There is a policy concerning the use of race in school placement involving Seattle up before the SCOTUS, and the loyal defenders of Seattle liberalism, the PU PI, has gone unhinged to defend it.

The case involves the Seattle open choice policy, where parents could ask to send their students to particular schools instead of depending on district boundaries, and its use of race as a tiebreaker.

U.S. Supreme Court to hear Seattle's school racial-tiebreaker case

Seattle Public Schools will be under a constitutional microscope Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments on whether the district acted properly when it used race to assign students to its most popular schools

Can this be right?  All these years after the landmark Brown v Board of Education case which intergrated schools, why is race a factor again?

The case asks fundamental questions about the extent to which governments can use race to promote diversity, Kmiec said.

Specifically: Is a racially diverse student body a "compelling government interest," as previously defined by the Supreme Court, that justifies the use of race to determine where kids go to school?

The school district contends it used race as part of its process for assigning students to schools to enhance students' education by introducing them to people with multiple backgrounds and points of view.

The parents who are suing disagree. They say their children, who are white, were unlawfully discriminated against when they were denied admission to their preferred schools.

Both sides have attracted enormous support. More than 70 groups have filed friend-of-the-court briefs, including more than 50 who are defending the school district's policy as a useful and justifiable bulwark against racial inequity.

So how does it work you ask?

Under the plan, parents were asked to name the preferred schools for their children. Most of the roughly 3,000 freshmen went to one of their top choices.

However, five high schools — Ballard, Nathan Hale and Roosevelt in North Seattle; Franklin in South Seattle and Garfield in the Central Area — had more applicants than they could accommodate.

The "Open Choice" plan used a series of tiebreakers to allocate seats.

First, students with siblings at a given school were allowed to attend the same school.

Next came the "integration tiebreaker," which sought to have the student populations at the oversubscribed schools mirror the racial makeup of the district as a whole.

Among Seattle's 47,989 students in 1999, roughly 40 percent were white and 60 percent were students of color. If a child's race would help bring a school's students to a 40-60 split, he or she was assigned to that school.

Oh you mean a racial quota?  Their pet lawyer disagrees, using this Clintonian logic:

Madden also rejected claims that the racial tiebreaker represented a quota system, because the district did not mandate exact numbers of minorities at different schools, but instead used approximate ratios as targets.

Right, that is so much different than a quota.  Sheesh.

The other side had this to say:

In a Supreme Court filing outlining his case, Korrell said the Seattle plan violates the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which states "no state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Seattle's high schools were racially diverse even without the tiebreaker, Korrell wrote, yet the district used "racial balancing" to achieve a predetermined racial balance in the schools.

But this would be moot if they didn't try to accomodate all the people in the first place.  Call me old fashioned, but once upon a time the address you lived at determined the school you attended.  Nothing else.  If this plan forced local kids to be bussed out of their zone without consent, it is wrong.  In other words, if a kid was in walking distance to one of the good schools, but because of the tie breaker, he had to go via bus to one of the bad schools, how is this right?

It should also be noted that only 5 of the schools were affected, so the policy did nothing to balance racially undiverse schools that were seen as less desireable. 

The White House took particular issue with the district's stated goal of using the racial tiebreaker to promote diversity, since it did nothing to improve the racial balance at the Seattle schools that were not oversubscribed.

The populations of students of color at Cleveland and Rainier Beach in 2000-01 were 90 percent and 92 percent, respectively.

"The district's plan can hardly be justified as a tailored promotion of the interest in avoiding racial isolation, when it does not directly address the district's most racially concentrated and isolated high schools," wrote Clement. 

So apparently this was only a limited use issue, which violates the equal protection clause.

So why race?  Why not grades?  Why not economics?  Why not distance to the school, with a precedent for the students local?

Why race?

So the lawsuit was bouncing around the SCOTUS and here comes the PI to save the day:

Seattle Schools: Diversity's value- SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

Faced with long-term increases in the segregation of its buildings, Seattle Public Schools goes before the U.S. Supreme Court this morning to protect the value of diverse learning communities.

We hope the justices uphold an appeals court decision allowing schools to use race as a small factor to break some ties in the school assignment plan.

Why?  If you refuse to use race district wide, why go so far as to balance perfectly these schools?

U.S. children of all backgrounds benefit from learning, playing and relating to one another in classrooms that are as similar as possible to the communities in which they live.

In which case, let the school reflect the neighborhood around it, and if that is undiverse, so be it.   Is that not the community?  How far afield will you go to determine the proper ratio?

The Bush administration is joining in the attack on the schools' racial tiebreaker, which has been in disuse while the suit by some families has been in court. In a perfect world, we'd agree with ignoring race. Unfortunately, the country has a long history of conscious, legal discrimination once justified by the pseudoscience of racial classification.

So what?  Will we ever get the chance to put history behind us, or will you continually fall back on white guilt? 

The hateful, comprehensive U.S. apartheid system continues to affect how communities are organized, where families live and what schools children attend. Some Americans think that, because most apartheid laws were gone by 1970, the issue is closed.

Aparthied?  Name me one law in Seattle that determines that a black family has to live in the Ranier area?  One institutional program that will not allow them to up and move?  Show me a concentrated effort to discriminate.

Answer:  You cannot, because it does not exist.  No such hateful system exists outside of your fevered imagination.

Housing prices?  Sorry that factor also ensures that I cannot even afford to buy a house in Rainer Beach, so it does not wash. 

This is grossest kind of race baiting and an insultin attempt to invoke white guilt.  Sorry but I am unmoved, I have no particular need to feel guilt over something I have no control over.

Ironically, at the same time, U.S. troops are at risk daily over issues dating from the Crusades.

And also to protect your sorry ass right to race bait in the name of free speech and press, apparently.  Nice that you could not pass up the chance to bash the war.

Biblical, Algonquin and other spiritual traditions speak of delivery from inequities after many generations.

So now Seattle is Moses leading the Children of Israel out of bondage?  Come on!  This is absurd. 

We trust legal remedies for segregation can end sooner. But with minority children still subjected to inferior schools,

(fix the schools) 

the NAACP Legal Defense Fund

(fix the schools)  

rightly warns a decision against desegregation in Seattle and Louisville, Ky.,

(FIX THE SCHOOLS) 

 would abandon the Brown v. Board of Education ruling's demands for equal education.

If you want equal education you fix ALL the schools, not just a few of them with an artificial racial balance bandaid.  Try improving facilities, and programs and curiculum.  Try attracting better teachers.  Make schools safe.  Stop wasting money on bus rides and the administrative overhead and maintenance.

Or sit back and feel good about yourselves because you saved a few people.  Enjoy the misery, you guilt whores.

The fact is that Seattle has failed its people with stupid policies that waste money.

But the whole case may be moot in Seattle, as they are considering dropping the open choice program due to its high costs. 

Seattle school choice may be limited 

After almost a decade of allowing parents to send their kids to virtually any school in the district, Seattle Public Schools officials are considering curbing school choice to cut costs.

While popular with many parents, Seattle's "open-choice" enrollment policy is expensive and much more complex than those of neighboring districts.

Considering the fact the district has been struggling for months now deciding closures and budgets, maybe it is time to call in the fluff programs that waste money for no benefit.

Remember the study I posted early?  The programs offer no benefit.

They just act as a cooling salve for a few people misplaced guilt.

I say get over it.  Shut up and go to school...the one down the street.

(crossposted from LSU)