Class, not race, a better determinant of where students go

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Robert L. Jamieson Jr.

Class, not race, a better determinant of where students go

Saturday, April 20, 2002

By ROBERT L. JAMIESON Jr.
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Race never should have been the main issue.

That's how Don Nielsen feels about this week's federal appeals court decision that affects Seattle Public Schools. The ruling bans the use of race in determining which schools a student will attend.

The way Nielsen sees it, class ought to trump race; consideration for socioeconomic background would, he says, make schools diverse.

It could also keep district lawyers out of court.

You might have heard Nielsen spreading the gospel a couple of years ago. At the time, he was vice president of the Seattle School Board.

He'd tell anyone who cared to listen that a poor student, rather than a student from an ethnic minority group, would more truly integrate schools.

The idea solidified in his mind after he spoke with a young African American student. The student was not happy that he had been assigned to Ballard High School --in a relatively white part of the city -- because none of his neighborhood friends had gotten in.

Nielsen posed an interesting question to the kid -- are your friends white?

Yes, the kid replied.

"I thought to myself," Nielsen recalled, "this kid doesn't need to be treated differently because of race."

Nielsen's class proposal was like trying to produce an orange grove in the Sahara.

It yielded no fruit.

But his way of thinking, which has merit, has found fertile ground elsewhere.

In San Francisco, for instance.

Before students in the City by The Bay head to class this fall, their parents must answer questions. Is the family on welfare? Do they live in public housing? Is English spoken at home?

Those answers will go into a complex formula -- a ranking system called the "diversity index" -- which aims to counter the increasing homogeneity in that city's public schools while also improving student achievement.

Other places are even ahead of San Francisco.

La Crosse, Wis., and Cambridge, Mass.

Why have these cities become class conscious?

Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a New York think tank, has an explanation.

With economic integration, he says, you also get some racial integration. He adds that mixing students of different income levels improves learning and may be more significant than the gains from integration that are solely based on race.

Research has shown that poor students are more likely to drop out of school than students of any particular race.

Still, some people have grave reservations about the economic class approach -- and understandably so.

Former Seattle School Board President Michael Preston says "the idea of socioeconomics as a substitute for race is a racist notion."

Preston says that blacks historically have been deprived of access and resources when it comes to public schools. Preston has a point -- up to a point.

One must also consider that our society is becoming increasingly diverse.

Multicultural. Multiracial. The definition of race is blurring.

So focusing on race becomes thornier. Is a black person someone who has one parent who is black and the other white? Or is it someone who has 10 percent black blood?

As Nielsen, who championed the class-based approach for Seattle's schools rightly points out, "poverty is easy to define and monitor."

He adds: "Statistics tell us that poverty is a much greater determining characteristic in academic achievement...It also happens that in some cases people of color are poor."

Nielsen stopped short of saying this more bluntly, so I'll say it for him:

A class-based approach hits two birds with one stone -- class and race.

For societal and educational reasons diversity in those areas is a worthy pursuit.

This week's court ruling has school officials scrambling...what next?

They have parents who want to send their kids to the neighborhood school; parents who want their kids to go to the best school; teachers who are eager to boost academic achievement; administrators who want schools to reflect the rich diversity of society.

"I hear the district is going to appeal the ruling," Nielsen told me.

He thinks an appeal is a bad idea. So do I.

The district is cash-strapped. Seattle schools would be better off spending their limited money on improving schools rather than engaging in costly courtroom jousts.

If all of the district's schools were better, parents wouldn't make such a fuss about where their kids ended up.

But better schools in an academic sense would not necessarily translate into having better schools in terms of diversity -- in terms of social and cultural richness and breadth.

Nielsen's clarion call for a class approach was prescient.

Now the alarm clock is sounding. It's a fine time to revisit that idea.

P-I columnist Robert L. Jamieson Jr. can be reached at 206-448-8125 or robertjamieson@seattlepi.com

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