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Better than Expected, Worse than it Seems
By Gary Orfield, Erica Frankenberg, and Liliana M. Garces, Inside Higher Ed, July 24, 2007
In a summer editorial in Inside Higher Ed, Gary Orfield, Erica Frankenberg, and Liliana M. Garces consider the implications of the June 2007 Supreme Court decision that allowed an important 2003 affirmative action case (Grutter v. Bollinger) to stand. In its ruling on voluntary K-12 school integration (Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education), the Supreme Court reversed previous school desegregation decisions, but the justices agreed that the case had no direct implications for higher education, where admissions offices could still use race as one admission criteria among others. On its face, the authors explain, this ruling looks good for higher education—it ensures that colleges and universities can continue to work for diverse campuses by using affirmative action methods. But “optimism should be restrained,” the authors write. “The dike protecting affirmative action has held, but the river that brings diverse groups of students to colleges may be drying up.”
The authors identify two main reasons for this expected reduction in diversity. First, colleges and universities draw many high-performing minority students from integrated high schools. As a result of this ruling, these integrated schools are likely to become more segregated, and research shows that minority students who attend segregated schools are less likely to be academically prepared for college. Second, as schools become more segregated, all students—white and minority—will have fewer interracial experiences growing up, and thus will likely be less prepared to function in an integrated setting after high school.
It is important, the authors conclude, for university and college officials to take leadership roles on this issue, to assist local school districts in finding workable solutions to maintain diversity, and to argue for the importance of integrated schooling, from kindergarten through higher education.
The full text of this article is available at Inside Higher Ed.
AAC&U issued a statement in July 2007 on the Supreme Court decision on school integration and a separate statement, Diversity and Democracy: The Unfinished Work, in the wake of the Court’s ruling on the use of affirmative action at the University of Michigan. See also our latest publication, Making a Real Difference with Diversity.
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