found against plaintiffs in that case<\/a>,\u00a0 noting that the policy had reduced overrepresentation of white and Asian-American students and underrepresentation of Black and Latinx students and that because of this it could not be considered racially discriminatory. In other words, balanced admission was the antithesis of discrimination. The court further noted that several Supreme Court justices had indicated separately that race-conscious use of race neutral admissions criteria was permissible. Justice Thomas even went so far as to say that significant racial diversity could be achieved by increasing an institution’s preference for socioeconomically disadvantaged students.\u00a0 That seems to promise that challenges to using some of the intersectional aspects of race as criteria for admission (zip code, income, home school) will continue to be allowed and may even be wholly supported by the court.\u00a0 \u00a0There are some other court decisions that also seem to point to this conclusion which I’m not going to go into here, but it seems that using race-neutral criteria for admissions that include socioeconomic disadvantage and other factors to ensure balanced admissions is the way forward to creating more diverse schools and equal opportunities.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
*This is due to a cluster of factors. First, the intersectionality of poverty and minority racial status is well documented. Non-white students are far more likely to be poor. Second, schools with high concentrations of poor students, who are also more likely to be non-white, have lower per-pupil expenditures, fewer fully qualified and\/or experienced teachers, higher teacher turnover, outdated or below-grade level materials, and a host of other factors that impact achievement.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n**This proportion of white students reduces the problems enumerated in the above footnote. Maintaining a minimum population of 25% white students keeps per-pupil expenditures higher, resources flowing to the school, and a higher proportion of fully qualified and experienced teachers.<\/em><\/p>\n***The issue here is that states argue they didn’t deliberately set out to racially segregate students. Rather, the segregation is due to geography or economic factors beyond their control. So for a NJ judge to say the state failed to address the segregation happening is a pretty strong statement, as is the statement of the MN Supreme Court that it doesn’t matter whether the state deliberately caused the segregation, only whether that segregation resulted in academic harm to the students.<\/em><\/p>\n^It’s important to note that in the 2007 case Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, the Supreme Court already curtailed the ability of K-12 districts to consider race in admitting students or assigning them to specific schools. That ruling held that K-12 admissions or school assignment policies that aren\u2019t \u201crace-neutral\u201d are probably violating the 14th Amendment unless there’s a compelling reason to consider race.<\/em><\/p>\n^^In case you’re wondering, the district court ruled the new plan was discriminatory, but the 4th Circuit Appellate court reversed that decision and reinstated the plan, specifically because plaintiffs couldn’t prove the plan was restricting Asian-American student admissions as they claimed.\u00a0 In early 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case so that particular battle is at an end but it’s likely not the last case of its kind.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n______________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n
1 Southworth, S. (2010) Examining the effects of school composition on North Carolina student achievement over time. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 18 (29). Retrieved from http:\/\/epaa.asu.edu\/ojs\/article\/view\/848<\/p>\n
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Diversity is good for students. Quite a lot of research — really a lot — shows that the segregation of schools, both racial and economic,\u00a0 impedes student achievement.\u00a0 One study of the New Jersey public schools from 2020 found that racially diverse schools reduced the achievement gap between white and non-white students:\u00a0 “the achievement gap […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":208,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3392"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/208"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3392"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3406,"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3392\/revisions\/3406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curriculumsolutions.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}