Chicago Tribune editorial board member and columnist Clarence Page - an African-American - writes today about the Seattle schools student assignment "racial tiebreaker" now before the U.S. Supreme Court.

..the Louisville and Seattle public school racial-integration plans...offer troubling examples of the overreaching of "reverse discrimination" that affirmative action foes rail against...as Bill Cosby forcefully told civil rights leaders at the 50th anniversary of the Brown decision, what have we gained when the past half-century of desegregation has failed to close the academic achievement gap between blacks and Latinos on one side and whites and Asians on the other? Some of my fellow African-Americans were offended by Cosby's candor, but he spoke the truth. Close the grade and test-score gap and the affirmative action debate ends.

Unfortunately, we too often have seen school desegregation lead to further divisions in which black and Latino students are tracked into lower-performing classes and white and Asian students are tracked toward college. That problem is bigger than buses.

....we should be motivated to move to the next rational step for our liberation: the integration of low-income, low-achieving students into a higher-achieving future. It takes more than a bus to make that trip.

How? More uniform and rigorous curricula focused on core academic subjects; much stricter school discipline; no dilution of state graduation requirements; and an end to grade inflation and "social promotion." The impetus for all that in Seattle would be far greater with public charter schools, and greater still if vouchers for non-denominational private schools were added to the mix. But lacking both as we now do, the push for more consistent rigor and higher expectations in Seattle public schools must primarily come from the local black and Hispanic communities. A pre-condition is their eschewing "victim politics;" and the local media have a large role to play in this, as well.