Education Not Segregation

IT is unacceptable for a predominantly white city government to limit the educational opportunities of minority children by promoting segregation. But it is also wrong for minority advocacy groups to level this serious charge against legitimate proposals for educational reform.

The recently adopted "controlled choice" student assignment plan in Boston is one such legitimate proposal, now under illegimate attack. Black members of the Boston School Committee and the Boston chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) alleged last week the plan is tantamount to resegregation and is not in the best interests of minority schoolchildren. They may file a lawsuit against the school system to block the proposal's implementation.

Minority leaders' charges are simply untrue, and their lawsuit threatens to undermine a plan which has been proven across the country to enhance parental choice and educational opportunity. These leaders have also unnecesarily divided Boston city politics along racial lines, creating an environment ill-suited for lasting educational progress.

THIS struggle began last December, when Boston Mayor Ray Flynn hired Harvard Professor Charles Willie and Michael Alves, a former head of the state desegregation office, to develop a more flexible desegregation scheme for the city.

In contrast to the present courtordered system in which parents have no input in choosing their children's school, Alves and Willie proposed "controlled choice," a plan which allows parents to select their children's schools so long as each school remains desegregated. Such a plan has been successfully implemented in Cambridge and Little Rock, Ark.

Minority groups saw the impending debate over this proposal as an opportunity to air their grievances about the inadequacy of education funding and the poor condition of city schools.

John O'Bryant, a Black School Committee member, put it this way: "If you're talking about moving children, you're not talking about an educational activity. If you're talking about giving people choice, you have to give them something to choose."

These protests were politically astute. Flynn was forced to answer tough questions about the poor condition of city schools, as the press paid significant attention to parents' claims that they were unsatisfied with the quality of their children's education.

At no time during this debate, however, did any minority advocates question controlled choice's effectiveness as a desegregation scheme. But when it became clear about two weeks ago that the new plan would pass the School Committee without Flynn promising new funds, these leaders shifted the focus of their attack. They called controlled choice a "farce" and a Trojan Horse for resegregation. Now they seem ready to sacrifice controlled choice itself for additional exposure of their concerns.

But this would be a grave mistake. Controlled choice should not be sacrificed for the long term goal of higher quality education because it can help achieve this goal. By involving parents in the student assignment processs, it creates active educational communities of teachers, parents and schools.

What minority leaders also fail to realize is that controlled choice contains a powerful political opportunity to press for more funds. Every year, when lists of which schools are chosen preferentially to others are published, debate over school funding will dominate city news. Every year, minority advocates will have concrete proof where resources need to be targeted, and have ammunition to demand concessions from the Mayor.

As Willie argues, "One has to justify money and that's what this plan does."

TRUST is a rare commodity in Boston city politics. Hattie McKinnis, President of the Citywide Parents Council, said Black parents continue to harbor distrust towards Boston politics because of its reluctance to endorse desegregation 15 years ago. "There is a lot of fear it will go back to segregation, despite what the consultants say," she said.

Minorities must overcome this fear. Controlled choice cannot lead to resegregation, and will serve to improve school quality and increase parental choice. It should not be an issue of whites versus Blacks. More than anything else, it is a question of quality education.