Race and Diversity: Surprise!

By Rick Moran

The New York Times reports that the San Francisco school system has learned a painful lesson about wealth-based efforts at achieving diversity; it doesn't work:

San Francisco began considering factors like family income, instead of race, in school assignments when it modified a court-ordered desegregation plan in response to a lawsuit. But school officials have found that the 55,000-student city school district, with Chinese the dominant ethnic group followed by Hispanics, blacks and whites, is resegregrating. The number of schools where students of a single racial or ethnic group make up 60 percent or more of the population in at least one grade is increasing sharply. In 2005-06, about 50 schools were segregated using that standard as measured by a court-appointed monitor. That was up from 30 schools in the 2001-02 school year, the year before the change, according to court filings.

The problem is significant because it was thought that in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling questioning some race-based diversity solutions, wealth-based criteria would be substituted and achieve the same result. No so, according to San Francisco officials. In fact, the "solution" only serves to exacerbate the problem of resegregation. The bottom line: "Diversity" as it is currently defined by the courts may not be achievable without painful dislocations of students. Simply redefining the issue as San Francisco sought to do, won't cut it.