A school integration plan that takes into account the demographics of a student’s neighborhood rather than the student’s race when making school assignments has been endorsed by University of California researchers as a model for other school districts seeking to maintain diversity.
The elementary schools in the Berkeley (Calif.) Unified School District are well integrated, and the district’s integration plan is constitutionally sound, according to a report released Tuesday by
Public school districts around the country have been challenged to meet such goals since a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court 5-4 decision endorsed the importance of creating diverse schools, but limited assignment to public schools based upon a student’s race. The ruling stemmed from challenges to integration plans in Seattle and Louisville, Ky. In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. I , and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, parents sued the respective school districts, arguing their desegregation plans relied too heavily on race to determine school population.
“Berkeley has had a succession of plans for four decades, showing a continuing commitment to avoiding the resegregation which has been so severe in the country, and particularly intense in California, during recent decades,” Dr. Gary Orfield, UCLA professor of education and co-director of the Civil Rights Project, told Diverse.
“The importance of the Berkeley plan now is that it appears to provide a way communities can continue to integrate their schools voluntarily and still comply with the severe barriers erected by the Supreme Court in the 2007 Seattle and
Louisville cases,” Orfield added.
Researchers examined the racial composition of each elementary school in the Berkeley district, comparing their findings to the district-wide racial makeup of the elementary school student population. The authors determined various ethnic groups to be over- or underrepresented in a school if their makeup deviated by more than 10 percent from the district-wide racial composition.
Eight of the city’s 11 elementary schools were found to be well integrated, according to the report, “Integration Defended: Berkeley Unified’s Strategy to Maintain School Diversity.” One school had a slightly higher proportion of Black students, and two with Spanish-language immersion programs had somewhat higher proportions of Latino students.
