Opting out shouldn\u2019t be an option.<\/p>\n
Over the past few weeks, several articles <\/a>have placed school district secession laws, also known as splinter laws, at the center of discussions on racial segregation in American public schools. Although the specifics vary by state, these laws allow individual communities to break off from their larger school districts, often having the practical effect of creating racially and economically homogenous school districts <\/a>that coexist alongside one another.<\/p>\n At first glance, these laws should seem like legislation of the past, a disquieting reminder of the segregation that the Supreme Court sought to eliminate with its ruling in Brown v. Board of Education<\/a><\/em>. Yet, when the 1972 SCOTUS decision in Wright v. Council of City of Emporia <\/em><\/a>struck down Emporia, Virginia\u2019s attempt to break off from its county school system after\u00a0<\/em>a district court desegregation order, the Court limited its holding to this time period. It noted that the attempt to secede was impermissible because \u201cit would impede the process of dismantling a dual system,\u201d a judicially-established status that relied on certain factors described in Green v. County School Bd. of New Kent County<\/a>. In other words, the Court endorsed the view that the constitutionality of splinter laws depended on prior policies of intentional segregation.<\/p>\n In light of our current climate and according to Edbuild\u2019s recent report, Fractured<\/em>, <\/a>the implication <\/a>of such a holding that limits federal oversight of school district secession is startling. EdBuild notes that the past 19 years have produced at least 71 attempted school district secessions around the nation. And these attempts, such as the most recent one in Gardendale, AL<\/a>, have carried the imprimatur of local control<\/a>, a buzzword adopted and endorsed by the United States Supreme Court in Wright <\/em><\/a>and other school desegregation cases.<\/p>\n The EdBuild report makes a bold, yet convincing statement<\/a>: \u201csecession is a counterproductive means of obtaining more local authority\u201d because of its negative effect on more impoverished school districts, its inefficient use of resources and its exacerbation of racial and socioeconomic segregation. But how do school secession laws fair in light of plausible judicial understandings of local control?<\/p>\n A Supreme Court decision proves helpful in beginning to address this question. In San Antonio Independent School Dist. v. Rodriguez<\/em><\/a>, the Supreme Court upheld a Texas school funding plan based on property taxes. In doing so, it embraced the principle of local control. \u00a0Writing for the majority, Justice Powell emphasized its value in providing \u201cthe opportunity\u2026for participation in the decision-making process that determines how . . . local tax dollars will be spent.\u201d He went on to state that \u201c[n]o area of social concern stands to profit more from a multiplicity of viewpoints and from a diversity of approaches than does public education,\u201d specifically as a means to create \u201chealthy competition for educational excellence.\u201d Simply reading these two statements in insolation from the rest of the opinion and time period, two words stick out: Diversity and participation<\/em><\/strong>. <\/em><\/p>\n Many state splinter laws, however, are designed and implemented so as to undermine these underlying principles, highlighting, as one report <\/a>notes, that \u201c[r]ecent Southern secessions reflect a narrowing conception of what is \u2018public\u2019 about public education.\u201d In Fractured<\/em>, EdBuild compares each state\u2019s process <\/a>for school district secession, highlighting the requirements for new school district formation. As EdBuild emphasizes, only four states consider the \u201cdistrict left behind,\u201d only six examine racial and socioeconomic effects, and only one provides for state legislative action. \u00a0These, however, are the very factors that would ensure Rodriguez\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>\u201cpromise of local control<\/a>.\u201d The preemptive exclusion of members of the larger school district undercuts participation by conveniently redefining local to advance a new definition of the word. <\/a>It ties one\u2019s participatory value to what one can provide, ignoring the fact that concrete votes should be and are more valuable than abstract definitions of wealth.<\/p>\n And the failure to consider racial and socioeconomic factors undercuts the achievement of the\u00a0 \u201cdiversity of approaches\u201d called upon by the Court in Rodriguez<\/em><\/a>. Although Justice Powell envisioned local control as a means to spark different approaches to education among\u00a0<\/em>school districts, the practical effect of school splinter laws makes this competition moot. Justice Marshall, dissenting in Rodriguez<\/em>, says it best: \u201cit is an inescapable fact that if one district has more funds available per pupil than another district, the former will have greater choice in educational planning than will the latter,\u201d and as a result, will have more \u201ceducational inputs available for a child\u2019s public education.\u201d The ability of local control to elicit these \u201cdiverse approaches\u201d fails, however, when we\u2019re comparing apples and oranges, when the competition is far from fair. A recent study, Is Separate Still Unequal<\/em><\/a>?<\/em>, by the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University revealed a negative correlation between poverty and educational achievement, noting that as poverty increased, educational achievement decreased. Thus, splinter laws facilitate the creation of systems that fall outside of Powell\u2019s ideal \u2013systems that don\u2019t work. \u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n