Conservative Scholars Ponder K-12 Education
Conference highlights include discussions of public school reform, closing racial achievement gap

By Ronald Roach

NEW YORK
During the week the nation commemorated the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation case, more than 200 conservative scholars and education officials gathered in New York City to consider the responsibility American higher education has toward helping improve the nation's K-12 public education system.
Meeting at the Roosevelt Hotel in midtown Manhattan May 21-23, the scholars and education officials convened for the 11th national conference of the Princeton, N.J.-based National Association of Scholars (NAS). Scholars and education officials explored the conference theme "What Our Universities and Schools Owe Each Other," a topic conference organizers say was not chosen because of the anniversary of the Brown decision, but merely reflected the NAS' interest in examining the relationship between higher and K-12 education.
"We've been interested in looking at K-12 education for some time," said Dr. Bradford Wilson, executive director of the NAS.
 With an estimated membership of 4,000, the NAS describes itself as "an organization of professors, graduate students, college administrators and trustees, and independent scholars committed to rational discourse as the foundation of academic life in a free and democratic society." The group and its local affiliates are best known for their opposition of the multiculturalism that seeks to supplant the primacy of the Western intellectual tradition; opposition to campus speech codes and political correctness; and opposition to race-conscious affirmative action in academic admissions.
With many Brown commemorations, public discussions and media attention focusing on the contention that American public schools are resegregating, the NAS panel speakers largely framed their critiques of K-12 and higher education, and of school reform ideas with little or no reference to the racial and ethnic demography of public schools. In fact, two speakers, referring to the Brown anniversary, took exception to the characterization that resegregation was taking place and touted the decision as an undiminished success. 
Dr. Stephen Balch, president of the NAS, told a reporter that "the great triumph of Brown was that it said the American people are to be treated as individuals."
"That's what America is all about," he said.