parents involved in community schools v seattle 2007 quizlet
KORRELL ON BEHALF OF PETITIONER MR. KORRELL: Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court. School districts can seek to reach Browns objective of equal educational opportunity. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007) Opinions Syllabus Opinion (Roberts) Concurrence (Thomas) Concurrence (Kennedy) Dissent (Breyer) Dissent (Stevens) Justia Opinion Summary and Annotations Annotation Primary Holding In 1973 a federal court found that Jefferson County had maintained a segregated school system, Newburg Area Council, Inc. v. Board of Ed. Furthermore, it was only used in a limited number of schoolsthose that were both over subscribed and relatively unintegrated. The Seattle district, which has never operated legally segregated schools or Read More(2007) Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School . See Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U. S. 467, 494 (1992). See Beard v. Banks, 548 U. S. ___, ___ (2006) (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment) (noting that two were killed and hundreds were injured in race rioting subsequent to this Courts decision in Johnson). As counsel who appeared before this Court for the plaintiffs in Brown put it: We have one fundamental contention which we will seek to develop in the course of this argument, and that contention is that no State has any authority under the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to use race as a factor in affording educational opportunities among its citizens. Tr. Pp. The District Court found that Jefferson County had asserted a compelling interest in maintaining racially diverse schools, and that the assignment plan was (in all relevant respects) narrowly tailored to serve that compelling interest. [Footnote 11] But see Metro Broadcasting, Inc. v. FCC, 497 U. S. 547, 610 (1990) (We are a Nation not of black and white alone, but one teeming with divergent communities knitted together with various traditions and carried forth, above all, by individuals) (OConnor, J., dissenting). Assertions of general societal discrimination are plainly insufficient. [citation needed]. Indeed, the social scientists brief rather cautiously claims the existence of any benefit at all, describing the positive impact as modest, id., at 13, acknowledging that there appears to be little or no effect on math scores, id., at 14, and admitting that the underlying reasons for these gains in achievement are not entirely clear, id., at 15. After assignment, students at all grade levels are permitted to apply to transfer between nonmagnet schools in the district. We defend only the validity of the statute that enables the Topeka Board of Education to determine its own course). of Boston. See Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306, 351354 (2003) (Thomas, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Because attending Ingraham would have placed a burden on the family and would have limited the students ability to participate in after school activities of their choice, both parents elected to send their children to parochial high schools. His resides school was only a mile from his new home, but it had no available spaceassignments had been made in May, and the class was full. v. Barksdale, 348 F.2d 261, 266 (CA1 1965); Pennsylvania Human Relations Commn v. Chester School Dist., 427 Pa. 157, 164, 233 A. Roberts cites to: Grutter, supra, at 327, 328, 334, 123 S. Ct. 2325, 156 L. Ed. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306. For much of this Nations history, the races remained divided. As well, because the racial tiebreaker is only used when more students apply to a certain school than there are spots, schools such as Ranier and Clevelandwhich have only ten percent of white students and are not popular choices remain racially imbalanced. In both cities plaintiffs filed lawsuits claiming unconstitutional segregation. During and just after World War II, significant numbers of black Americans began to make Seattle their home. For the reasons explained above, the records in these cases do not demonstrate that either school boards plan is supported by an interest in remedying past discrimination. In the administration of public schools by the state and local authorities it is permissible to consider the racial makeup of schools and to adopt general policies to encourage a diverse student body, one aspect of which is its racial composition. It also argues that the plan is not narrowly tailored because it does not seek integration at all racially imbalanced schools, only certain ones. In Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483, the Court held that segregation deprived black children of equal educational opportunities regardless of whether school facilities and other tangible factors were equal, because the classification and separation themselves denoted inferiority. The histories I have set forth describe the extensive and ongoing efforts of two school districts to bring about greater racial integration of their public schools. [Footnote 3] If it is still necessary to select students for the school after using the racial tiebreaker, the next tiebreaker is the geographic proximity of the school to the students residence. Hundreds of state and federal statutes and regulations use racial classifications for educational or other purposes. 1 McFarland v. Jefferson Cty. In light of the evident risk of a return to school systems that are in fact (though not in law) resegregated, many school districts have felt a need to maintain or to extend their integration efforts. We described the various types of diversity that the law school sought: [The law schools] policy makes clear there are many possible bases for diversity admissions, and provides examples of admittees who have lived or traveled widely abroad, are fluent in several languages, have overcome personal adversity and family hardship, have exceptional records of extensive community service, and have had successful careers in other fields. Id., at 338 (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted). Id. But it explicitly cited Swanns statement that the Constitution permitted a local district to adopt such a plan. Other cases cited are similarly inapplicable. in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1952, No. 3, p.8 ([W]e take the unqualified position that the Fourteenth Amendment has totally stripped the state of power to make race and color the basis for governmental action); Tr. At the same time it adopted an open transfer policy under which approximately 3,000 of Louisvilles 46,000 students applied for transfer. A. Croson Co., 488 U. S. 469, 501. VII, 1, ch. In these cases two school districts in different parts of the country seek to teach that principle by having classrooms that reflect the racial makeup of the surrounding community. Nevertheless, Justice Kennedy suggests that school boards: may pursue the goal of bringing together students of diverse backgrounds and races through other means, including strategic site selection of new schools; drawing attendance zones with general recognition of the demographics of neighborhoods; allocating resources for special programs; recruiting students and faculty in a targeted fashion; and tracking enrollments, performance, and other statistics by race. Ante, at 8. Thomas, J., filed a concurring opinion. [Footnote 29] See post, at 2834, 6465. No. As a result, it reverses course and reaches the wrong conclusion. Thus, the school districts must demonstrate that their use of such classifications is narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling government interest. Copy_of_SCOTUS_COMPARISON_QUESTION_TEST_v3_ - SCOTUS - Course Hero Educational Research 531, 550 (1994) (hereinafter Wells & Crain). It also cited to Justice Powells opinion in Bakke, approving of the limited use of race-conscious criteria in a university-admissions affirmative action case. The Seattle district, which has never operated legally segregated schools or been subject to court-ordered desegregation, classified children as white or nonwhite, and used the racial classifications as a tiebreaker to allocate slots in particular high schools. A. Croson Co., 488 U. S. 469 (1989); Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630 (1993); Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peńa, 515 U. S. 200 (1995); Grutter, supra; Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 244 (2003); Johnson v. California, 543 U. S. 499 (2005). 05908, at 224a225a, 253a259a, 307a. The Court need not resolve the parties dispute over whether racial diversity in schools has a marked impact on test scores and other objective yardsticks or achieves intangible socialization benefits because it is clear that the racial classifications at issue are not narrowly tailored to the asserted goal. Connecticut law requires each school district to submit racial group population figures to the State Board of Education. Thus, Congress has enacted numerous race-conscious statutes that illustrate that principle or rely upon its validity. The present cases are not governed by Grutter. See, e.g., Columbus Bd. It is not up to the school boardsthe very government entities whose race-based practices we must strictly scrutinizeto determine what interests qualify as compelling under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. . 10 important Supreme Court cases about education 1 is an important case to educators, parents and students. This plan labeled racially imbalanced any school at which the percentage of black students exceeded by more than 20% the minority population of the school district as a whole. This distinction is critically important in the context of education. The entire gist of the analysis in Grutter was that the admissions program at issue there focused on each applicant as an individual, and not simply as a member of a particular racial group. In 1958, black parents whose children attended Harrison Elementary School (with a black student population of over 75%) wrote the Seattle board, complaining that the boundaries for the Harrison Elementary School were not set in accordance with the long-established standards of the School District but were arbitrarily set with an end to excluding colored children from McGilvra School, which is adjacent to the Harrison school district.. Fifty-three of the 125 studied districts used transfers as a component of their plans. ", Justice Stephen G. Breyer, in the principal dissenting opinion, dismissed Justice Kennedy's proposed alternatives to the labeling and sorting of individual students by race and, in a surprisingly emotional 20 minute speech from the bench, denounced the plurality opinion. See App. The Court has allowed school districts to remedy their prior de jure segregation by classifying individual students based on their race. Cf. How does one tell when a racial classification is invidious? In light of this Courts conclusions in Grutter, the compelling nature of these interests in the context of primary and secondary public education follows here a fortiori. The Jefferson County plan, however, is based on a goal of replicating at each school an African-American enrollment equivalent to the average district-wide African-American enrollment. Id., at 81. See, e.g., Brief for Respondents in No. Arkansas, for example, provides by statute that [n]o student may transfer to a nonresident district where the percentage of enrollment for the students race exceeds that percentage in the students resident district. Ark. Brief for Petitioner at 3637. The wide variety of different integration plans that school districts use throughout the Nation suggests that the problem of racial segregation in schools, including de facto segregation, is difficult to solve. Neither school district has made any such specific findings. These are not affirmative action plans, and hence individualized scrutiny is simply beside the point. 2. And second, Kennedy faults the dissent for ignoring the "presumptive invalidity of a State's use of racial classifications to differentiate its treatment of individuals.". Fifty years of experience since Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (1954), should teach us that the problem before us defies so easy a solution. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. in No. 2. Quoting Justice Powells articulation of diversity in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265, 314315, the Grutter Court noted that it is not an interest in simple ethnic diversity, in which a specified percentage of the student body is in effect guaranteed to be members of selected ethnic groups, that can justify the use of race, 539 U. S., at 324325, but a far broader array of qualifications and characteristics of which racial or ethnic origin is but a single though important element, id., at 325. 693, 227 N.E. 2d 729 (1967), appeal dismd, 389 U. S. 572 (1968) (per curiam), post, at 35, is inapposite for the same reason that many of the cases cited by Justice Breyer are inapposite; the case involved a Massachusetts law that required school districts to avoid racial imbalance in schools but did not specify how to achieve this goaland certainly did not require express racial classifications as the means to do so. Decisions to assign students to schools within each cluster are based on available space within the schools and the racial guidelines in the Districts current student assignment plan. Id., at 38. It must be conceded its primary function in school cases was to delimit the powers of the Judiciary in the fashioning of remedies. See Hampton v. Jefferson Cty. The United States Constitution dictates that local governments cannot make decisions on the basis of race. See Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. "[13], Roberts noted that prior Supreme Court cases had recognized two compelling interests for the use of race. 10925, 26 Fed. Outside the school context, this Courts cases reflect the fact that racial mixing does not always lead to harmony and understanding. 2, 2001). By limiting the School Districts use of race, it will be more difficult for it to cure these defects. [Footnote 2] If an oversubscribed school is not within 10 percentage points of the districts overall white/nonwhite racial balance, it is what the district calls integration positive, and the district employs a tiebreaker that selects for assignment students whose race will serve to bring the school into balance. Id., at 38a. As the Court explained, [t]he importance of this individualized consideration in the context of a race-conscious admissions program is paramount. Ibid. And we have understood that the Constitution permits local communities to adopt desegregation plans even where it does not require them to do so. 1117, 2528. The Grutter Court expressly limited its holdingdefining a specific type of broad-based diversity and noting the unique context of higher educationbut these limitations were largely disregarded by the lower courts in extending Grutter to the sort of classifications at issue here. 05915, at 159, 147. Indeed, if our history has taught us anything, it has taught us to beware of elites bearing racial theories. Finally, the kind of deference that the Supreme Court will give the School District will also have implications. of Boston v. Board of Education, O.T. 1967, No. Parents Involved, the Court noted that: Seattle and Louisville had not demonstrated that they seriously considered race-neutral alternatives; the individual racial classifications used had a minimal impact that cast doubt on their necessity; the districts defined The lesson of history, see ante, at 39 (plurality opinion), is not that efforts to continue racial segregation are constitutionally indistinguishable from efforts to achieve racial integration. If a school district has an interest in teaching racial understanding and cooperation, there is no logical reason why that interest should not extend to the composition of the teaching staff as well as the composition of the student body. Supporting the school boards, one amicus has assured us that both early desegregation research and recent statistical and econometric analyses indicate that there are positive effects on minority student achievement scores arising from diverse school settings. Brief for American Educational Research Association as Amicus Curiae 10. 1, 458 U. S. 457); see generally Siqueland 2324. in No. For the 2005-2006 school year, seven out of ten of the high schools had racial balances that varied more than 15 percent from the racial balance of the school district as a whole. See Grutter, 539 U. S., at 342 (stating the requirement that all governmental use of race must have a logical end point). in Brown v. Board of Education, O.T. 1952, No. However, if the Court decides that Grutter and Gratz apply in the secondary education context, school districts will still be able to use race as a factor, but in a different way than it is used in the Seattle School Districts plan: race could only be used as a plus in the evaluation of the applicants potential to contribute to the overall diversity of the school. Public School Dist., 34 (Apr. See App. Second, "the interest in diversity in higher education", as upheld in, This page was last edited on 5 February 2023, at 17:43. Eighty-four students were assigned to schools that they did not list as a choice, but 29 of those students would have been assigned to their respective school without the racial tiebreaker, and 3 were able to attend one of the oversubscribed schools due to waitlist and capacity adjustments. That interest was not focused on race alone but encompassed all factors that may contribute to student body diversity, id., at 337, including, e.g., having overcome personal adversity and family hardship, id., at 338. Moreover, maintaining this federally mandated system of classification makes sense insofar as Seattles experience indicates that the relevant circumstances in respect to each of these different minority groups are roughly similar, e.g., in terms of residential patterns, and call for roughly similar responses.