MISSOURI COMMENTARY: NOBLE EXPERIMENT HEADED TO END

There was a time half a century ago when public education in this country organized on the principle of "separate but equal." It was, of course, legal fiction. "Separate," yes, but "equal" no.

The Supreme Court ended the fiction in 1954. Segregated school districts began to be dismantled "with all deliberate speed." In some areas, black children were often bused into theretofore all-white schools and white children were sometimes bused into previously all-black schools.

The Supreme Court could change legal doctrine, but it could not change attitudes. Many white parents put their children in private schools or fled to suburbs out of the reach of the federal court orders. The end result is that in the big, older urban school districts of America, public education turned overwhelmingly minority. These systems are no longer separate by law, but separate by out-migration. Constitutional doctrine was easier to change than attitudes.

As the new school year has opened, school districts across the country are trying, in some form or another, to cope with the racial polarization.

-- Milwaukee. Milwaukee has 100,000 students (70 percent minority). Gov. Tommy Thompson believes in the privatization of public education. A pilot program was initiated to use public funds to send 1,000 students to non-sectarian schools. The private schools reserve the right to reject students they find objectionable. The program was to be expanded this year to an additional 2,300 to attend parochial schools. The Wisconsin Supreme Court issued a temporary order restraining the proposed expansion, raising the question of the constitutionality of using state money to fund religious schools.

School vouchers for private schools are the hot-button education issue. Proponents argue that it is only fair that private education has access to government funds, since such schools are doing the work that public schools otherwise would have to perform. As to religion in schools, a leader of the Milwaukee voucher program says, "Are you afraid of religion being part of your community? ... Do you tremble at the idea that your children might encounter God rather than guns or drugs in the hallways?"

Opponents view vouchers as the beginning of the end of public education, the "siphoning off" to private schools of already insufficient tax dollars. Some day the Supreme Court of the United States will rule on a voucher plan like Wisconsin's.

-- Kansas City. The Kansas City school system has 37,151 students (76 percent minority). No need to await a Supreme Court ruling here. There already is one.

Under federal district court order, the infrastructure of the Kansas City schools underwent a massive upgrade. The concept was that with first class facilities and attractive magnet school programs, white students from the suburbs would be eager to be transported to the city by bus or taxi. The Supreme Court knocked out the interdistrict component of the Kansas City scheme earlier this year. As a result, the meager in-migration of white students will fade away.

Kansas City will remain as a school district with extensive first-class facilities in an overwhelmingly minority district: separate and pseudo-equal.

-- St. Louis. The St. Louis public schools have 42,166 students (78 percent minority). In addition, under court order, 13,500 black inner city students are bused to suburban districts with the State of Missouri paying a very generous per capita sum to the receiving suburban districts.

The Kansas City and St. Louis cases are markedly dissimilar in the nature of the court-supervised remedies previously ordered. It is, however, clear that if busing and federal court jurisdiction in Kansas City are to end in the foreseeable future, so too will they similarly end in St. Louis.

Whereas Kansas City has enormous extra classroom space for white students who never came in sizable numbers, St. Louis will have a shortage of classroom space for the 13,000 black students who for the time being have been traveling to the suburbs. When judicial oversight end, the St. Louis public schools will be amongst the most segregated in the nation.

The overriding question facing the Kansas City and St. Louis school systems is: Where will these districts raise sufficient money to education their children? No one is stepping forward with an answer to that question.

The legal fiction excised by the Supreme Court in 1954 becomes the operative fact of the 21st century.

~Tom Eagleton of St. Louis is a former U.S. senator from Missouri.