{"id":355,"date":"2012-11-13T20:58:11","date_gmt":"2012-11-13T20:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=355"},"modified":"2014-02-12T19:30:36","modified_gmt":"2014-02-12T19:30:36","slug":"race-and-education-at-the-crossroads-a-hypothetical-thought-experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=355","title":{"rendered":"RACE AND EDUCATION AT THE CROSSROADS: A Hypothetical Thought Experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Record:<\/strong> Consuelo Valenzuela Lickstein, \u201cRace and Education at a Crossroads: How Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 <\/em>and Wisconsin v. Yoder<\/em> Shed Light on the Potential Conflict Between the Black Homeschooling Movement and K-12 Affirmative Action Programs\u201d in The Journal of Gender, Race and Justice<\/em> 13 (Spring 2010): 835-857.<\/p>\n

Summary: <\/strong>Lickstein, an associate at Choate Hall and Stewart LLP<\/a> and recent graduate of University of Iowa College of Law, here presents an interesting thought experiment about homeschooling and diversity in public schools.<\/p>\n

It goes like this.\u00a0 Suppose there were a group of African Americans in an Iowa town who, dissatisfied with the public schools, chose as a group to leave them and homeschool instead.\u00a0 Now suppose that the Iowa district really wants to increase racial diversity in their public school classrooms and, frustrated by this secession, passes a law prohibiting homeschooling by minorities because they are needed to ensure diverse classrooms.\u00a0 Now imagine that the African American families sue and that the case makes it to the Supreme Court.\u00a0 What would happen?<\/p>\n

Lickstein tells us there are three things to consider as we work toward an answer.\u00a0 First is the empirical reality of increased African American homeschooling.\u00a0 Second are claims made by homeschooling advocates that parents have a fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their children.\u00a0 Third are school district claims that the state has a compelling interest to promote racial diversity in k-12 schools.\u00a0 We\u2019ll take each in turn.<\/p>\n

First, African American homeschoolers.\u00a0 It\u2019s refreshing to see a recent article on this topic.\u00a0 But reading it through it becomes clear that Lickstein must have written it in 2008, before the most recent NCES data<\/a> came out showing a pronounced drop in African American homeschooling numbers.\u00a0 Lickstein\u2019s empirical basis for claiming increases rests on a few newspaper articles and an NPR story, all from 2008 or before.\u00a0 Lickstein uses these sources to argue that African American homeschoolers often choose the option out of frustration with failing public schools.\u00a0 Homeschooling allows them to devote more attention to Afro-centric topics and individuals, to develop positive race consciousness, and to avoid having their children become part of the disproportionate representation of blacks in special education.<\/p>\n

Having established that this hypothetical is plausible given how many African Americans are embracing homeschooling, Lickstein moves to the arguments homeschoolers make for the constitutional right to homeschool.\u00a0 She begins where such discussions always begin, with Meyer<\/em>, Pierce<\/em>, and Yoder<\/em>.\u00a0 On Yoder<\/em> Lickstein agrees with the mainstream view that the case does not establish a far-reaching right to homeschooling since it was so clearly limited to the uniqueness of the Amish experience.<\/p>\n

Next she takes up the school\u2019s possible argument that diversity is a compelling state interest.\u00a0 Here she starts with Brown v. Board of Education<\/em> and moves to Bakke<\/em> and Grutter v. Bollinger<\/em>.\u00a0 In such cases as these the Supreme Court upheld diversity as a civic good and affirmed policies seeking to promote affirmative action on behalf of minorities.\u00a0 In a 2007 case called Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District no. 1<\/em><\/a> the Court had the opportunity to either extend Bakke<\/em>-style affirmative action to K-12 or not.\u00a0 A group of parents sued the Seattle School District because the district was using race to assign students to schools in an effort to promote diversity.\u00a0 The Court, in a 5 to 4 ruling, agreed with the parents and struck down the school\u2019s affirmative-action style plan, arguing that higher ed and k-12 ed are different animals.\u00a0 Lickstein notes, however, that the way the case was decided leaves open the possibility that a better-formulated policy might have been acceptable.<\/p>\n

Next Lickstein summarizes the arguments both sides would likely make if they were debating this issue before the Supreme Court.\u00a0 African American homeschoolers would argue that, like the Amish, black children\u2019s public school experience is detrimental to the black community and detrimental to black children at a crucial time in their development, and that public schools do not adequately prepare black children for their adult responsibilities in the black community.<\/p>\n

Public school advocates would argue that there is less difference in terms of diversity goals between K-12 and higher ed than Justice Roberts (who wrote the plurality opinion in Parents Involved<\/em>) thinks, that schools should be able to address de facto<\/em> segregation as well as de jure<\/em>.<\/p>\n

What would the Supreme Court, given these arguments, do?\u00a0 Lickstein thinks \u201cit is likely\u201d that it would rule in favor of the school district. (p. 855)\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because the court wouldn\u2019t put African American children in the same category as the Amish and because the school\u2019s arguments for affirmative action \u201cis particularly persuasive.\u201d (p.855)<\/p>\n

Appraisal: <\/strong>As a thought experiment this article is intriguing, but in reality I don\u2019t think a case like this would be decided along the lines presented by Lickstein.\u00a0 A school district that actually tried to pass a law prohibiting one racial group from homeschooling would get into serious trouble.\u00a0 I simply can\u2019t conceive this part of the hypothetical ever happening under any circumstances.\u00a0 The only way it could even possibly happen would be for the district to make a blanket policy prohibiting ALL homeschooling, and that wouldn\u2019t work either, because a district can\u2019t just decide for itself to override state law.\u00a0 So it would have to be a STATE decision.\u00a0 And we all know what would happen if a state, any state, but Iowa works nicely, tried to do that.\u00a0 There would have to be some serious lobbying on behalf of a motivated constituency to overturn Iowa\u2019s current law.\u00a0 And what constituency might that be?\u00a0 Who\u2019s going to mount a campaign to outlaw homeschooling in Iowa?\u00a0 And even if somebody did, and even if they were successful, the Iowa courts would strike such a law down.\u00a0 But let\u2019s say just for the sake of argument that they didn\u2019t.\u00a0 The Supreme Court would then do so.\u00a0 THAT would be the most likely hypothetical if the issue was homeschooling.<\/p>\n

However, after reading Lickstein\u2019s article through I wonder if her real goal wasn\u2019t so much to talk about homeschooling but to argue against the Court\u2019s finding in Parents Involved<\/em>.\u00a0 Her arguments against some of the plurality Justices\u2019 claims and for the claims of some of the dissenting Justices were crisp and interesting.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t get into them here because they weren\u2019t really relevant to homeschooling.\u00a0 To me the homeschooling angle was just a distraction.\u00a0 And let\u2019s say that, hypothetically, a more carefully-crafted K-12 affirmative action program were to pass muster with the Supreme Court, I don\u2019t think any school district would really find so many African American or Hispanic or other minority homeschoolers that it couldn\u2019t meet its targets.<\/p>\n

For the issue of homeschooling and diversity, the better hypothetical is not the one created here by Lickstein but the one addressed in some of the other recent legal articles I\u2019ve been reviewing of late.\u00a0 Can the state force homeschoolers to expose their children to a wide range of ideas and perspectives?\u00a0 If the state really does have a compelling interest to promote diversity, the likely next step would not be to force minority homeschoolers to attend public schools but to force (mostly white, mostly Christian) homeschoolers to have at least some contact with outside views and people.\u00a0 Can the state do that?\u00a0 If so, how?\u00a0 Those would be better questions for Lickstein to ponder in my view.<\/p>\n

Milton Gaither, Messiah College, author of Homeschool: An American History<\/a>\"\"<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer<\/strong>:\u00a0 The views expressed in reviews are not the official views of ICHER or of its members.\u00a0 For more information about ICHER\u2019s Reviews, please see the \u00ab\u00a0About these Reviews \u00bb Section.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Record: Consuelo Valenzuela Lickstein, \u201cRace and Education at a Crossroads: How Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 and Wisconsin v. Yoder Shed Light on the Potential Conflict Between the Black Homeschooling Movement and K-12 Affirmative … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[11,13,14],"tags":[322,319,317,323,318,324,122,325,121,320,321,123],"class_list":["post-355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal","category-public-schools","category-raceethnicity","tag-brown-v-board-of-education","tag-choate-hall","tag-consuelso-valenzuela-lickstein","tag-grutter-v-bollinger","tag-journal-of-gender-race-and-justice","tag-justice-roberts","tag-meyer-v-nebraska","tag-parents-involved","tag-pierce-v-society-of-sisters","tag-stewart-llp","tag-university-of-iowa-college-of-law","tag-wisconsin-v-yoder"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=355"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1140,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions\/1140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}