Magnet Schools Assistance Program challenged by student assignment ruling
When the U.S. Supreme Court in late June issued a major decision on whether school districts may consider race when assigning students to school, it made it much more challenging for the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) Magnet Schools Assistance Program, whose central goal is to help desegregate schools, to take race into account. The program provides about $106 million a year to help districts establish or revise schools or programs that draw students from across typical attendance boundaries, with the core purpose of "the elimination, reduction, or prevention of minority-group isolation" in schools with "substantial proportions of minority students." ED defines that proportion as anything over 50% of enrollment. During a session at the 2007 annual legislative conference of Magnet Schools of America, a private lobbying and support group for magnet programs, Richard Foster, an attorney with ED’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), told participants his office "had the interesting timing of the Supreme Court ruling landing on our desks" just as officials were reviewing the magnet school grant applications for compliance with federal civil rights laws. At an earlier conference session, Maree F. Sneed, a lawyer with the Washington firm Hogan & Hartson who works closely with school districts on desegregation matters, told attendees the ruling had prompted anxious calls to her from districts that knew their magnet schools’ grant applications were in the final stages of review. She reported districts were getting calls from the OCR, which appeared to be scrutinizing the applications closely after the high court’s June 28 decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District. "Any mention of race seemed to raise a question" with the civil rights office, Ms. Sneed told participants. Mr. Foster declined to discuss the reviews in greater detail, citing ED’s procedures about who may answer press inquiries. "I don’t think those of you who have been with us in the magnet schools program over the past 10 years should find the ruling a complete shock," he said.
One trend that seemed apparent at the conference is that districts have been moving away in recent years from relying solely on race to assign students to such programs, notwithstanding their purpose as a tool to reduce racial isolation. One factor has been the refinement of criteria considered race-neutral for selecting students for magnet school assignment, such as families’ socioeconomic status, parents’ level of educational attainment, and the academic performance of students’ "sending" schools. "If you are going to use race-neutral factors, your life is easy" under the Supreme Court ruling, Ms. Sneed told the participants. Both Ms. Sneed and Anurima Bhargava, the education-practice director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, stressed that in their view, districts were not completely barred under the June ruling from taking race into account on an individual basis. "If you say, ‘I want to go there,’" Ms. Sneed said, educators should be prepared to consider race as part of a more holistic review of students for admission to magnet programs. "There is not going to be one answer for all school districts in the country," Ms. Bhargava said. The conference did not schedule any opponents of race-based government action, who take a different view on how much room the Supreme Court has left school districts to consider race. Some say that even under Justice Kennedy’s concurring opinion, any assignment of individual students based on their race would be illegal.
Steven L. Brockhouse, who oversees the program for ED’s office of innovation and improvement, noted that while magnet programs tend to be associated with large urban school districts, more suburban districts are applying for the grants and winning some of the funding. "Suburban schools are seeing issues of segregation, and they’re seeing magnet schools as a way to address that issue," he said. Another trend is that while most grants used to go for magnet programs that were being established as part of a court-supervised desegregation plan, many more districts were now seeking the federal aid for voluntary magnet plans. "People involved with school desegregation for many years pretty much universally roll our eyes at the prospect of reducing racial segregation or minority-group isolation without taking race into account," said Joshua P. Bogin, the magnet school director for the Springfield, Massachusetts school system, a former desegregation consultant working out of New York University, and a one-time civil rights lawyer in the U.S. Department of Justice under Presidents Carter and Reagan. "Nevertheless, that has been the clear direction the court has been pushing us for many years." The Supreme Court’s decision in the Seattle and Jefferson County cases, "with these fractured opinions, really lends itself to the development of nuanced approaches," he said.
Education Week By Mark Walsh
[Editor’s Note: More information on the fallout from the Supreme Court decision in various communities, as well as NSBA resources on the decisions, is available starting below. Information on the regulations for the program is at the second link.]
NSBA School Law pages on Milton, MA
NSBA School Law pages on magnet school regulations