A Lesson From Berkeley on School Desegregation

Despite strong public support for school diversity and a growing body of research showing that integrated schools benefit all of our children, students nationwide return this fall to public schools more segregated than they were in 1970.

The benefits of being educated in a diverse environment are many: improved critical thinking skills, stronger problem-solving abilities and greater agility at communicating complex ideas. Students in diverse schools are less likely to develop racial prejudice, and more likely to feel comfortable in a variety of job situations.

Americans of all races and ethnicities substantially support the idea of racially integrated schools. The majority of parents whose children have attended integrated schools believe they have improved the quality of their child's education.

But how schools can actually go about achieving diversity has been less clear.

Recent Supreme Court decisions have made it more difficult for school districts to craft voluntary integration plans that comply with legal requirements. In 2007, for example, the Supreme Court struck down plans used to achieve racial integration in Seattle and Louisville. Although the court affirmed the importance of Brown v. Board of Education and left open some pathways to integration, the court stated that schools may no longer use an individual student's race as the sole factor in school assignment decisions.

Since the passage of Proposition 209 in 1996, California school districts have been plagued by the question of how to achieve racial integration without facing claims that they are violating the initiative's prohibitions on granting preferences based on race.

It is heartening, then, that one local district's plan has survived court challenge after challenge, emerging as a model for other districts in California and nationwide.

Since 2004, the Berkeley Unified School District has assigned students to schools based on a complex calculus that takes into account the average household income and education level of the adults in each student's neighborhood, as well as the racial composition of each neighborhood. The plan divides the district into "planning areas," and assigns each planning area a diversity category based on average income and education levels and ethnic diversity. Every student residing within a particular planning area falls into the same diversity category, regardless of his or her race. Considering parental preference whenever possible, students are then proportionally assigned to schools so that each school is comprised of students from many types of planning areas.

The end result? Every Berkeley school is racially and socioeconomically diverse.

Since Berkeley's plan was put in place, the Academic Performance Index scores of every school in the district have increased and equalized across schools. Now, every school is scoring near or above the target score of 800.

The plan came under fire in 2006, when the Pacific Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit against the school district alleging that its school assignment plan violated Proposition 209. The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, along with other legal advocacy groups, represented parents who intervened in the lawsuit to support the district's assignment plan. Last March, the California Court of Appeal ruled that Berkeley's innovative plan does not violate Proposition 209 and dismissed the challenge. In doing so, the court affirmed the value of a race-conscious approach to addressing educational inequity.

The Pacific Legal Foundation thereafter submitted a petition for review to the California Supreme Court, which the court unanimously denied in June.

It has now been more than 50 years since the Supreme Court held in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated education is inherently unequal. If school districts throughout California and across the nation follow Berkeley's model, perhaps we can finally ensure that all schools provide welcoming, inclusive and integrated learning environments for students of all backgrounds.

Greta Hansen recently completed a two-year fellowship at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. She is now a Deputy County Counsel with the Santa Clara County Counsel's Office.