Racial Isolation, Educational Equity, and the Rightto Equal Access: The Carlin Case and School Integration

The study examined the effects of school integrationin SDUSD during 1978 to 1998. The question was: What was theimpact of school integration for ethnically and linguisticallydiverse students? Five areas were examined: student achievement,cross-cultural interaction, integration programs, students' andcommunity leaders' perceptions on integration. The findings indicatethat: (1) integration was ineffective in closing theachievement gap in the 23 racially isolated schools; (2) students perceivedintegration as a favorable program that allowed for integration butfailed to provide them with a rich culturally diverse curriculum; (3)the district provided magnet school programs that were academically challenging, while VEEP programs provided lowacademic rigor; (4) administrator leaders perceived the implementation ofintegration as a compliance issue as opposed to a social commitment,and lastly; (5) community leaders perceived the integrationexperiment with some social benefits but generally labeled theintegration efforts of the school district as symbolic and lacking thesocial commitment to equal educational opportunity.