Wake County schools begins public hearings tonight on the latest plan to reassign kids over the next three years. About 25,000 — 18 percent — will be impacted. System officials are staying on message, equating busing kids with achieving “healthy schools.”

Meantime, the system’s planner in chief — Chuck Delaney — says deciding which kids attend which schools is a “high calling.” I don’t doubt Mr. Delaney’s intent, but the county’s busing policy continues to be implemented without any data showing whether or not it leads to increased student achievement.

One has to wonder why the vast majority of the school board isn’t interested in finding out whether their policy is achieving the desired results.

Wake’s approach of busing kids based on their family income has received favorable media coverage over the years, but the approach does not enjoy majority public support in this country. The Fall 2008 issue of Education Next includes national survey results that are quite revealing (emphasis is mine):

To investigate the public’s views about race- and income-based enrollment programs, we asked Americans one of two variations of the following question: “In order to promote diversity, should public school districts be allowed to take the racial background [family income] of students into account when assigning students to schools?”

To the version of the question asking about “racial background,” the public reacts very negatively. Only 16 percent of the public respond that districts “definitely” or “probably” should be allowed to take students’ racial background into account when assigning them to schools. Another 21 percent of the public are unsure, while fully 63 percent of the public say that school districts should not take into account students’ racial background. African Americans are much more likely to support the idea, but still only 30 percent of them think districts should be allowed to take race into account (Q. 14a). Though the Supreme Court was closely divided in the Seattle case, the majority decision has broad public support.

But what if the policy is adjusted to use family income as the basis for assigning students to schools? Does public support then increase? Not at all. In fact, public support for the idea dips slightly (see Figure 10). Just 13 percent of respondents report that they support using family income as a basis for assigning students to a school, while 62 percent say that they are opposed, with the balance uncertain (Q. 14b). Legal experts who wish to circumvent the recent Supreme Court decision by shifting from race to family income clearly have yet to make much headway in the court of public opinion.