Chicago to Experiment with Socioeconomic Status Admissions
Racial preferences proponents in Chicago are panicking, if you believe this story, over a plan to consider a student’s socioeconomic status rather than his skin color when assigning to magnet and selective government schools.
In recent years, courts have ordered school districts to keep race out of the assignment equation. For instance, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled two years ago that schools in Jefferson County, Kentucky, and Seattle, Washington, could not use race as a tiebreaker when assigning students. Bureaucrats must be subtler about discriminating and preferring certain races over others.
On the other hand, California’s First District Court of Appeal ruled earlier this year that Berkeley Unified School District’s race-based assignment plan did not violate the state’s ban on racial preferences.
A 1980 consent decree, which allowed Chicago to assign students by race, was vacated in September. Affected schools will consider socioeconomic and legacy factors to assign students. Minority parents fear (strong word) the change will negatively impact their children. An excerpt:
“The data obtained by the Chicago News Cooperative shows that where race was not used as a factor in admissions, 85 percent of either black or white students would have to change schools to achieve an even distribution between the two groups across the entire school system. But in schools where race is allowed to be a factor in admissions, only 62 percent of either black or white students would have to change schools.
“Similarly, to achieve a balanced mix of black and Hispanic students throughout the district, 69 percent of either group would have to move at schools where race is considered in admissions. Where race is not taken into account, 81 percent of such students would have to switch schools.
The practical challenges to school integration are substantial, in part because white students make up only about 9 percent of the public school population, compared to a white population of 31.5 percent in the city. But at magnet, gifted, classical and selective-enrollment schools, 17 percent of the students are white, nearly double their presence throughout the public school system, according to data from the Illinois State Board of Education.”
After all, a balanced mix of races is what’s most important. According to “research,” the performance of lower-income students can be improved when they attend classes with higher-income students. But there’s a problem. The majority of students in Chicago are from low-income homes.
This is one of the reasons some racial preferences proponents prefer race-based assignments over socioeconomic status assignments. Is socioeconomic preference, or poverty, to be precise, a proxy for race?
