District Administration - September 2007 - (Page 21)

liability and, at the least, expensive litigation. To avoid running afoul of the Fourteenth Amendment, I would suggest educators explore other options to achieve a diverse student population. For instance, school districts could employ a matrix of indicators, not based on race, but on other characteristics of individuals’ lives. A school district could begin with some of the factors identiﬁed in Grutter. It may also be possible to achieve diversity without the use of a matrix of indicators. Rather than adhering to traditional methods for determining school attendance zones, boundaries could be drawn to incorporate neighborhoods with diﬀerent socio-economic characteristics. Changing the district lines could result in a diverse student enrollment. To the extent that schools seek to promote diversity, they need to understand that diversity means more than race and that they need to be creative in achieving that goal in light of the Parents Involved decision. Culminating Step Pedro Noguera Professor of Education at New York University, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education The recent court ruling marks the return to legally sanctioned segregation. Actually, to be fair it is not the same as the pre-Brown Jim Crow days because the court has not called for schools to be segregated. Rather, the court has disallowed eﬀorts to counter the eﬀects of racial segregation in residential patterns, which almost always aﬀect the racial composition of schools. The Supreme Court has gradually undermined every eﬀort to address racial segregation in public schools through a series of rulings that have reduced the ability of school districts to utilize race as a means to ensure equity in access to schools and their academic programs. This new ruling merely represents the culmination of those gradual smaller steps. Those of us who have followed the changes in the direction of the court for the last several years recognize that legal remedies to racial segregation and the larger issue of educational equity have often had limited utility and eﬃcacy. White and middle-class ﬂight from most large American cities have made integration impossible anyway, and in the inner-ring suburbs where there tends to be the most diversity, the most pressing issues related to racial justice have been tied to “second-generation discrimination,” namely, tracking—disproportionate placement of minority students in special education and racial imbalances in disciplinary practices. It is ironic that at a time when the nation claims to be concerned about closing the “racial achievement gap,” we are also less willing to address blatant racial injustice in school funding and educational opportunity. DA www.DistrictAdministration.com September 2007 21 http://www.solution-tree.com http://www.solution-tree.com http://www.DistrictAdministration.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of District Administration - September 2007

Cover Contents Editor’s Letter Letters News Update Curriculum Update Inside the Law District Profile Administrator Profile District Buying Power 2007 X-Factor Student Achievement Awards 2007 We've Got Mail Supporting New Teachers How Well Does This Web Site Work? New Products Problem Solution Computer Literature Research Corner Online Edge Supervisor’s Opinion Speaking Out Calendar of Events Understanding the Times

District Administration - September 2007

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