EKB News

The ability to use race when assigning students to public schools is on the line in two cases before the Supreme Court today. The ruling could produce the most important decision on school desegregation in decades. Parents in Louisville and Seattle, Washington are challenging school assignment plans that factor in a student's race in an effort to have individual school populations approximate the racial makeup of the entire system. Federal appeals courts have upheld both programs. The school policies are designed to keep schools from segregating along the same lines as neighborhoods. In Seattle, only high school students are affected. Louisville's plan applies system wide.