Fisher v. Texas: Implications for K-12 Integration

1. Fisher v. Texas: Implications for K-12 Integration Stephen Menendian Assistant Director, Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society February 22, 2014

2. K-12/Post-Fisher Environment • The requirements of narrow tailoring/exhaustion and the burdens of this approach are already evident in K-12. • K-12 educational environments are increasingly segregated by race and class. • School districts with a commitment to equal opportunity and integration have developed increasingly administratively complex, sophisticated approaches to student assignment.

3. “If school authorities are concerned that the student-body compositions of certain schools interfere with the objective of offering an equal educational opportunity to all of their students, they are free to devise race-conscious measures to address the problem in a general way without treating each student in a different fashion soley on the basis of systematic, individual typing by race. School boards may pursue the goal of bringing together students of diverse backgrounds and races through other means, including strategic site selection of new schools; drawing attendance zones with general recognition of the demographics of the neighborhoods; allocating resources for special programs; recruiting students and faculty in a targeted fashion; and tracking enrollments, performance, and other statistics by race. These mechanisms are race-conscious but do not lead to different treatment based on a classifications that tells each student he or she is to be defined by race.

4. Multi-Factor Modeling • Multi-factor approaches may better capture particular forms of disadvantage, but they do a less effective job of producing raw numerical racial diversity than individual racial classifications do. • To compensate for not being able to use race directly, more factors are needed to ensure greater precision in terms of desired outcomes. • While approximating race, these approaches are far more complex and resource intensive than using a simple race criterion, and require outside expertise and consultants • Such plans have been laboriously developed using available demographic data with the help of consultants and student assignment experts.

5. Multi-Factor Modeling • Multi-factor approaches are compelling because they not only paint a more vivid portrait of the underlying structural conditions, but are also more narrowly tailored to particular forms of disadvantage.  • A single indicator cannot capture the myriad factors that influence an individual’s life chances.  • The administrative expense of developing race-neutral plans goes far beyond the resources of most admissions committees, let alone school boards and administrative staff, compared to the use of racial classifications in either student assignment or admissions review.

6. Opportunity Models: Voluntary Integration Plans Using Multiple Indicators (Multi-Factor Approaches)

7. Berkeley Zones Source: Civil Rights Project at UCLA

8. Diversity Map Source: Civil Rights Project at UCLA

9. Cal. Ct. of Appeals “We conclude that the particular policies challenged here – which aims to achieve social diversity by using neighborhood demographics when assigning students to schools – is not discriminatory. The challenged policy does not use racial classifications; in fact, it does not consider an individual student’s race at all when assigning the student to a school.” - ACRF v. Berkeley Unified School Districts

10. Multi-FactorModeling: Opportunity Mapping Opportunity Mapping and Education • Since the racialized nature of opportunity isolation is a spatial phenomena, maps are naturally an effective way to represent it • Maps allow us to understand volumes of data at a glance through layering • Mapping is a very powerful tool in looking at educational inequity & opportunity

11. Opportunity Mapping For Schools • Mapping the geographic distribution of opportunity helps us to evaluate where these opportunity mismatches exist in a community and to design interventions to move people to opportunity • Student assignment policies can be created using indicators, drawing attendance Zones, boundaries, or through controlled choice plans.

12. Opportunity Zones in Montclair • Modeled several educational zones for Montclair, based on five equally weighted factors. • # of Free and Reduced Lunch Students • Parental Education Levels • Median Household Income • Household Poverty Rates • Race, by neighborhood • Each of these factors was calculated at the neighborhood level, by census block group.

13. Three Zone Integration Model: Montclair, NJ GOAL: Each school has diversity of students from each zone, within 5% point deviation of K class zone baseline. K and transfer students are assigned based on parental preference and zone balance.

14. Montclair *Step 3: From this database, a wait list system is utilized

15. Montclair

16. Montclair

17. Three Zone Integration Model: Montclair, NJ • Under the plan, the township would be divided into three zones, labeled Zone A, Zone B and Zone C. • Students would be assigned to zones based on individual census data, including household income and Title 1 status (eligibility for Free or Reduced Lunch). • Students from all  three zones would then be represented in each school.

18. Three Opportunity Zone Model Without Race With Race

19. Four Opportunity Zone Model Without Race With Race

20. Justice Kennedy’s opinion is controlling as the fifth vote. The Court in Parents Involved

21. Justice Kennedy, Concurring That the school districts consider these plans to be necessary should remind us that our highest aspirations are yet unfulfilled. School districts can seek to reach Brown’s objective of equal educational opportunity. But the solutions mandated by these school districts must themselves be lawful.

22. Conclusion • Opportunity-enrollment model may well offer an ideal alternative or complementary admissions policy. • Pursuit of policies such as these will illustrate for the courts the limits of a strict exhaustion requirement, and perhaps lead to the development and use of admissions processes that can better measure forms of advantage relative to discrete and insular minorities.