Seattle Schools ill informed attempt at "diversity" have made it onto the pages of National Review Online in an article by Peter Kirsanow.
Seattle's obsession with adjusting the racial composition of schools that are diverse already fails the tests set forth in Grutter and Gratz. Indeed, it would be difficult to craft a racial-assignment policy more incongruent with the narrow tailoring requirement of strict scrutiny.
He hits on everything wrong with this school policy. And is a window into why Seattle Schools are such a disaster.
Posted by jcmount at August 23, 2006 08:40 PM | Email ThisOf course, it is curious that the District continues to pay to litigate it.
You want wacky racial logic in Seattle schools? Consider this:
Two different individuals have appealed Seattle Public Schools' school closure decision to King County Superior Court because, among other reasons, its impact fell disproportionately on minority (i.e. African-American) students.
The plaintiffs complain that the District made a race-based decision. In fact, the District did NOT make a race-based decision. The District, in an act of simple logic, addressed its excess capacity problem by closing the schools with excess capacity. These schools weren't closed because they were half full of Black students, they were closed because they were half full.
The irony is thick here. The plaintiffs want the District to institute a closure plan that would directly impact students in proportion to the racial makeup of the District as a whole. In other words, the plaintiffs are saying that the correction for the logical decision that they claim was race-based is to replace it with an illogical decision which is explicitly race-based. They would have the Distict close schools with healthy programs as long as the students in those school had the right complexion to make the numbers come out balanced.
This is clearly insane. It only remains to seen if the Courts will support this insane view and order the District to re-do their closure plan.
Posted by: Charlie Mas on August 29, 2006 04:26 PM