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pline in the schools has certainly interested many parents in reconsidering their children's education."

Deputy Superintendent George V. Kirk said, "I think it's what has happened in many school districts once things settle down. I have a basic feeling that white flight will drop substantially if the school system runs well."

Gilbert S. Scarborough Jr., president of the board of education, said the fairly low percentage of blacks in district schools may be encouraging white students to return. About a fourth of the students in the county district are black.

"I really expected a return of many of the children that had sought alternatives to the public schools when their parents saw that the racial balance in the schools was what it was going to be," he said.

White flight is responsible for perhaps two-thirds of the drop in enrollment since the district was formed by the court-ordered merger of 11 school districts.

In 1977, before desegregation, there were 69,953 students in the 11 districts, and there are now 58,459 students in the county district. About 4,000 of the 11,494student decline is due to a drop in the birth rate. Another 1,500 or so students have dropped out of school.

Enrollment declined by 9.1 percent before the county district opened its doors in the fall of 1978. There was another 8.1 percent drop last fall. And the research office is projecting a drop of more than 8 percent when school starts next fall.

PREPARED STATEMENT OF GARY ORFIELD

During the past fifteen years I have been a close observer of congressional battles over school desegregation. I studied the reaction in the House and Senate when the Johnson Administration enforced the desegregation of the rural South in the mid-sixties and the equally intense reaction of Members from the North and West when the Supreme Court moved to require urban school desegregation between 1971 and 1973. Each year during this period there have been measures passed by at least one house of Congress to limit school desegregation enforcement by the executive branch or by the courts. Each year there have been groups of angry local whites on Capitol Hill sitting in hearings where Congressmen and Senators considered bills to roll back desegregation requirements. Four of the five presidents during this period have expressed their personal opposition to busing to desegregate urban schools.

Congress has not prevented the desegregation of a single school district. It has removed the enforcement authority of the Education Department and forced much more of the burden onto the courts and private civil rights litigators. All of the amendments

have created widespread false hopes that the law will be reversed, hopes that spur white resistance, greatly increase the burdens on the educators attempting to successfully manage a difficult transition, and undermine the efforts of the courts to peacefully enforce the law. This entire period has passed with very few constructive

efforts by Congress to make the desegregation process work better. The Emergency School Aid Act, providing federal funds to training and enhanced educational programs to aid in the changes that come with desegregation, was a significant positive effort and that act was substantially improved with the Carter Administration amendments. Apart from Senator Glenn's magnet school amendment there have been few efforts to foster voluntary achievement of school desegregation through educational incentives. Congress has failed to act on

a long scries of proposals for voluntary city-suburban transfers to

aid desegregation.

There has been no significant initiative since

1968 which has provided either strong incentives or strong enforcement
powers to speed neighborhood integration, which could produce
naturally integrated schools where busing would be unnecessary.

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I believe that Congress is, once again, moving toward restrictions on school desegregation that are based on false assumptions and will only further undermine community efforts to make integration work. After discussing a number of these assumptions I will suggest that Congress could play an extraordinarily valuable role in devising a

strategy which would make less busing necessary in the long run without sacrificing the goal of integrated education.

Assumptions.

Since the beginning of this Congress there have been

a number of floor speeches and statements in the Record on the need Most share some or all of the following

for anti-busing legislation.

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The courts order busing because it is the only practical way to achieve full desegregation in the face of intense residential segregation and the lack of any significant national effort to foster residential integration.

The great majority of the nation's

rural districts, which have relatively little residential segregation, were desegregated in the 1960's and there has been great progress across

the

U.S. in the desegregation of small cities, through modest use of busing sometimes combined with magnet school plans, redistricting, and

other techniques.

A good many states with relatively low minority

populations have no significant remaining school segregation.

The reason the busing issue is so crucial is that the remaining problems are concentrated in large cities with severe residential and educational segregation. About half of black students in the U.S.

and three-fifths of Hispanics attend school in fifty school districts. The typical American city has residential segregation so intense that 80-90 percent of black families would have to move to achieve full residential integration. On a metropolitan level, according to the

Urban Institute, residential segregation increased during the 1960-1970 period and there are only limited signs of progress in the preliminary returns of the 1980 Census. There is evidence of increasing

Hispanic segregation in central city areas. There is no evidence that existing residential trends will produce integrated schools. In fact a study of all neighborhood schools which had significant black and white enrollment in Los Angeles showed that not one became stably integrated--all were "integrated" for only a few years as the ghetto expanded through a new neighborhood. Much the same pattern was

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If the courts are prohibited from transporting students there will be no practical remedy for students whose segregation has been found to result from unconstitutional actions by local authorities. No school district of large size has ever been fully desegregated through voluntary approaches. Usually, according to the only national

evaluation of magnet programs, voluntary transfers outside of a mandatory framework have little if any impact on segregation in large cities. Rarely do such programs produce any significant desegregation in black and Hispanic areas.

Redrawing of attendance boundaries is often a counterproductive remedy in big cities. It tends to accelerate the processes of ghetto expansion and create maximum instability in white areas near minority areas. It puts all the pressure of desegregation on these limited areas that already face the self-fulfilling prophecy of

resegregation and encourages white families to settle in areas

beyond the reach of the plan.

Busing is an essential remedy for most of the segregation that remains in American education. This is the only reason that

conservative federal judges faced with proof of violations have

ordered student transfers.

many students.

Ending busing would mean segregation for

Virtually every speech for anti-busing legislation asserts that both blacks and whites oppose this remcdy. It is true, of course, that virtually every survey in recent years shows substantial white opposition. It is not true, however, that most research shows black opposition. It is also true that most Americans have little accurate information about busing and that those families who are actually participating in court-ordered reassignments believe that they are working out by a substantial majority.

A February 1981 Gallup Poll showed that 78% of whites opposed "busing for better racial balance" but only 30% of blacks expressed such opposition. Blacks, in fact, supported busing by a 2-1 margin.

A number of studies of black opinion within individual communities where busing plans have been under way for a number of years show substantial majorities believing that their children are receiving a better education and supporting the plan.

Part of the opposition among whites may reflect the

inaccurate information they have about school desegregation plans. One national survey,

for

example, showed that most believed that

the court orders cost more than ten times what they actually cost and that many believe that the education of white children is harmed. A 1978 national survey by Louis Harris and Associates found that although 85 percent of whites said they opposed busing, the attitudes of those whose children were actually bussed under a desegregation plan were very different. 56 percent of the white families actually affected by the plans said that the experience was "very satisfactory." The researchers concluded: "The irony of busing to achieve racial that rarely has there been a case where so many have been

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