Parents' group sues over BPS exam school admissions, alleging discrimination against white students
:
Advertisement
'The Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause guarantees every qualified Boston student an equal opportunity to compete for a place in an Exam School, regardless of race,' the lawsuit says. 'The Tier System was implemented to limit that opportunity for members of a particular racial group. It must be struck down.'
A spokesperson for Boston Public Schools declined to comment.
This isn't the first time the Boston Parent Coalition for Academic Excellence or the law firm that represents it, Pacific Legal Foundation, filed a lawsuit against Boston Public Schools over exam school admission practices. In 2020, the School Committee voted to temporarily award seats based on grades and zip code, and the same group and law firm sued over that system as well. The Supreme Court ultimately declined to hear the case last year, with one justice noting the system was no longer in use.
Related
:
Advertisement
Prior to the pandemic, admission to the three exam schools, Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy, and the John D. O'Bryant School of Math and Science, was determined in a citywide process based solely on grades and an entrance exam score. Under the current admissions system, which has been repeatedly
Students apply to enter the schools in grades 7 and 9, and must have at least a B average to be eligible. Applicants receive a composite score out of 100 based on their grades and entrance exam scores. Students can get 15 bonus points if they live in public housing, are homeless, or are in foster care, or a varying number of points if they attend schools where at least 40 percent of students are low-income. The school-based bonus points vary by tier from three points to 10.
The wealthiest tier, Tier 4 (or Tier 8 in an earlier version of the system), has tended to have more applicants than the other tiers, but all tiers get the same number of seats. That means admission is particularly competitive in Tier 4, which included many tracts in neighborhoods such as West Roxbury and Beacon Hill.
Because the city's white students are concentrated in Tier 4, they have lower odds of admission to their schools of choice.
'This was done ... to limit the proportion of white students who could get into the exam schools,' said Pacific Legal senior attorney Chris Kieser in an interview. 'And it's been remarkably effective.'
Advertisement
Under the new system, the proportion of Grade 7 exam school invites going to white students declined from 40 percent for School Year 2020-21 to
a low of 24 percent for 2023-24. According to the lawsuit, in three out of four years of the new system, white students have made up a smaller share of admitted students than of applicants. The percentage of admitted students who were white has been lower than the share of applicants.
Related
:
Parties to the suit include parents of white and Asian children in Tier 4 who either already applied and were denied admission to one or all exam schools, or parents of white and Asian children
who plan to apply in future years.
The Pacific Legal Foundation has represented parents in a number of related cases alleging discrimination in efforts to diversify elite public schools around the country.
Last year, the Supreme Court also declined to hear a case it brought against Virginia's Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, another elite, application-based public high school that recently overhauled admissions. But some
conservative
members of the court have written that these policies violate their 2023 decision
Christopher Huffaker can be reached at
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
UPI
8 hours ago
- UPI
Thailand, Cambodia continue fighting despite cease-fire pledges
Cambodian soldiers ride on a self-propelled multiple rocket launcher in Oddar Meanchey province, northwest of Cambodia, on Sunday. Fighting between Thai and Cambodian forces, marking the fourth consecutive day of border clashes. Photo by Kith Serey/EPA July 27 (UPI) -- Fighting continued between Thailand and Cambodia forces on Sunday in a border dispute despite both prime ministers agreeing to a cease-fire in conversations with U.S. President Donald Trump one day earlier. It was the fourth day of clashes, and the most deadly in 14 years of skirmishes between the two Asian nations. Trump spoke Saturday with both leaders, who told him they want peace. The New York Times reported that analysts believe both nations want to grab territory before an agreement is signed. At least 34 people have died in the conflict, which surpasses the conflict between 2008 and 2011 in which 15 people died. Maly Socheata, a spokeswoman for Cambodia's defense ministry, said Thailand's troops fired weapons around 2 a.m. Sunday in Camboda near Prasat Ta Krabey and near another ancient stunned claimed by both nations called Prasa Ta Moan Thomas by Cambodians and Prasat Ta Muen Thom by the Thais. This is where the fighting began Thursday. The Thai army said Cambodian military shot in several areas, including near homes, early Sunday. They were also mobilizing long-range rocket launchers. Thailand's acting prime minister, Phumtham Wechayachai, said he told Trump that he had agreed in principle to a cease-fire but would "like to see sincere intention from the Cambodian side." He also said Thailand wants to start talks as soon as possible. Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Manet said he hopes Thailand doesn't break a pledge because they violated a similar promise that Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim negotiated with both sides on Thursday. Malaysia heads the 10-member Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN. Cambodia's foreign minister, Prak Sokhonn, was instructed to talk to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is working with Thailand's foreign minister, Maris Sangiampongsa, to help implement the cease-fire. Trump said both sides are looking for an immediate cease-fire and eventual peace. "They have a long and storied History and Culture," Trump posted Saturday on Truth Social. "They will hopefully get along for many years to come. When all is done, and Peace is at hand, I look forward to concluding our Trading Agreements with both!" U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged both sides to exercise the "utmost restraint." Tensions have escalated since May when a Cambodian soldier was killed in an exchange with gunfire. Then earlier this month, Thai soldiers were injured by new landmines. Cambodia has denied putting them there. At least 138,000 people have been evacuated from Thailand's borders. Cambodia said more than 23,000 people were moved from near the border. Cambodia has a population of 17.4 million people and Thailand has 71.7 million residents. Vietnam borders both nations.
Boston Globe
21 hours ago
- Boston Globe
No, Mr. President, race is not a biological reality
But the fight over race in education is not confined to the classroom, and the embrace of perverse and offensive narratives is by no means restricted to the progressive left. Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up In March, President Trump issued an executive order titled ' Some of what Trump objects to is indeed troubling. It is appropriate to be concerned about ideological litmus tests, Advertisement Yet buried in the executive order is a statement so wrongheaded that it should have set off alarms. In a section excoriating the Smithsonian Institution, the document condemns the museum because it 'promotes the view that race is not a biological reality but a social construct' and because it states 'Race is a human invention.' But race is a human invention, not a biological truth. For any educated person to claim otherwise is on par with claiming that diseases can be cured through bloodletting or that astrology is a reliable guide to the future. That the president of the United States would make such a claim in an official statement of policy is appalling. By now it is a firmly established scientific truth that race has within populations commonly categorized as racial groups. The differences between such groups are so few as to make them genetically indistinguishable. For all intents and purposes, in other words, the DNA of white people is impossible to differentiate from the DNA of Black people, Asian people, or Native American people. Of course there are physical variations among populations that originated at points far apart on the globe. But the idea that those variations are racial is a relatively recent fiction. It was not until the late 17th century that the notion that mankind could be sorted into distinct biological races first made its appearance. In Advertisement Today such taxonomies seem absurd. So does the view, If the president truly believes that race is a fixed biological reality, he is endorsing a view long discredited by science and rejected by Americans across the political spectrum. 'Racial criteria are irrational, irrelevant, [and] odious to our way of life,' asserted Thurgood Marshall on behalf of the NAACP in 1950. ' Marshall was speaking as a constitutional lawyer, but modern genetics has confirmed what scientists in the 1950s could only have surmised: Racial categories have no objective biological basis. That doesn't mean that race is meaningless, but that its meaning is social, not biological. It is a product of historical, cultural, and political forces. The concept of race was invented to categorize and rank human beings, often for purposes of domination and exclusion. Over time, those categories may have come to feel 'natural' or self-evident, but they are anything but. They are constructs, not codes etched in our genes. Advertisement It is deeply unsettling to see the White House resurrecting the idea that race is a fixed, objective, biological reality. Such thinking has an ugly pedigree. It undergirded slavery, segregation, and eugenics. It lent scientific respectability to white supremacy. It's the reason 'one-drop' rules existed and why anti-miscegenation laws once barred people from marrying across racial lines. It is not the language of truth and sanity — it is the language of race science and racial hierarchy. Trump may imagine that he is striking a blow against leftist dogma, but this isn't a left-vs.-right issue. The point has been underscored across the political spectrum — including by the Supreme Court's most conservative jurist. 'Race is a social construct,' Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his 2023 concurrence in the landmark case of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. 'We may each identify as members of particular races for any number of reasons, having to do with our skin color, our heritage, or our cultural identity.' But that doesn't change reality, he continued. 'All racial categories are little more than stereotypes, suggesting that immutable characteristics somehow conclusively determine a person's ideology, beliefs, and abilities. Of course, that is false.' Clearly there are some human groupings that are genetically determined and have clear physical and reproductive markers — blood type, biological sex, Advertisement That is why the stakes here are so high. A government that treats race as a biological certainty is a government that legitimizes inequality and division. It is not 'Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History' to claim that people's character, capabilities, or civic status can be inferred from inherited traits. It is doing the opposite. And it opens the door to even more alarming policies. If race is 'real' in a biological sense, what follows? Race-based restrictions? Genetic profiling? The lionizing of historical figures with The president often casts himself as a fighter against political correctness and progressive overreach. But in this case, he isn't fighting back — he's reaching back, to a time when science was bent to serve bigotry. The right answer to racial dogma from the left isn't racial pseudoscience from the right. It is fidelity to truth, and to the ideal that all men are created equal. Jeff Jacoby can be reached at
a day ago
Trump's meeting with a key European official comes as his tariff deadline nears
EDINBURGH, Scotland -- EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) — Donald Trump is meeting Sunday with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, taking a break from golfing in Scotland to discuss trade as both sides seek an agreement on tariff rates now that the White House's deadline to impose stiff tariff rates is looming. Trump played golf Saturday at his course in Turnberry on the southwest coast of Scotland and is expected to hit the links again frequently during his five-day visit. On Tuesday, he'll be in Aberdeen, in northeast Scotland, where his family has another golf course and is opening a third next month. Trump and his son Eric are planning to help cut the ribbon on the new course, where public tee times starting Aug. 13 are already on offer. The visit with von der Leyen is expected to be behind closed doors and few further details have been released. Leaving the White House on Friday, Trump said 'we have a 50-50 chance, maybe less than that, but a 50-50 chance of making a deal with the EU.' He said the deal would have to 'buy down' the currently scheduled tariff rate of 30% on the bloc of 27 member states. Later, von der Leyen posted on X that, 'Following a good call' with Trump, the pair had 'agreed to meet in Scotland on Sunday to discuss transatlantic trade relations, and how we can keep them strong.' The U.S. and EU seemed close to reaching a deal earlier this month, but Trump instead threatened a 30% tariff rate on the bloc of nations. Still, Trump's original deadline for beginning such tariffs has already passed, and is now delayed until at least Friday. Flying to Scotland to enjoy his golf courses hasn't stopped the president from talking trade. After going to Turnberry to play nine holes, have lunch, then play nine more, Trump posted that he'd block any trade deals between the U.S. and Cambodia and Thailand since the two southeast Asian countries remain locked in violent clashes in long-disputed border areas. Trump wrote that he spoke with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet and Phumtham Wechayachai, the acting prime minister of Thailand, to call for a ceasefire. 'I am trying to simplify a complex situation!' he wrote on Truth Social after disclosing his conversation with the Cambodian leader. After speaking with Wechayachai, Trump said both countries want peace and added: 'Ceasefire, Peace, and Prosperity seems to be a natural.' The actual likelihood of a deal with the EU, meanwhile, remains to be seen. Trump recently said he thought the odds of reaching a framework with Japan was 25% — but the U.S. and Japan subsequently announced an agreement this past week. The president also bragged earlier in his term that he would leverage constant threats of steep U.S. tariffs around the globe to negotiate better rates and shrink trade deficits with some of Washington's key allies. But, so far, that effort has fallen well short of expectations, meaning the onus may be on Trump to be able to announce an agreement with a bloc as key to global commerce as the EU. Trump is also set to meet Monday in Scotland with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, after the two announced a trade framework in May and a larger agreement last month during the G7 in Canada. Trump says that deal is concluded and that the pair will discuss other matters — though the White House has suggested it still needs some polishing. Without an EU deal, the bloc said it was prepared to retaliate with tariffs on hundreds of American products, ranging from beef and auto parts to beer and Boeing airplanes.
