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America New
York: Three Rivers Press.
Orfield, Gary, and Eaton, Susan 1997 Dismantling
Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v Board of
Education New York: New Press.
Whitman, Mark, ed 1997 The Irony of Desegregation Law,
1955–1995: Essays and Documents Princeton, N.J.: M.
Wiener.
CROSS REFERENCES
Civil Rights Movement; Equal Protection; Schools and
School Districts.
SCHOOL PRAYER
See ENGEL V.VITALE;RELIGION
SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL DISTRICTS
A school district encompasses a specific
geographi-cal area with defined boundaries In most areas,
the head of the school district is called the
superintendent Each school district contains at
least one school Typically, a school district
includes primary schools, also called grade schools,
middle or junior high schools, and high schools A
school district’s boundaries may be the same as the
boundaries of a city Multiple school districts may
exist within larger cities, and in rural areas, a
school district may encompass several towns
School districts are quasi-municipal
cor-porations created and organized by state
legislatures and charged with the administration
of public schools within the state A
quasi-municipal corporation is a political body
created for the sole purpose of performing one
public function States divide up their school
systems into districts because localized
admin-istration and policy making are more efficient
and more responsive to community needs than
one state-levelBUREAUCRACY
Each state has numerous laws pertaining to
public schools and school districts, but state
statutes do not cover every educational concern
State legislatures delegate many aspects of
public education to school districts School
districts have the power to fashion curricula and
make rules and regulations that apply to the
schools, school employees, and students within
the district School districts also have power
over such matters as arranging for the
powers to individual schools
State and federal revenues pay for only about half of all educational costs The rest of the burden for construction, maintenance, and improvement of school facilities, salaries, and other educational costs is borne by local government Most states give school districts the power to levy local taxes for educational purposes This taxing power is limited by the state legislature If a school district wants to raise taxes beyond what the legislature allows, it may seek approval from the voters in the district
in aREFERENDUMor proposition vote
Most state legislatures require that school districts be governed by a school board, board of education, or similar body School boards govern the school district’s actions and can also take action on their own School boards appoint superintendents, review important decisions made by the district’s administrators, and fashion educational policies for the district Most school boards comprise several members elected by voters who live within the boundaries of the district In some states, school board members may be appointed by a state or local governing body or a designated government official
School boards hold regular meetings that are open to the public A school board must give notice
to the public prior to the meeting Notice generally
is given through mailings or by publishing the time
Elementary schools
Secondary schools
Combined grade schools
SOURCE: U.S Department of Education, National
Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education
Statistics, 2008
Pupil-Teacher Ratios for Public Schools, Fall 2006
15.6 16.4
14.7
0 5 10 15 20
ILLUSTRATION BY GGS CREATIVE RESOURCES REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF GALE, A PART OF CENGAGE LEARNING.