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A NEW RACIAL ERA FOR SAN FRANCISCO SCHOOLS | PAGE 1, 2, 3
The consent decree represented the best and worst of 1960s-style liberal social engineering. On the positive side, it represented an almost naive optimism in the capacity of integration to solve the problems of black children (Latinos were later added to the decree's intended beneficiaries, when their school achievement proved as poor as African-Americans') and the capacity of government to cajole and/or impose that integration on anxious, tax-paying parents of every race. A system of thriving alternative schools like the one my daughter attends was established to coax families into voluntary integration. And in neighborhoods where school integration didn't occur naturally, students were bused to achieve it. Its downside was its reliance on rigid, court-monitored racial formulas that resisted reform, even as the city's demography changed dramatically. There was always an Orwellian feel about the consent decree. It was monitored by an outside "Committee of Experts" and a "Special Master." The school district's lead attorney, Aubrey McCutcheon, lived in Michigan and almost never spoke to the press. The agreement was presided over by Judge Orrick, who likewise never talked to the media. Although he was observing rules of judicial propriety, Orrick's distance seemed like elitism, and that most democratic of institutions, public education, in San Francisco came to seem out of reach of democracy. School boards came and school boards went, it seemed, but the consent decree was with us forever. From the beginning, Chinese parents had taken the lead in opposing the agreement; white parents who opposed it tended to leave the city. To fight this set-up designed to help black children, they boldly borrowed from the civil rights movement, setting up what they called private "freedom schools" -- it was brazen, really -- to protest the new ethnic limits in the district. As the Chinese population grew, so did the number of complaints. They reached fever pitch at San Francisco's prestigious Lowell High School, where students are admitted on the basis of grades and test scores. Over time, rising Chinese demand for precious seats at Lowell forced the district to increase the scores they needed to enter the high school, in order to keep within the consent decree's racial caps. By 1993, Chinese students required much higher scores than any other racial group -- including white, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and other Asian ethnic groups, not just blacks and Latinos. That inequity led to the lawsuit settled this week. Even after the district moved away from differential scores and began to diversify Lowell by giving students special consideration if they came from poor families, lived in public housing, had parents without much education or took part in community and extracurricular activities, Chinese parents continued to complain. Adding to their ire was the fact that Chinese kids were reaching racial caps at almost every popular San Francisco public high school, and some elementary schools as well. "We make up 28 percent of the district, but in high school we're 42 percent of the district, because our kids don't drop out as much as other groups," complained Roland Quan, a Chinese-American parent activist who supported the lawsuit against the district. "Our kids are being penalized for achieving." But the NAACP continued to resist lifting the racial caps. In 1993, the late Lulann McGriff, the local NAACP leader considered the mother of the consent decree, told me: "The Chinese are the largest group at most of the best schools in the city. They can't have it all. If anything, I'd say lower the caps, don't raise them -- otherwise we're headed back to segregated schools, only all Chinese instead of all white." Ultimately, the biggest failing of the consent decree was its inability to substantially improve the achievement of the black and Latino students it was designed to help. Although black achievement rose at the first five schools overhauled by the decree in the mid-1980s, since then there's been little significant progress at low-achieving schools. "San Francisco has actually done a better job than most cities in linking desegregation to school achievement," says Harvard University education professor Gary Orfield, who has monitored the consent decree. "The district has made genuine progress for all groups, but black achievement still lags behind." Indeed, dropout rates are still high, and test scores, while improving, are still low. And while most black parents and activists support the desegregation agreement, and especially the money it provided for special programs, a few have begun to critique the consent decree, too. "Black kids have been sold out," says Naomi Grey, a longtime community activist who supports ending the consent decree. "Busing hasn't helped our kids. They still have the lowest achievement in the district. How can anybody explain that?" The dissatisfaction of black parents has been one factor leading city after city to abandon their desegregation agreements in recent years. Indianapolis, Kansas City, Mo., Denver, Oklahoma City, Norfolk, Va., Wilmington, Del., Nashville and Cleveland have all given up on desegregation agreements. N E X T+P A G E+| A future without race?
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