WASHINGTON- The Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider banning school diversity policies that limit Asian American students to magnet programs and selective high schools.
Three years ago, the court ruled that Harvard and other universities could not discriminate in their admissions based on the race of their applicants. The evidence in this case showed that Asian applicants with very high test scores were often turned away.
But judges are divided on admissions rules to highly selective high schools in Boston, New York and Fairfax County, Virginia, as well as magnet programs for gifted middle school students.
In most cases, the justices said school officials could use “race-neutral” policies to achieve racial diversity. For example, granting automatic admission to the top 5 percent of students in all high schools or middle schools in a large city could allow for greater racial and ethnic diversity.
But the Court’s conservatives, led by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito, condemned the policies as thinly disguised racial discrimination.
Magnet programs exist across the country, including in California and Los Angeles, and were designed as a form of voluntary integration – a way to get white students to attend the same schools as non-white students, without having to resort to forced busing.
The idea was that a special school program would be attractive enough to serve as a “magnet” to attract white students to enroll in a school they might not otherwise attend. A mix of white and non-white students was seen as an advantage to non-white students, because white students would share the plight of non-white students.
Asian students were often part of this original equation on the non-white side of the ledger and counted along with other students classified as non-white, such as black or Latino students. But in terms of academic achievement, Asian students performed on par with white students, often outperforming white students academically.
A subset of magnet schools require a selective admissions process, and these are at the center of the current conflict.
The court agreed to hear the appeal of parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, who were upset by a sharp decline in the number of Asian students in its four magnet schools for gifted students.
For a decade, the school board was troubled by the fact that fewer than 15 percent of students in its magnet schools were black or Latino, even though they made up about half the student population.
In contrast, Asian students made up less than 15 percent of the county’s student population but made up about half of those enrolled in magnet programs.
After several years of debate, school officials abandoned the use of a countywide competition and chose the highest-performing students from all middle schools through a lottery.
This resulted in a lawsuit that reached the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Fairfax County in northern Virginia had adopted a somewhat similar policy for Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology. A federal judge ruled in favor of the Asian parents and said their students were deprived of a “level playing field” when competing for admission.
But the 4th Circuit, by a 2-1 vote, disagreed and said Asian American students still won more seats than their percentage of the school population.
The Assn. for Education Fairness, the Montgomery County parents group, lost for the same reason in the 4th Circuit. The number of Asian students admitted has declined, but their percentage remains well above their share of the school population.
They appealed and urged the Supreme Court to rule on their case and clarify the law.
“School districts across the country have revised admissions requirements for competitive public schools after concluding that existing systems were producing undesirable racial enrollment patterns,” they said.
They said the court should end this type of racial discrimination against Asian students.
However, a longtime advocate for admissions policies that rely on social and economic fairness said he hoped the court would side with Montgomery County.
“The Supreme Court has long disfavored racial preferences and emphasized race-neutral programs that examine factors such as socioeconomic disadvantage as the proper way to implement affirmative action,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg, director of the American Identity Project at the Progressive Policy Institute.
He said the Maryland school board follows that rule.
“It essentially gave students an admissions discount based not on race, but on the economic disadvantage of the elementary school they attended. The open question now is whether the court will uphold precedent or shift the goalposts. Is the court opposed to racial preferences or racial diversity itself?”
Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest school system, has an extensive magnet system, with 66 school-wide magnets and 268 magnet centers within a larger campus.
Currently, many magnets offer no discernible onboarding benefit and are instead seen as incentives for any student to enroll. Many magnets are almost all students of color because few white students apply.
A few schools, however, have more applicants than seats, and the district relies on “the Magnet priority point system and the need to maintain a racially balanced and space-available enrollment.”
Parents must indicate a federally recognized race or ethnicity on the application or it will not be processed. A family gets points, for example, if a student has previously applied unsuccessfully for a magnet.
In Los Angeles Unified, 53 schools are designated for students deemed “gifted” and four campuses offer programs for highly gifted students, usually identified by a professional evaluator.
Recent data available on North Hollywood High’s gifted program indicates that the largest percentage of students, about 38 percent, were Asian. Overall, the district’s enrollment is about 3.5% Asian.
The justices will hear arguments in the case early next year.
Savage reported from Washington and Blume from Los Angeles.
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