In an excellent National Review Online article, Liam Julian writes,
It appears that a school-assignment consensus ? one in which students are allotted to schools based on the racial compositions of their neighborhoods and the socioeconomic classes of the students themselves (or of their neighborhoods) ? is beginning to emerge and attract followers. Louisville is just one of several cities to recently embrace it.
Such an approach seems to satisfy the conditions that [Supreme Court justice Anthony] Kennedy set [in a June 2007 decision that struck down the race-based school-assignment policies of Louisville and Seattle]. It manages to be broadly ?race-conscious? without ever considering the races of individual pupils. And by combining vague race consciousness with specific socioeconomic attentiveness, districts believe they are creating in their classrooms an even more diverse diversity, which will raise the academic achievement of poor students. Thus, unoccupied space on this bandwagon is quickly disappearing.
Julian does not mention Wake County’s wicked school assignment policies, but it is clear that Wake County’s socioeconomic busing program is the source of much panting and tail-wagging among “progressive” public school superintendents and school boards.
