Busing: The Best Available Means

Peter J. Ferrare's April 28th Crimson article ("The Failure of Busing") deserves a critical responses. The article ignored racial and class Issues, legal precedents and logic. In addition, he selectively reported social science research findings in a deceptive and damaging way.

He argued that the state has no right to force anyone to be sent to a particular school on a bus against their will. The courts of the land, from city to state to federal, have found otherwise many times. Is it really necessary to point out that busing is an old invention? Students have been bused to school for decades. The real issue must be the particular school and its quality, not the means used to get students to class. If Mr. Ferrara's suggestion is to be taken seriously, an informed and completely free choice of public schools should be open to all students and families. To accomplish such a plan, the extent of busing would have to be increased far beyond the highest projections of its scope under the present Garrity plan in Boston. Most parents would want to see their children attend the same schools, and those would be the predominantly white schools, the same schools which generally have had better funding and facilities. If there is any right the state may justifiably claim, it is to establish racially unbiased access to decidedly public facilities. Altering bus schedules and destinations is a direct extension of that right.

He stated that alternate busing plans are implicitly racist because they make race a basis for the way people are treated. This is a peculiar definition of racism. Identifying individuals on the basis of their race may be a prelude to discriminatory practices or compensory activity. "Racism," as it is usually defined does not consist of the recognition of racial differences, but is determined by our actions after racial differences are recognized. Prior to the busing plan, policies of the Boston School Committee resulted in discrimination against blacks and other minority groups. The alteration in schedules and destinations ordered by Judge Garrity used racial determinations to help eliminate inequities for minority groups. I fail to see how this can be described as racist, implicitly or explicitly.

Mr. Ferrara speaks of his fears about "...freedom from aggression" and acts of force originating in the power of government. For ten years, the Boston School Committee created socially based inequities in the distribution of children to schools of marked differences in quality. This is aggression, and a contemptible display of racial discrimination. This is an example of Mr. Ferrara's tendency to ignore racial and economic realities in our society while expressing a desire to protect individuals from the aggression of public officials.

He states, "Furthermore, quotas completely overlook merit where it should be the basis for consideration." There can be no question of merit in deciding if different racial groups should have equal opportunities for quality education in public facilities. This is a self-evident constitutional guarantee. Anyway, the case in Boston is clear--race, not merit or other considerations, has for many years been the basis of both busing patterns and school location decisions.

As an alternative to changing busing patterns, Mr. Ferrare suggested punishing those responsible in public authority and ordering their discriminatory activities stopped. Members of the Boston School Committee were brought to court and asked by Judge Garrity to indicate the manner in which they would act to correct the injustices they fostered. Mr. Ferrara must be aware that they responded with a vague plan after much delay, and denied any wrong doing. This continued ten years of delay in the face of yet another call to attention. Punishment would have accomplished nothing. When asking did not work and prodding failed, the Court was forced to enter the decision-making process directly.

Another proposal offered by Mr. Ferrara was the voucher system. He proposed that, "...every parent would receive the average amount of tax dollars spent on his child, say $1000 in voucher form." He argued that this plan would, "benefit mostly the poor." This is absurd. If the money were distributed in that fashion, families with children in better than average quality schools would under no circumstances allow them to change schools. Families with children in lower quality schools would by necessity have limited mobility and choice of schools in the public system. In a private school market, those with more money would receive state subsides to buy better facilities for their children at the expense of others.

Beyond these difficulties with the voucher proposal, there is hardly any certainty that a private system of educational facilities can compete with the public system of educational facilities already established. For example, the religious school systems are barely managing to survive the current economic crisis, and the day when they appeal for public funding is already past.

Mr. Ferrara pointed out that given the same amount of money and quality of facilities, black children should learn as well in predominantly black schools as they could in racially balanced classrooms. Although this may be the case, it is a matter of history that predominantly black or minority schools neither received an equal or greater amount of funding nor the same quality facilities as the predominantly white schools on the average. They have received less. This is due, in part, to housing patterns and class differences, and, in part, to the policy decisions of public authorities. Busing is the means of reversing deliberate actions which gave rise to these inequities above and beyond those differences in racial composition due only to housing patterns.

The Leach article (Indiana Law Review, Vol. 6, 1973) was used by Mr. Ferrara to support his statement that, "...busing did not improve the academic achievement of black children." This statement is a clear distortion of the facts presented in the article, and a misuse of social science research. In fact, the findings of the ten studies cited in the article are overwhelmingly positive in support of advantages to bused blacks over their peers left in segregated schools.

In referring to the journal article, Mr. Ferrara neglected to mention any of the findings which compare the gains of bused blacks to control groups of blacks left in segregated schools. On this point, I found that five of the ten studies (Berkeley, Buffalo, Connecticut, Rochester and Sacramento) found significant gains for the bused black groups over their black peers remaining in segregated schools. These gains were reported in black achievement levels, paragraph meaning comprehension, mental ability, school achievement, reading and arithmetic. This leaves five studies. Three of these (Evanston, Boston-Metco and White Plains) must be eliminated from the realm of conclusive evidence due to a lack of control or comparison groups. The remaining two studies (Riverside and Ann Arbor) found no differences between bused and secregated blacks, but Riverside did not control for social class, and Ann Arbor tested students only one year after busing plans were altered.

The evidence in the Leach article reports only one of ten studies found that bused blacks gained over non-bused whites. This is not starting considering the advantage the white students had in not having to switch schools. There was no comparison made in any study between bused blacks and bused whites because no white bus schedules were altered in-any sample group, and he reports that five of the ten studies found conclusive gains for bused blacks over their non-bused peers in a number of skill areas. The remaining studies are of questionable conclusiveness (in each case by Leach's admission) due to lack of controls, sampling bias, and as I pointed out in the case of Ann Arbor, because testing for effects was done too early after the policy change.

If Mr. Ferrara had criticized the manner in which busing is often implemented or the quality of educational options for Boston parents, black and white, there would be no disagreement. The implementation, planning and assessment of Judge Garrity's decisions have not been without fault, and in some aspects each has been shoddy. Even though there are real differences in quality between schools now, the quality of Boston's schools needs upgrading, and city funding formulas need to be re-evaluated. However, the Supreme Court and the judge are acting in accord with an unambiguous dictate of the Constitution: it is unlawful to deliberately execute plans to make the distribution of students in public school facilities racially biased. Changing the pattern of busing is the best available means of rectifying the inequity, and preliminary evidence is available to document its educational value to black students. If should rightfully stand as the law of the land unless an easier and more certain solution is found.

Brian Bohn '74 lives in Cambridge and will enter UCLA's School of Clinical Psychology in the fall.