RALEIGH – John and Elizabeth Edwards are racists.
Or so some of our more excitable local politicians and media commentators might say, given the fact that the Edwards family moved from Raleigh to Chapel Hill to reduce the risk that their children might be subject to Wake County’s reassignment policies. In an interview published early this year in Chapel Hill Magazine, Mrs. Edwards explained their rationale this way:
The school system in Wake County is undergoing a lot of stress and there’s always the potential for [redistricting]. Since our children have been through so much change, we wanted to give them some predictability, which we think is more likely in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro [school system].
Of course, there is no reason to believe that Mrs. Edwards is being anything but straightforward here. Surely they didn’t move to Chapel Hill to avoid having their young children reassigned to facilitate Wake County’s socioeconomic balancing act, its officially race-neutral but still controversial busing plan. The Edwards used their substantial means to choose where they would live so as to increase the “predictability” of their children’s education setting. That’s not only a rational goal for a parent to have, but also a common one. Thousands of parents in Wake County and other rapidly growing communities share the goal, but many lack the means to accomplish it by moving to another place, paying private-school tuition, or schooling their children at home.
Those who have made one of these choices don’t deserve to be vilified as disloyal, prejudiced, or selfish. Like the Edwards, they place a high value on finding the right educational fit for their children – and then seeking to protect it from disruption, which has both social and educational costs.
There is no doubt that any school district adding thousands of students every year will have to make some unpopular reassignment decisions. Newcomers and births don’t clump helpfully by age in vacant areas of a county so that a newly constructed school can be filled without moving some students around. The problem in Wake and other jurisdictions is that administrators give parents good reason to be wary and distrustful of their frequent, large-scale reassignments. Dress it up however you like, but forced busing for racial or socioeconomic balance is a policy that use many children as a means to an end. It’s wrong. And it makes parents angry.
I happen to think that there are ways to improve academic performance and foster diverse educational settings that don’t rely on coercion. Instead, they rely on the notion that parents making informed choices on behalf of their children is a natural process, one far more likely to maximize the benefits for children (for whom parents are more likely than school administrators to know what’s best for them in the vast majority of cases) without tearing a gaping hole in the social fabric of a community. School choice is a policy with which we now have decades of experience, domestically and internationally, and a growing body of empirical evidence demonstrating its efficacy in improving school productivity and educational outcomes, particularly for disadvantaged students.
Debating these issues is fraught with peril. There’s no way to avoid inflaming the passions and rubbing up against raw nerves. But we would certainly be far better off if we didn’t jump to conclusions about motivations. When parents express concern about reassignment or having their children bused across town, it’s just not right to assume the worst and ascribe their reaction to bigotry (particularly since the sentiment crosses all racial and ethnic lines). That’s not to say that bigotry is extinct. Wishful thinking will not make it so. But it is not the predominant explanation for the phenomenon. To get that, you need only re-read Elizabeth Edwards’ explanation for their move to Chapel Hill.
When it comes to making challenging decisions to protect and nurture your children, we are all very much alike. There is one America – even if the size of our lawns and rec rooms vary just a little bit.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.