San Francisco made headlines last year when it announced that it would begin integrating some schools on the basis of income. This year, the school board in Cambridge, Massachusetts voted to do the same thing. Many experts are excited about this new strategy for diversifying schools, particularly since courts have begun to limit the use of race in student assignments. (Richard Kahlenberg's 2001 book All Together Now: Creating Middle Class Schools through Public School Choice offered a ringing defense of the idea, for instance.) But after learning that their children have been assigned to low-performing schools that will require cross-town busing, some parents in San Francisco are less thrilled with the plan. Hundreds of Asian American parents who would prefer that their children attend neighborhood schools protested at a school board meeting last week, and city and community leaders are backing the parents. For more see "School district diversity plan under microscope," by Joyce Nishioka, The San Francisco Examiner, April 10, 2002.
