Legal Clips, [September 2007]North Carolina’s Wake County is relaxing its nationally recognized student diversity policy because schools are having a difficult time meeting the plan’s goals. School leaders plan to raise the ceiling for the percentage of low-income students at each school from 40% to 50%. Some worry that simply raising the cap will encourage the district to ignore schools that would have been out of compliance under the old rules. "We are not going to forget these schools," says Chuck Dulaney, assistant superintendent for growth and planning. School board chairwoman Rosa Gill says the board is scheduled to vote on the change next week. School district officials say they must change the policy because of the rising number of low-income students in the district. When the 40% goal was adopted in 2000, 25% of elementary students were receiving subsidized lunches. That number is projected to reach 35% this fall. "The guideline that is being proposed is a reflection of the reality we're now facing," says Superintendent Del Burns. Critics contend the new policy is only meant to make the district look better. "They've gotten a lot of mileage out of this, but they've never successfully implemented it," says Dave Duncan, president of Assignment By Choice, a parent group which has criticized Wake's assignment policies. The school board adopted the economic diversity policy in 2000 out of fears, later justified by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this year, that it would be difficult to legally defend the use of race in student assignment. The board based the policy on research that shows that academic performance suffers when more than half the students at a school are poor. Ms. Gill says officials set the goal at 40% instead of 50% because the district's percentage of poor students then was low. She says many schools with between 40% and 50% of their students receiving subsidized lunches are doing well academically. Wake County is the largest district in the nation to strive for diversity based on family income and has been singled out by the U.S. Department of Education as a role model for integration. Mr. Duncan says the diversity policy is a "noble instinct" but one the district has failed to follow and "a catastrophe." Ms. Gill and Mr. Burns argue the schools would be even less diverse if not for the policy. Richard Kahlenberg, a researcher for the Century Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy research group which supports using economic diversity policies, is not worried about the pending change. He says setting the new ceiling at 50% is consistent with the academic research. He says he would have been worried if Wake County had raised it to as high as 75%.
Raleigh News & Observer By T. Keung Hui
[Editor’s Note: Information on diversity efforts and controversies in other communities, as well as resources related to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in PICS v. Seattle School District No. 1, is available starting below.]
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