ANOTHER BAD DESEG PLAN

Decades of misguided attempts to integrate the nation's schools appears to be collapsing under their own weight. The Chicago public schools are the latest to face the reality that court-mandated quotas, busing and importing or transporting students to and from suburban districts doesn't work.

Fifteen years ago the Justice Department successfully sued the Chicago schools. A result was a complex formula that determined how both students and teachers were to be mixed racially. The result, of course, has been disastrous. Given that Chicago only has 11 percent white students to begin with, it has been impossible to comply with the quotas from school to school.

Moreover, the court-ordered desegregation plans have totally ignored the value of neighborhood schools. Students, their parents and teachers have all long recognized the stability of schools that form the nucleus of neighborhoods and given residents a source of pride and focus.

Chicago is just the latest urban area to realize the obvious. Now it may ask the federal government to relent on the quota system for education. Just a few days ago, a federal judge in Denver ruled that court-ordered busing, a failure from the start, could stop. Kansas City's expensive desegregation plan has been struck down.

The sooner education is returned to local control, where parents and locally elected officials, with input from teachers and administrators, make the decision, the better.