Integration and politics in Wake County

It's a sad day for those of us that believe in school integration. In a anger-laced meeting the Wake County School Board ended its nationally respected integration model.

For decades Wake County's student assignment policies have been praised for creating diversity in schools and raising standards of academic excellence. As a sign of their success the bipartisan leaders of their politically balanced system even authored a book about their efforts called "A School District's Journey to Excellence: Lessons from Business and Education".

Wake County's integration model has been so renowned that, perhaps, its supporters were thoroughly unprepared for the hostile conservative fiat that ended it with on surprise vote.

Last year a slate of segregationist school board candidates won seats and formed a new majority with the board's lone veteran member opposed to the district's award winning magnet strategy. The new team was funded by businessman and conservative millionare Art Pope who also funds Americans for Prosperity, a group dedicated to preventing President Obama's reform of health care.

By nature public education and school boards often exist in a political context, but rarely is idealogy with no educational basis so threatening to a school district as in this case. The success of Wake County Schools is based upon years of planning and adjustments. Allowing baseless political schtick to unravel a system that took decades to build is irresponsible and intolerable.

Its fair to ask if achieving integration in public schools is of more value than satisfying the desire of some parents to have "neighborhood" schools. My answer: yes.

In the last century a large movement pushed to integrate on mostly moral and legal grounds. We now know that there is an academic and social argument to be made too. In fact, that argument should proceed the ethical one. Segregated schools are immoral because of what they engdender. Concentrating poverty creates stressors that affect the cognitive development of large groups of children, which also contributes to social inequality.

Some parents have concerns that diverse schools actually rob their own children of a full education. It's a shame that irrational fears create a level of selfish backlash that over-corrects us into a historic ditch rooted in an ugly past.

Shame on us all.

At some point we will realize, hopefully together, that huddling children into high poverty, racially isolated schools is a savage and misanthropic practice. We might as well put these kids in phone booths and pump in cigarette smoke, or add lead paint chips to their food. The number of negative outcomes associated with concentrating poverty is far more dangerous to children than the other dangers we believe are socially unacceptable.

The decision in Wake County deserves the national attention it's receiving. So do the children most endangered by the stupidity it represents.