National groups asking for a voice in state’s school-choice case
A federal court battle over the Arkansas Public School Choice Act has drawn the attention of education policy advocacy groups from around the country, now seeking to weigh in on the debate.
The groups argue that the law, which allows students to transfer out of their residential school districts, will force those schools to improve to retain students and the public funding that comes with them.
They have asked the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — which is to hear appeals of a lower court’s decision striking down the law as unconstitutional — to accept their briefs in the case, arguing that they can offer unique insights into the discussion.
“In a system in which money follows the student, schools have a powerful incentive to provide the mix of educational options and opportunities their students demand,” wrote attorneys for the Indianapolis-based Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, founded by economist Milton Friedman.
“Schools responding to these market forces will be rewarded with students beating a path to their door. Schools that fall short will have no choice but to improve or fail.”
The Arkansas attorney general’s office, defending the Arkansas Board of Education in the case, has said the groups should not be allowed to file briefs in the case because they missed a deadline for submitting them and because their opinions mimic those of the original plaintiffs
in the case.
Other groups pushing for a say in the court’s decision are the Black Alliance for Educational Options, which focuses on “low-income and working class black families”; the political action committee Democrats for Education Reform; and the Arkansas Parents Network, led by Arkansan Virginia Walden Ford.
All four organizations argue that ending the School Choice Act would rob parents of a valuable say in their children’s education.
The School Choice Act, which remains in place while the appeals court considers the lower court’s decision, could affect the school placements of thousands of students.
There were 13,666 Arkansas students who attended school outside of their resident school districts during the 2011-12 school year, the Arkansas Department of Education said.
While the exact number cannot be determined, a majority of those students transferred under the School Choice Act, the agency said.
ORIGINAL RULING
The judge who originally struck down the School Choice Act was concerned about equal-rights issues, not the educational philosophy behind the law.
The law permits students to transfer out of their resident school districts unless the percentage of enrollment for the students’ race in the receiving districts exceeds that percentage in the original districts.
Superintendents testified that the restriction was necessary to prevent white students from leaving some districts altogether.
Siding with a group of parents who filed the original lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Robert Dawson in a June ruling called the racial restriction unconstitutional. Citing a U.S. Supreme Court decision related to race-based assignment plans in Seattle schools, Dawson said the clause used race too broadly as a factor.
“This fear of ‘white flight’ does not, in and of itself, justify the overbroad restrictions on school transfer,” he wrote.
Against the parents’ wishes, Dawson threw out the entire law after he ruled that the race restriction could not be “severed” from the School Choice Act because the surrounding language in the law made it clear that Arkansas legislators “seriously considered the prospect that unlimited choice would defeat integration and create liability on the part of the state.”
Dawson later stayed his decision, suspending its application until a panel of 8th U.S. Circuit judges can consider appeals. Under the stay, the racial restriction will also remain in place while the appeals court decides the future of the law.
The attorney general’s office has argued that the racial restriction is necessary to preserve a measure of racial balance in school districts. Those attorneys cite past federal court decisions in which judges have ruled that the state did not do enough to prevent segregation in its schools.
Leaders of intervening school districts — from Camden Fairview and El Dorado — have said that striking down the racial clause while leaving the rest of the law in place would lead to “near
immediate resegregation” of some districts because white families would flee to other school systems.
The parents who filed the original lawsuit after their white children were denied transfer between the Malvern and Magnet Cove school districts under the racial restriction have argued through their attorneys that the restriction is not part of the primary purpose of the law so it can be severed, or stricken independently, while the rest of the law remains in place.
SCHOOL CHOICE Groups seeking to intervene in the federal appeal side with the parents.
Striking down the entire act or allowing the race restriction to stand would “thwart the purpose of desegregation in the name of rigid adherence to simon-pure integration policies that have outlived their usefulness,” the Black Alliance for Educational Options and Democrats for Education Reform argued in a joint brief. (Simon-pure is defined in Webster’s New World dictionary as genuine or authentic).
The act is “crucial” to the future of disadvantaged minority-group students who “for the most part, are otherwise trapped in the neighborhood schools where they live because their families cannot afford better schools,” they wrote.
Attorneys for the state have said in previous court filings that a majority of students who transfer between districts in Arkansas are white — 76 percent in the 2010-11 school year.
Attorneys for the Friedman Foundation said in their brief that “any concern about racial balance is secondary and severable” from the rest of the school transfer law.
The Arkansas Parents Network argued that the School Choice Act does not contain language that demonstrates that the lawmakers who drafted it intended desegregation as one of its primary purposes. Rather, the law’s core intent is providing options to parents, the group wrote.
“Reform spills from the guts of the act,” attorneys for the group wrote.
The 8th Circuit has not scheduled oral arguments in the appeal.
State lawmakers and education leaders have said the Arkansas General Assembly might work to retool or replace the School Choice Act in the next legislative session.