Recent events throughout the country demonstrate why progressive educators must fight to keep equity as the central focus in school reform. Voters in Washington state this November passed Initiative 200, which bans race and gender preferences in public college admissions and government employment. Patterned after Proposition 209 in California, the referendum is expected to withstand legal challenge. Both the California and Washington referenda follow court decisions such as Hopwood v. State of Texas , a 1996 federal appeals court ruling that prohibited race-based admissions at the University of Texas Law School. These developments are particularly disturbing because they restrict affirmative action programs even more severely than did the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court Bakke decision.
Litigation pending in other states is likely to follow the same pattern.
The full impact of such decisions and subsequent administrative rulings portend poorly for children of color. Decades of work to desegregate schools and to create equal access are threatened. They unfold in the context of a frontal assault on the gains of the Civil Rights Movement. In the years during and following the Civil Rights Movement, communities of color have fought for full access to all educational programs for their children. Struggles have included battles over desegregation of public schools, conflicts over admission policies at public and private universities, and attempts to end the discriminatory effects of tracking, ability grouping, and gate-keeping standardized tests.