I think Mr.Dellinger doesn't understand the issue in Seattle when he chides Chief Justice Roberts for comparing historic racism in the South to the SSD's policies. Of course, they are radically different. And no white person in Seattle would ever say that their experiences over the past 3-4 decades could ever equate to those of an African American in the Southeast or anywhere for that matter. I think we all accept that level of racism is something we will never quite comprehend.

So, there is more to the story.

First, according the the U.S. Census Bureau, Seattle is approximately 70% white, 15% asian, 10% black, and 5% other. If that population were distributed equally throughout the city, and every parent sent their child to a public school, the schools would reflect that racial make-up. The problem arose when the district implemented the program to bus children to all corners of the city under a voluntary desegregation plan. There were no court orders. Even without a strong history of segregation the city was taking it upon itself to solve the problem. Because middle class and upper class whites thought this was a waste of time and money, they sent their kids to private schools or moved to the suburbs. The district racial pool eventually became 60% non-white and 40% white. But the city as a whole looked very different.

The 60/40 breakdown gave way to the tiebreaker that was at the center of the suit. If a child selected a public high school where the make-up deviated from this ratio by 10-15 points (it changed over the years) the child's race was used to determine the assignment. Yet still today the city is 70% white. And the whitest public high schools in the district more closely mirror the city as a whole then any other schools. (This is because there are dozens of private schools that are 95%+ white.)

Second, there are still inequalities in Seattle and there probably always will be. But the city is liberal in a very politically correct way, and this stifles change. The SSD for years told parents in Seattle that they had no options. If a parent complained about an assignment, the school district's reply was "too bad." Routine failings fell on deaf ears, and gradually support eroded for the controversial (and yes, it was always controversial) integration policy. These were not easy times. Childhoods were at stake. Spending 3-4 hours on a bus everyday was too much. Not making friends was too much. Not being able to participate in extracurricular activities was too much. Ask a wealthy parent in any suburb or city in America if they would sacrifice these things in the name of "diversity." I'm guessing most would not. And again Seattle is a liberal, open-minded city. At one time, all three major political posts were held by African American men. (Ron Sims-County Exec., Norm Rice-Mayor, John Stanford-School District Superintendent) Seattle has also been the driving for behind the recent elections of a female governor, and two female Senators. We pride ourselves on looking at character, and not at skin color, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. That is the history most of us know.

Third, is a story that I think illustrates the real problem. Last fall, I attended a birthday party in Harlem for a friend of a friend. The birthday girl who I'll call Betty, grew up in Seattle like me, and she attended Franklin High School, a school that has been largely non-white (and getting more so) for the last 20-30 years. Betty is white, lives in a predominately black neighborhood, and works in NYC Public Schools. And every guest I saw at her birthday party was white. Like Betty, I live in a predominately black neighborhood in Brooklyn, and I attended a Seattle elementary school that was 80% black. And I do not have one close black, or even non-white, friend.

So I don't know. This issue is not that simple, and we do what we can. For now, I think it is good that we are discussing the issue. And even if the SSD refuses to accept defeat, we will keep trying to bridge the gap in even small ways.

You missed a significant piece of the puzzle in Seattle. The "tie-breaker system" and the 3-4 hours on a bus that you describe, isn't the actual situation here in Seattle (my wife taught at Garfield until last year). Its significantly more complex and much less about "loss of childhoods".

Seattle IS VERY racially segregated in housing. Much of this is the consequence of legally mandated housing discrimination in FHA lending in the mid 60s when much of the Seattle housing stock was built. SE and S Seattle is predominantly non-asian minority. N, NW, and SW Seattle is predominantly well-to-do white. Central seattle is heavily asian.

To address the issues of purely race based tie-breakers, Seattle Public schools instituted a variety of Magnet school programs throughout the district:

• Garfield HS is an AP Magnet
• Garfield HS is an musical performing arts magnet
• Roosevelt is a dramatic performing arts magnet
• Lincoln is a fine arts magnet
• Nathan Hale is a horitculture and Communications Magnet
• etc (More on the magnets here)

Now the various magnet programs are invariably oversubscribed. So the way the system works is that

1. Every pupil gets to pick a perference prior to 9th Grade by ranking their choice of schools to attend. An effort is made to get every student into their #1 ranked school. 97% of all students get into their #1 or #2 ranked school
2. An extra weighting factor is given to attending neighborhood schools
3. If you apply for an oversubscribed magnet, two criteria are used for determining enterance
1. Lottery
2. diversity tie breaker
4. If you don't get into the non-neighborhood 1st choice that you applied for, you LOSE your "neighborhood" weighting factor, though you retain your "ranking" weighting factor and you are subject to the diversity equation Kristine described.
5. If you don't like the school you are in in 9th, there is a SMALL chance to re-apply for open slots in the schools each successive year.

However, the furthest bussing distance in the city is from the NW corner to Chief Sealth which during traffic is at most an hour commute - but not 3-4 hours. And there is an effort made to minimize that distance.

So this isn't about a broad level of dissatisfaction with the "voluntary" system that is driven by an ossified "politically correct liberal district". It is about a program that is aimed at ameliorating the outcomes of very real historic discrimination. And a mechanism that puts the racial tie-breaker well down in the program.

The gotcha that caused this lawsuit was Step #4. That by applying for a non-neighborhood school, you surrendered your neighborhood school preference.

And for that, we now are back to the system where the racism in society - both structural and daily - which is well documented, is ignored in the name of color-ignorance by the law.

I appreciate your reply, and you obviously do know a lot about the system and the way it worked. I must add that my parents were both products of Washington state public schools, and my maternal grandparents were both public high school teachers in a culturally diverse community in Eastern Washington for over thirty years. My family cares deeply about public education in Washington state, and they were devastated when in the 1980s my parents had to send me to private school in Seattle.

I realize the tie-breaker only applied to high schools, but the selection process you describe was born out of system that was broken 20-30 years ago and which once impacted all grades. It has to be understood in light of the voluntary desegretion policy and how that policy "gutted" the Seattle Public Schools. According to a Seattle Times article in 2004, there were 86,000 students in the SSD in 1970 and in 2004 there were only 47,000. People were not happy with the district. You really can't argue otherwise.

I think my real point was that intergrating based on numbers will NEVER be enough. And I know this is a difficult proposition to digest. I want to understand what is means to have a diverse society, and what real integration looks like. In my mind it is not enough to throw a bunch of different looking students together in a building. That doesn't cut it anymore. From the outside it looks good, but getting to the heart of segregation is much more complex. Public school policy CAN'T address this, and it shouldn't be asked to. The story about the birthday party was meant to illustrate this. We can send our kids to racially mixed schools, but if they end up only associating with the other rich white kids have we accomplished anything?

And you talk to parents whose children are now in private schools in the city (or who attended private schools in the past 10-25 years) and many of them will tell you about how the Seattle Public Schools pushed them in to it. The district's policies were "ossified" and they needed to be corrected. Wealthy parents (and yes, most of them are white--the city is 70% white after all) do have alternatives and they have chosen them over the years. If these children had never left the system in the first place, the district would look a lot different. That was really my point. And it isn't necessarily a bad thing for end game diversity to go to a school that is 95% white, or black, or hispanic, or whatever. My private high school was 95% white, and yet I have three high school friends in bi-racial marriages. Did their schooling have anything to do with their relationships? Ummm....no.

When I was entering middle school I was assigned to South Shore in the south end of Seattle. On a bus from my house in Magnolia to the school and back was over three hours a day. School buses make stops and take winding routes. Maybe now this isn't a problem, but I can tell you this was the primary reason I was taken out of the public schools in 1987.

I talk about this subject from personal experience. When I was at Leschi Elementary I made very few friends. I didn't participate in after school activies and my parents felt like outsiders. When I transferred to my local neighborhood Catholic school all of this changed, despite the fact my family is not Catholic.

I applaud the school district for putting rigorous academic programs in less desirable neighborhoods to encourage diversity. I think this is a great idea. I also think focusing resources on failing schools instead of costly litigation is a solution. All schools should be good, not just those with magnets, and not just those in the northern part of the city.

And people have already voted with their feet. Private schools have wait lists, and the suburbs are growing like crazy. The Seattle School District can implement policies as much as it wants, but it doesn't change the fact that it failed a generation of kids who now are loyal to their private schools and not interested in improving the public system. My parents, along with thousands of others, paid huge property taxes to support a district they didn't believe in. It's time to give up the bureaucratic policy ghost. Now we can spend our energy on the most important thing of all--the learning.

Its not as simple as 86,000 vs 47,000. A significant chunk of affordable housing has disappeared from downtown, along with major child friendly institutions including schools. There is no HS in downtown proper for example. The HS are all scattered in what used to be Seattles suburbs (Laurelhurst, Greenwood, West Seattle, Ranier Beach, Ranier Valley). So you see a gentrification of Seattle and a signficant drop in the population of K-12 attendees (they are closing elementary's right and left this year).

As for the quality of the schools, Garfield regularly places in the list of top 100 HS in the Country annually. Given the number of HS in the country, that's hardly a sign of a "gutted" school district.

As for the role of public policy - if public policy isn't bent to deal with segregation - then what will be? Segregation is nothing if not a public policy issue first and foremost. It was created by public policy, it is sustained by public policy and it can only be ameliorated through public policy since it deals with large groups of public interests. How you can suggest that Public Policy has no place in this is not very comprehensible.

Now as to your experience comparing Leschi Elementary with the local parochial school - you do realize that the parochial schools spend roughly 170% of what the public schools do on a per-capita basis. And this is before you add in the other benefits such as not having to pay healthcare, retirement, minimum wage, overtime or comply with WSHA standards for their "ordered" staff. So the real number is closer to a 2:1 ratio of expenditure. Do you really believe that Seattlites at that time would have been willing to double their property taxes? I don't. Nor do you clearly since the property taxes your parents paid were not huge by any standards of the time, yet you thought they were. (King Cty assess at roughly 1%. The town I grew up in on the east coast was assessing at 6% and now assesses at 7.5% your parents paid pittance in property tax.

Furthermore, Seattle SD taxing authority is limited by the state. Why? because if Seattle SD spends above a particular level on a per/pupil basis, the STATE has to kick in a subsidy to the district your grandparents taught in (thought the concept of a "diverse community in eastern Washington" is a novel one to me) because those districts lack the tax base to support their own schools. Hence WSPS limits the per-pupil spend in Seattle artificially.

Now as for private schools. We did the dance with private schools in the seattle area. Unless you have $10k/yr extra to spend, you ain't getting in. Not that many people can vote with their feet in that manner. Nor do they really have an option of moving to Bellevue where the median house price in excess of $500k So the choice is a 2 hour commute to work each way, or Seattle SD. And Seattle SD does pretty well.

So in summary, I think you need to revisit what you thought you knew about how the system worked, how it works now and how the spending goes. Your facts are at best "out of date".

You made a lot of great points here. I'll try to address them all as best as I can.

I think the numbers are the biggest piece of evidence we have when we discuss the success of SSD's integration policies. Go to the suburbs now and go to the private schools. Talk to people who have lived in the city for generations. They will tell you about experiences that sound very similar. There was widespread support for the district through the 1960s, and after busing started in the 1970s this support eroded. This had little to do with affordable housing in the 1970s. With Boeing's financial woes and the subsequent recession at that time, housing in the city was actually quite affordable. My parents as college students could buy a house near Green Lake, for example, without any help from my grandparents. My friends' parents and my parents' friends can tell you the same story. These were not wealthy people.

As far as I know, and in my life time and in the life time of my parents there were never schools downtown (Minor, Garfield, Washington, and the school-Hatzert?-across from the Urban league are close but not "downtown"). Nor has there been a large residential base downtown in recent memory so I don't know how this factors in to the argument. When were there ever a lot of families living downtown? A hundred years ago? (I think it would be great if there were a school downtown, but until recently there hasn't been the population to support it.)

And I know Garfield is a great school. I had friends who went there and they went to fabulous colleges and were brilliant, inquisitive people. Your wife should be proud to have worked there. It really is the jewel of the system. But I also know there is criticism that it suffers from a "school within a school" problem. I don't know what the solution is there. When I was at Leschi we had the same issue. The magnet kids hung out together and the kids from the neighborhood hung out together. Is this intergration? Not in my opinion. (And I have never questioned the quality of the SSD-I think the level of instruction is better than most.)

That is why I don't think the schools can solve this issue with assignments (however worked out) that have anything to do with race. In my experience, this just doesn't deal with the larger problem. Like-minded people want to associate with one another. Culturally similar people want to associate with one another. It is human nature. And it doesn't necessarily make someone a racist.

My comment about Leschi and my neighborhood Catholic school was actually just a superficial one. Leschi was a better academic environment and I missed its challenge and rigor when I transferred. The parents and the community at my Catholic school were more welcoming (and I'm not sure this had anything to do with expenditures) than they were at Leschi. My dad was one of the few white parents at Leschi and he has mentioned to me that he felt out of place and unwelcome when he visited. It was also a far drive and difficult to arrange regular visits. He had the opposite experience at my neighborhood Catholic school. My friends' parents invited my parents over for dinner, and I hung out with friends after school and walked home in the afternoon. Is it crazy to think these sorts of things are important?

You are right about the property taxes. The property tax rates are not as high in Seattle as compared to other parts of the country like Conn. and NJ., but that doesn't mean that property owners shouldn't have a say in how this money is used. Wealthy Seattle residents have peers in places like Falls Church, Short Hills, Greenwich, and Wellesley. Can you imagine if these parents were asked to send their kids to schools in Anacostia, or Bed-Stuy, or wherever? I'm not saying that wealthy families should have the final say, but they should have a say. Otherwise, the system turns in to the East Coast where wealthy white people go to private school and every else is left with a public system that has moments of greatness but is for the most part mediocre at the very best. I know private schools are expensive and I resent that I went to them for seven years. I shouldn't have had to. My parents thought it would be better for me to make friends and actually have time in the afternoon to hang out and be a kid. The only local option they had was a private school.

And now on to Bellevue...wow this is really turning in to a conversation! Of course not everyone can afford Bellevue. But people do work in Seattle and commute from more affordable towns/suburbs like Everett, Fife, and Maple Valley. The lines have changed over the years and at one time (1970s and 1980s) when the busing policy was going strong, these outlying areas were even more affordable. If the choice was to buy in Seattle and submit to the SSD or buy in one of these other areas, many families took the latter path. This movement, unfortunately called "white flight," forever changed the city's demographics. This led to the percentages that I mentioned in my first post. But for the original busing policy, the current policy would not have been in place because the city would have looked very different. (And I can't say that busing was the only reason people left, but it was the major contributing factor in the 1970s and 1980s.)

Now, Eastern Washington. I suggest you visit the lower Valley and the Tri-Cities area. As one of the largest agricultural regions in the country it has always seen a huge migrant work force. They have brought diversity in culture, experience, and economy. I love that part of our state and think it has rich traditions and amazing people. And yes, hard as it is to believe, it is diverse.

It is possible that I don't know all the "facts" but I have my experience. I have the experience of my neighbors, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, my parents' cousins, and on and on. These issues have impacted Seattle residents for decades, and we all have our stories. We also don't have the same history as other parts of the country, which is why I originally mentioned our African-American leaders, and our current governor and senators. I do believe that we look at character first whether we went to public school or private school, or a school that was 90% white or 60% black.

Are we really disagreeing? What is your perfect solution?

This is a great discussion. Should the kids of all white parents be punished because some decades ago some people were racists? Well, if the answer is yes - then the idea of collective punishment just got promoted to a new level. I am curious at what point we will see this method applied to, say, moslems.

Secon point about spending in private schools vs. government schools is quite ironic. So far, most private schools take less money for education than the amount the taxpayers are forced to pay for the government run schools. And yes, the private schools don't have to follow the stupid government rules and labor regulations. This once again proves that with vouchers, we could achieve better education at lower cost. Of course, it would limit the power of liberals to control children education - and that's why the liberals are unwilling to let the parents choose.

Thirdly - I want to express my utter amusement with the fact that most of the terms used here "segregation, white privilege" and others are used without even a slightest attempt to define those terms. Let me ask you one question. Do you consider American football to be "segregated"? If not, explain why.

If your skill is better than the next person you make the team and the other guy doesn't. American football then is neither segregated nor desegregated as athletic skill is the yardstick.

It is far more complex in the real world where a combination of wealth and status dominate. Wealth permits people to vote with their feet and seek housing in the neighborhood of choice. Since there are institutional barriers to leveling the playing field segregation is the product of public policy, wealth and status. Merit is an illusive target so the better jobs go to cronies and the segregation is perpetuated. That is a fact of life. Today the Courts are removing the public policy aspect, leaving wealth and status the remaining criteria. It didn't work under Jim Crow and it won't work now. As a result, segregation will grow and we all lose because of this.

It is really not all that hard to understand if you just put in a little effort.

"Like-minded people want to associate with one another. Culturally similar people want to associate with one another. It is human nature."

You want to hang out with people you can relate to on an intellectual and cultural level? This is a crime against the State! Obviously you are a racist and a member of the bourgeoisie.

There is no such thing as "human nature." Our destinies are determined by class and race.

A few years in Comrade degs' re-education camp will mold you into a proper servant of the State.

"Should the kids of all white parents be punished because some decades ago some people were racists?"

Yes, the progeny of all white people must pay for the sins of their forefathers because they are members of the oppressor class. The children deserve to be punished because they are members of the bourgeoisie and have inherited an acculturized sense of entitlement. Only when all class distinctions have been erased will there be an end to racism. Until then we must struggle against the white bourgeoisie oppressor.

You must join Kristine in Comrade degs' re-education camp.

All power to the people!

I was hoping that degsme would reply to my earlier post because he obviously had insight in to the Seattle system.

I disagree with Iwasblind because a lot of what you are saying is theory and makes for great t-shirt slogans. In reality a lot of these ideas don't pan out. Everyone grows up in a "culture" whether it is European, African, Asian, South American, etc. Nobody has a choice in this. And for the most part it is a universal truth that people feel more comfortable in their own "culture." This can be teased out. I have white friends who grew up in Africa and they identify with African culture in a way I never will. It is a culture that is comforting to them. That was my point.

I don't think the Seattle Schools ever set out to brainwash anyone. I think their intentions were in the right place, but according to the Supreme Court benign intentions are not enough to make up for the fact that their idea of diversity was just a proxy for racial quotas. Defining "diversity" is really the problem and the reason that I started this thread. No one so far has been able to define "diversity" in any meaningful way. It is the reason the school districts lost their case. At the higher ed level, law school admissions officers were able to make the argument that they were looking at a variety of different characteristics. Seattle and Louisville couldn't do that.

For years, Seattle tried to integrate its schools and in my opinion the results were devastating. The schools are still very good, but they no longer serve the whole city. They only serve those who can't afford to send their kids to private school or move to the suburbs. That isn't good enough, and it wasn't good enough for the Involved Parents.

I agree with Justice Kennedy. Intergration and diversity are important goals although it is almost impossible to define these terms. And it will probably be at the heart of any future cases in the area.

I also like that Justice Breyer discussed the history of the educational racial divide in his dissent, but he overemphasizes the connection between our national racial history and our local racial history. Before 1970, Seattle had not failed its minority population. (Not in any significant way that can't be divorced from failing its poorest citizens.) And yet Seattle set out to right a national wrong and did so with a system that judged individuals on the color of their skin. How can we not all agree that this was wrong?

I appreciate you takung the time to respond to the points I was making, through I'm not sure how most of your response fits with the core issue of the SSD's use of race only as a tie-breaker.

We actually do know fairly well what works to promote integration within settings like Garfield. Non-academic programs like the performing and fine arts. And therein lies a significant part of the problem today - the economics are such that despite these being the most effective programs for increasing retention, improving academic outcomes and reducing intranecine tensions, they are the first to get cut.

Garfield's drama program only got a full time funding this past year. It has no wood/machine shop program. Its voctech program is refurbishing PCs. Its music programs are competitively elite.

And yes there is a teacher bigotry problem. Minority kids have a much much harder time getting put into Honors classes. And in essence if you aren't in honors classes in 7th Grade, then you don't get allocated a slot for 8th. And if you don't have a slot in 8th, you are 99% unlikely to get an honors slot in 9th grade. And if you are not in honors in 9th grade - unless you get a teacher willing to buck the system, you aren't going to get into honors for the rest of your HS career. PERIOD. Largely because the economics result in insufficient staffing to allow kids to try Honors if they want to ahve a go at it and change mid-year if it isn't working for them. So teacher bias in early early grades, echoes up through your college admissions possibilities.

As for "White Flight". Seattle is one of the cities where "white flight" never really took place - largely because of a fairly strongly enforced housing segregation policy through the 70s - at which point the economics (15% inflation rate while Boeing was laying off) of housing precluded much housing integration. Seattle is primarily white. The movement to the sugurbs was more a result of cheap land combned with the new floating bridges that made the commute viable. Since then the Silicon Forest has made Bellevue into a Fringe City in its own right - but almost as many commute to Bellevue from Seattle as do in the opposite direction. So your hypothesis about white flight in the greater seattle metro area isn't supported by the data.

You also cannot compare wealthy Seattlites with Wellseleyans or Falls Church or Greenwich. Each of those has their own School District. Like Bellevue, Redmond or Northshore. Thus they have nothing to do with the tiebreaker aspect of the SSD. The more appropriate comparison would be the Upper East Side and the general NYC PSD. And yes, there IS racial tie breaking, cross town commuting, magnet schools AND LOCAL CONTROL in play there.

And as a white kid from the east coast - no, white kids don't just go to private school. you have a distorted view of the system on the east coast as well.

The reality is that Washington and Oregon have a long history of racial segregation and bias. The largest KKK rally ever took place in Issaquah WA in the 1920s. And having been to the Tri-cities, Benton Harbor, Selah and that area quite a bit, I can tell you that it is NOT particularly diverse or integrated. Yes there is a large hispanic population. A population that is discriminated against, often reviled and who's housing is heavily segregated. The fact that Roberts had the nerve to fly in the face of these facts about thee region in general and Seattle in particular is pretty mendacious.

So far, most private schools take less money for education than the amount the taxpayers are forced to pay for the government run schools.

This is an interesting statement. In that it conflates as identical, tuition with expenditure. Taxpayer spending on schools is just that - spending. Whereas TUITION for a private school is vastly different than expenditure. Even the conservative Hoover Institute documents the fact that the private schools routinely held as exemplars - namely Catholic Parochial Schools - SPEND roughly 170% of what taxpayers spend on public education - with only marginally better results.

The reason that SPENDING is the important measure is threefold.

1. Its and apples to apples comparison. How much $$ does it take to educate a student to a particular level of capability. Comparing tuition to spending doesn't tell you that - because with tuition you don't know the TOTAL COST of that education
2. Private schools that subsidize their tuition have a limited pool of endowment funds. If you increase the attendence burden on them, the per-pupil subsidy will drop and the tuition will approach to the COST.
3. NEW private schools - either for or not-for profit, but ones with no endowments - will be unable to provide such tuition subsidies and will have to charge the Per Pupil COST as their tuition.

So the notion that vouchers of roughly 59% of the per-pupil cost for private education could

could achieve better education at lower cost

Has no basis in rational analysis of the economics of education. None whatsoever. Even the Hoover Institute agrees on this.

As for "punishing" kids of "all white parents" - I'm not sure where this concept comes from. If in fact the "white parents" are as interested as anyone else in the notion of EQUAL educational opportunity for all, then they should rationally be working to have all schools have equal resources.

Ah but there's the rub. We know that not all schools within an SD have equal resources. We KNOW that often better teachers will seek schools of higher socio-economic status (which given the legacy of legal racial discrimination in housing corresponds to "almost all white" schools). We KNOW that higher socio-economic status parents will use their contacts and political clout to improve their child's oppurtunities AT THE COST OF OTHER STUDENTS.

IOW we KNOW that the parents of 'all white students" will attempt to take away resources from less powerful minority students. I'm not sure how limiting the motivation to do this on a school wide basis is "punishment"? How is reducing the benefits of the unearned privilege that is the result of racially biased housing "punishement"? Unless of course, you believe that white's deserve this preferential treatment.

As to the question of the NFL being segregated. Actually it was for a long time. And we have seen that until recently that legacy has had a 100% hold on the "front office" of the NFL where Head Coaches and GMs have not been representative of the population of aspiring ex-players or the general coaching pool.

Now the reality is that the "life expectancy" of a rookie is 1 season. And the full career expectancy of most players is roughly 3 years. That means that once the "color line" is broken through a demonstration of skill and capability, the "generational cycle" of football is roughly 10-15 times as fast as the legacy of something more structural like housing. 3 year life span vs. a 30 year mortgage is a huge difference.

So the NFL actually models the opposite of what you suggest that it does. It models an environment where you can compare and contrast a relatively meritocratic realm (the field) with one that still contains racial bias that favors white males (the front office).

There are no RACIAL QUOTAS in either the Seattle or the Louisville systems.

Seattle school decline has NOTHING TO DO WITH INTEGRATION - it has everything to do with the fact that Washington state is 20th in teacher salary rankings and 47th nationwide in class sizes. IOW it has to do with cheapskate Washington taxpayers.

You are wrong about Bryer overemphasizing the connection between the LEGALLY MANDATED HOUSING RACISM in seattle and the history of segregation in Seattle schools. Seattle had failed its minority population LONG BEFORE 1970. The facts on this are in the public record. There is a reason that minority housing is almost exclusively concentrated in Rainer Valley and Rainier Beach. Its not by choice.

• Its because prior to the mid 1960s the Federal Housing Association was REQUIRED to use Race as a factor in evaluating "credit worthiness".
• It is because prior to 1977, cities and townships used zoning restrictions to keep minorities and poorer individuals out of the "white" areas.

And yes, this is completely divorced from how the poorest white citizens are dealt with. So the SSD set up a system to REDUCE (not eliminate) the white privilege that is such a part of Seattle. How can we all not agree that this is what SSD should be doing?

Ah yes name calling. Typical conservative. You can't rebut the facts so you name call.

Nice try.

Wow, degsme. Thanks for the great posts. So, what's the plan? How do we solve this? (I hope I wasn't the one who name called, for goodness sake, we haven't stooped that low, have we?)

On many of these issues we are just in disagreement. I will always think my grandparents worked in a diverse environment in Eastern Washington because as a city kid it looked different from mine. They had students coming in to class covered in smuge pot (?) grease and often not wearing shoes. When my grandmother died, one of the first visitors to their house was a Native American former student who lives in Toppenish. Another of my grandfather's constant companions was a Japanese-American man he taught with. From the outside these areas may look "undiverse." Sure mostly everyone looks the same, but does that really mean they aren't diverse? That they don't interact, intermarry, etc.? My school teacher grandfather belonged to a golf club where he was the only Democrat among a sea of Republicans. He made friends, he argued with them, and he often got fighting mad at them. They all looked the same on the outside, but they definitely weren't the same. And I'm sure there have been incidents with the hispanic population in the lower valley, but the culture is there. The impact is there. It isn't ignored, nor is it necessarily reviled in the way you describe.

I guess I have stories like this for all of my assertions. You can disagree, but they are still the facts that I know.

I never said the SSD declined in quality. It hasn't. But since its intergration policies started in the 1970s it lost half its students. It was "gutted" in the literal sense of the word. It lost its contents. Those 40,000 students didn't disappear in to the ether. They went somewhere. We can disagree about what precipitated this, but I don't believe the kids are actually gone. They just aren't in the SSD. In 1987, when my parents bought their current house, I was the only kid in a three block radius. (I was probably the only person younger than 40, but that's just supposition.) Today, there are 13 children on my parents' block alone. Only one of them attends a school in the SSD. The families are there or are returning, but they still question the SSD. Again, my experience, but there it is.

My point about suburban districts again was one of experience-people I know who had school aged kids in Seattle and moved East. They didn't trust inner city school districts in DC, NYC, Boston, Chicago, etc. But I suppose if we looked at wealthy students on the UES, they aren't being shipped to Washington Heights or Spanish Harlem. I could be wrong, but what wealthy parent is going to send their young child to these neighborhoods, really? Especially when the alternative is to go to a) a good local school or b) a private school. I don't know how the racial tiebreaker works, but even with it the NYC schools have huge racial imbalance, (the elementary school a block from my apartment is 99% black) but parents in places like the UES will send their kids to good local public schools if they can. Also, I'm aware of a case pending in Brooklyn where a young Indian girl didn't get into her magnet because it was already oversubscribed with minority students. Is this right? I don't think so.

I don't particularly like the term "white flight", but it happened across the country and in Seattle only less because there have always been a lot of white people (post-Indian days, of course). Places like Issaquah didn't really exist when I was younger, and Seattle once had a few more white people. So I don't know, what do we call it? White migration? Middle class movement? From what I've heard, Seattle a generation ago looked more like an Issaquah. Why are these families choosing Issaquah over say Beacon Hill or Columbia City or even Lake City? Perhaps it has something to do with schools. Perhaps not.

I agree that performing arts have helped integrate schools like Garfield. The jazz band and other programs are a terrific examples of this. But not everyone can go to Garfield. And you do have to get in to have these benefits. The neighborhood has also been iffy over the years--shootings, fights, etc. It's wonderful that such a fabulous school was put in the heart of a once--if not currently--economically disadvantaged neighborhood. But one has to wonder why neighborhoods like Queen Anne and Magnolia have been without a high school for 20+ years. (Okay, The Center School but it's not a traditional high school.)

Yes, there were problems across the country with red-lining. I don't know how we can get over that. But I also know that Seattle produced Jimi Hendrix, Quincy Jones, Judge Richard Jones, and Ernestine Anderson. (And was the movie Ray wrong, or was it Quincy Jones who persuaded Ray Charles to boycott segregated clubs?) Seattle has also been the home to such luminaries as August Wilson, Jacob Lawrence, Gwendolyn Knight, and Charles Johnson. In a city that is 10% black, I think this is remarkable. We have celebrated all of them in every way we know how. If there were racial problems prior to 1970 in Seattle, I guess I'm unaware of them. I'm sure it occurred, but did sending my ten year old self to Leschi help matters? Really?

And I used the term racial quotas while Roberts called it racial balance. It's still the same idea. Using percentages to compile a "diverse" student body. The question is how do you define diversity without using percentages (i.e without using race as the sole factor)? I'm not being cheeky. I really want to know. And I think the majority wanted to know as well. For Roberts, specified racial make-up (however defined) is not a compelling interest. And even if diversity is, the policies have to meet this goal in a way that doesn't use race as the sole factor. From my limited reading of the opinion, I believe the dissent wanted to rely on history to support the notion that yes, in fact, using race is okay if diversity is the goal whether or not this diversity is actually achieved. (In other words, it doesn't matter if it's just a numbers game becuase we've had problems with race in the past so these policies are okay.) I have problems with this.

I agree that diversity is important, but when I have kids I will want to send them to a school that is close to home so they can make friends, walk home, have time to hang out, etc. Oh, and I want it to be a good school too. Are these only white feelings? I don't believe so, and I don't think the SSD's policies ever did enough to take these important factors in to account. It deeply bothers me that in a city that is 70% white, only 40% of the school district is white. Why is this? What can we do about this? How do we get real diversity without falling in to the trap of the appearance of diversity? Ideas?