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Wednesday, October 29, 1997
Houston school district settles magnet school admission
lawsuit
HOUSTON (AP) -- A group of parents who charged that Houston's gifted
and magnet programs based student admission on unfair racial quotas have
settled their lawsuit with the city's school district officials.
The agreement, submitted Monday to U.S. District Judge David Hittner,
states that the Houston school district policy of setting enrollment goals
of 65 percent black and Hispanic and 35 percent white and Asian for the
district's magnet and Vanguard, or gifted, programs has been eliminated.
Hittner signed an order dismissing all claims of 14 families who had
joined in the suit. He said HISD will pay part of the plaintiffs' legal
fees.
The Houston Independent School District board voted last week to eliminate
the current racial guidelines, but also voted to direct Superintendent Rod
Paige to revise the guidelines so that race is considered as one of many
factors when picking students for the special programs.
The agreement submitted to Hittner said only that HISD will develop admission
guidelines that are narrowly defined and in keeping with constitutional
prohibitions against racial discrimination.
School district attorney Kaye DeWalt said the district's new selection
process will likely give students points based on test scores, grades, interviews,
teachers evaluations and, to a less significant degree, such criteria as
family income and race.
Because most educational institutions have long since satisfied the mandates
of court-ordered desegregation, the use of racial quotas as admissions criteria
at educational institutions increasingly is being challenged.
The Houston case, Roe vs. HISD, was filed in April by two students who
claimed they were excluded from a Vanguard program because they are white.
The two fifth-graders, who filed the suit under the pseudonyms "Robert
Roe" and "Anna Doe," said they were refused admission to
the Lanier Middle School Vanguard program for fall 1997 because they are
not members of a preferred minority group.
The students said they had excellent grades and standardized test scores
and met all requirements for admission, but Robert's parents contend the
program coordinator told Vanguard hopefuls at a November open house that
the program sets ethnic goals of annually admitting one-third of its students
from each of the major ethnic groups: black, Hispanic and white.
Both children were later notified they didn't make the cut. The parents
claim Robert and Anna were excluded because the "available ethnic space"
for whites had been filled.
The lawsuit grew to include 14 white and Asian families, each of whom
had children who they said had been excluded from the Vanguard or magnet
programs because of race. Of the children represented in the suit, however,
only nine will go into the Vanguard programs at the schools of their choice.
The agreement announced Monday averted a trial and possible intervention
by a federal judge -- a path already trod by other school districts, including
Arlington County, Va., and San Francisco.
Ms. DeWalt said the new selection procedures will apply only to new students
seeking admission to the special programs, and to fifth-graders and eighth-graders
who will change schools in the fall of 1998.
A key component of the new guidelines will be that all students -- not
just those whose parents request it -- will be tested for gifted programs.
Ms. DeWalt said that fifth-graders will be tested next month for the Vanguard
programs, and kindergarten children will be tested in February.
"I think now that we have this lawsuit behind us, we can really
move forward and move quickly," she said.
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