The Wake school board recently passed a very very controversial resolution ending what is typically called “busing for diversity” — that is, busing minority students to specific students across the county in order to maintain proper race stratification and to balance poverty levels. And, of course, certain people are angry this passed, and that the busing ended.

“Busing for diversity” is a plan that’s been around for quite a while. The idea is, simply, that certain areas of counties/states/districts naturally contain a higher population of one minority or another, and sometimes as a “result” of that, certain minority neighborhoods are poorer than others. Following logically, many argue, schools local to these poorer neighborhoods are filled up with poor, under-funded, uneducated minorities, who are basically given a raw deal in a school that does not give them the opportunity to escape their problematic lifestyle. Thus, the answer to this issue is simply to take a wire whisk to the entire school district — to take different racial/economic groups and to bus them around the county to different schools, thus enduring a fairer division of race, economic status, and academic possibility.

Of course, this sounds nice, but what other groups argue is that this leads to what is in effect institutionalized racism. In the process of figuring out specifically what minorities are being disenfranchised, one must inherently single out racial groups and deem them worthy of “special” treatment, and consequently determine that other “majorities” are getting too fair of a deal. What inevitably happens is that the state has to basically pick a group (typically, but not always, African-American or Hispanic students) and “punish” them by making them go all over the wild blue yonder so school statistics look balanced. Basically, in the attempt to be “fair”, it ends up massively inconveniencing everyone and often only being impressive in the racial statistics of the schools involved in the program.

So what do I think?

First of all, both of the issues above don’t entirely address the issue. On one hand, “busing for diversity” is institutionalized racism: it’s an attempt to arbitrarily bring focus to race where it oftentimes needs not be taken, and it really is a kind of ridiculously PC attempt by schools to look “diverse” in perhaps the most racist way possible. On the other hand, however, the issue of low-income “minority schools” still remains — like it or not, these types of schools do exist, and they need to be fixed. Such schools create a kind of cycle of low-education begetting low income begetting disenfranchised children, and it’s a loop that basically screws promising kids out of a future.

Put another way, both positions above don’t really address the issue — the under-performing schools. “Busing for diversity” is just slight of hand, an attempt to randomly shuffle a deck of cards to possibly make things more “fair” just through random chance. Not doing so means that those who are in the under-performing schools are trapped there.

So what should we do? Two things.

First off, the answer to poor performing schools is not to start throwing the students all around the county. The answer is to fix the problem itself. School districts need to have the money and the ability to financially support these schools and send in highly talented teachers and principals who can turn these schools around. Even if 100% of the students get free lunches and can’t afford a single pencil, schools need to provide a great education, and if students are under-performing, they need to find a way to remedy the situation, not put a band-aid on it by sending select students out of the area and bringing other students randomly in. As I mentioned above, shuffling the proverbial cards does nothing but try to randomize the chance that an unwitting student gets forced into a bad school.

Additionally, further opportunities outside of the hard-and-fast highschool system need to be available. If a student is particularly gifted, regardless of his school or economic situation, accommodations should be made for him to be able to go to a community college for some classes — some school districts have implemented programs like this to great effect. Indeed, this can run the risk of putting a “brain drain” on local highschools — but simultaneously, it will allow promising students even in the worse schools an avenue to higher quality, more focused education, and possibly a proper segue into undergraduate studies. Investing the little money into these kids to allow them such opportunities pays back in the future of a state fifty-fold — it’s a small expense we should be willing to pay.

Of course, it’s unlikely much will happen in this case. The unfortunate fact is, this entire debate’s been perverted by the fact it’s become partisan — either side is not willing to think of much else but beating the opposition. Creative, objective thinking has been quashed in the attempt to “win” in a partisan debate, which never results in anything productive. It’s too bad the citizens of Wake County are too busy protesting and complaining to think of real answers.