How important is diversity in our public schools, and to what lengths should we go to achieve it? If presidential candidate John Edwards has his way, American taxpayers can anticipate forking over $100 million for economic integration policies.
Interestingly, Edwards’ website touts Wake County as a “national model” for economic diversity in its school system. But a look at student population growth in Wake County reveals otherwise. In spite of Herculean efforts to maximize diversity, trend lines show a consistent increase for both minority and low-income students. In fact, in 2005-06, more than 70 percent of the student growth in the system came from minorities; the number of poor students (as measured by participants in the free- and reduced-price lunch program, which itself is questionable) increased by 6 percent between 2002 and 2006. If these trends continue unabated, Wake County will join the crowded ranks of urban-school systems serving primarily poor, minority students – a “national model” no more.
Why are diversity programs so woefully ineffective? Using pupil assignment policies as social engineering tools might sound magnanimous on the surface, but it’s a sure way to frustrate families facing long bus rides or limited school choices for their children. In fact, unhappy parents were the source of successful lawsuits targeting racial diversity programs in Louisville, Kentucky and Seattle, Washington, recently ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court (a decision Edwards criticized).
Moreover, disaffected parents who have the financial means to leave an unresponsive public school bureaucracy often do so, upsetting what is already a precarious racial and economic balance. This is the overlooked down side to the “diversity” policies espoused by John Edwards and Wake County bureaucrats. As long as families have the freedom to choose private or home schools, government-mandated social engineering programs are destined to fail.
Interestingly, for all of his talk about poverty and opportunity, Edwards never mentions education vouchers, instead proposing the creation of one million housing vouchers over a period of five years to enable low-income families to move to better neighborhoods. Could this be because support for tuition vouchers would mean a loss of support from teachers’ unions? Bloggers have picked up Edwards’ glaring ideological inconsistencies.
In the end, ill-conceived diversity programs will never narrow racial and economic achievement gaps. A data-driven approach that focuses on teaching (inputs) and performance (outputs) is and continues to be the only way to close the gap. Government-mandated diversity policies may sound good, but in the end, they’re just so much political spin.