Charting Alternatives to a Segregated School Admissions Policy: Where Demographic Analysis Fits In

This paper illustrates how demographic analysis and data get applied in affirmative action disputes. The focus is a racially-based quota system for admitting applicants to a public school program offering accelerated learning to gifted and exceptional students. The paper evaluates the effects of this quota system on the admission of qualified nonminority applicants and considers the feasibility of alternatives for maintaining racial balance without engaging in purposeful discrimination. The analysis establishes the use of an ethnic quota system which denies admission to qualified nonminority applicants; documents the severity of its effect, whereby race (instead of academic qualification) is the deciding factor in admissions; and devises feasible nondiscriminatory alternatives to this system for maintaining racial balance among applicants admitted solely on the basis of merit. As a potential instructional case, the paper introduces students to the adversarial realm, showing how applied demographers inform their thinking with the reasoning and underlying legal principles that govern a case, clarify the issues in dispute, and fit measures to legal standards that apply.