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Voluntary School Integration

September 16, 2008

Statement of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund on Promoting Diversity in Schools

A Response to OCR's August 28, 2008 "Dear Colleague" Letter

On August 28, 2008, the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education (OCR) issued a "Dear Colleague" letter providing informal guidance regarding how OCR plans to assess the use of race in assigning students to schools. OCR adopted a narrow and limited reading of the United States Supreme Court's decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, 127 S.Ct. 2738 (2007) as support for this guidance. Because LDF believes that OCR's interpretation of the decision is inaccurate in a number of respects, we now write to clarify the legal standards applicable to elementary and secondary schools.

In Parents Involved, a majority of the Supreme Court justices (the four Justices who would have upheld the student assignment plans from Seattle and Louisville at issue in the case, and Justice Kennedy, who found some aspects of those plans unacceptable but approved of their purpose) recognized that school districts have compelling interests in promoting student diversity and avoiding racial isolation in elementary and secondary school settings. The majority agreed that, in Justice Kennedy's words, a school district can, in its "discretion and expertise", take affirmative steps to avoid racial isolation and to achieve a diverse student population, Parents Involved, 127 S.Ct. at 2797, and that school officials may "consider the racial makeup of schools and adopt general policies to encourage a diverse student body, one aspect of which is its racial composition." Parents Involved, 127 S.Ct. at 2792.

Specifically, schools and communities may take account of race in using the following student assignment methods to promote diversity: "strategic site selection of new schools; drawing attendance zones in general recognition of the demographics of neighborhoods; allocating resources for special programs; recruiting students and faculty in a targeted fashion; and tracking enrollments, performance, and other statistics by race." Parents Involved, 127 S.Ct. at 2792. The Court also clarified what school districts cannot do: individual students cannot be assigned to school solely on the basis of their race. Instead, school districts should consider race along with other demographic factors when implementing specific student assignment methods. Parents Involved, 127 S.Ct. at 2797.

Furthermore, while the Court held that the Seattle and Louisville school districts had not presented sufficient evidence that they had seriously considered "race-neutral" alternatives, there is no requirement in Parents Involved that school districts only use race-neutral means to promote the compelling interests in diversity and avoiding racial isolation in their schools. School districts should be able to demonstrate that they seriously considered workable race-neutral alternatives, but need not exhaust every possibility.

As Justice Kennedy recognized, "[t]his Nation has a moral and ethical obligation to fulfill its historic commitment to creating an integrated society that ensures equal opportunity for all of its children." Parents Involved, 127 S.Ct. at 2797. Schools and communities nationwide therefore can and should continue to take steps to promote a high quality, inclusive education for all children and to address the pervasive harms of continued racial isolation in schools.

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund is America's legal counsel on issues of race. LDF pursues racial justice to move our nation toward a society that fulfills the promise of equality for all Americans. Following the Supreme Court's Parents Involved ruling, LDF issued Still Looking to the Future: Voluntary K-12 School Integration, a Manual for educators, parents and advocates that provides comprehensive information about what we can and should do to promote high quality, inclusive schools in our communities. Click on the link under Publications in the right hand column to access the Manual. Other related resources are also located on this website.