Publicsquare.Net Features Intense Debate: Desegregation of Public Schools

This week, PublicSquare.net features an intense debate involving two hot-button issues: affirmative action and public schools. School districts in Seattle and Louisville, Kentucky, have enacted plans to achieve more racial balance in their high schools, and, as one would expect, this has caused much controversy over race relations, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the role of public education in our society. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the cases in the coming months.

In “School Desegregation: Educational Equity and Judicial Integrity,” Michael A. Rebell and Amy Stuart Wells of Columbia University make a two-pronged argument in defense of the school districts’ policies. First, they argue that social science indicates that minority students benefit from race-conscious school assignments; second, a ruling in favor of the school districts is necessary to achieve the equity envisioned by the Court in Brown v. Board of Education. “If we acknowledge, as we should,” Rebell and Wells write, “that the vast majority of failing schools under NCLB [No Child Left Behind]are those serving racially segregated poor students of color, we also need to admit that we have yet to evolve into a truly color-blind society in which race is no longer a factor assuring educational opportunities.”

But Paul J. Beard, staff attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation who authored a brief in favor of the students, takes a different view. In “Dispelling the Myths about Race-Based Student Assignment,” Beard criticizes Rebell and Wells, saying that the real issue is individuals’ rights under the Fourteenth Amendment: “No imaginative reinterpretations of the equal protection clause or of Supreme Court jurisprudence—and no amount of social science studies—can alter the sanctity of our individual right to equal treatment by our government.”

But that’s not the end of it. A discussion thread follows the debate, where all registered members of PublicSquare.net can join in. Who’s right? Decide for yourself.

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There remains in America a hunger for intelligent, balanced debate among the best representatives of their positions. This can be seen whenever a public debate or roundtable discussion occurs with multiple viewpoints represented. PublicSquare.net is intended to satisfy this hunger by making intellectually stimulating debate our modus operandi. Balanced, two-sided discussion isn’t just an occasional diversion; it’s our raison d’etre. We actually invite authors, scholars, pundits, and other experts of all persuasions to make their respective cases to a general audience, letting their arguments stand or fall on their own merits. And because it’s all online, there are no time or space constraints, so no one has to worry about not having “the last word.”