Schools apart

Whether the racially polarized attendance patterns in the Wayne County public schools are legal will be for the courts to decide, now that the NAACP has filed a lawsuit. But whether or not "apartheid" is at work, as the NAACP alleges, this clearly is a school system where the notion of diversity counts for zilch. What does such a system look like?

The civil rights organization points to an attendance district in central Goldsboro and another one to the east. The Goldsboro district, with 2,100 students, is said to have a grand total of four who are white. The poverty rate is high, with 94 percent of the students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch. And less than half of the students manage to graduate.

The other district has an enrollment that is 90 percent white. Those students fare better academically and are suspended less often. Good for them. But it's fair to wonder if the central district's students would have a better chance to succeed in a learning environment where poverty was not a common denominator.

A spokesman for the Wayne schools says the patterns criticized by the NAACP simply reflect the fact that the schools are located in communities where their students live. Extra resources are supplied to those schools, he says. Yes, people in Wake County have heard a thing or two about the virtues of neighborhood schools.

But that view also can be an excuse to isolate poor and minority students, to their detriment. Done deliberately, that could be a violation of federal law besides being poor educational practice. The NAACP understandably is calling attention to the way they do things in Wayne, and the school system can look forward to explaining why its districting and assignment policies are on the up and up. Explaining to a judge.