PARENTS WANT SCHOOLS WITH THE BASICS

The findings of a recent study into what parents want from their public schools will come as no surprise to most parents of school-age children or most teachers and administrators.

In the survey by a group called Public Agenda, 800 black parents and 800 white parents were asked about education topics ranging from integration to basic courses. What did all the parents agree on? They gave top priority to safety issues: No guns, drugs or gangs at school.

And next on the agenda of most parents was heavy emphasis on reading, writing and arithmetic, the Three R's that have been the foundation of a good American education for years and years.

Integration -- particularly court-ordered desegregation -- didn't rank high in importance in this survey. More than half of the black questioned and nearly three-fourths of the whites said integrated schools make little difference in the education their children receive.

The lessons of integration have left some ugly scars over the past 40-plus years, not because of racial diversity in the nation's classrooms, but because of a hard-headed policies that ignored educational needs or practical realities in order to achieve racial balance.

Often overlooked in the history of school integration are the reasons the Brown family sued the Topeka Board of Education, leading to the now-famous U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1954 that began the era of court-ordered desegregation.

The Browns wanted their daughter to go to a nearby neighborhood school instead of being forced to go to an all-black school on the other side of town. And they wanted her education to be of the same quality as that in the all-white schools. While the Supreme Court agreed with the concept of integrated schools as a matter of education policy, it failed to take note of how desegregation would be accomplished in far too many instances: Blacks were bused to all-white neighborhoods to achieve the appearance of integration.

It is good to see that the issue of integration is disappearing finally from the sharp glare of national attention. Too many issues that have been counterproductive to maintaining high-quality schools have grabbed the spotlight for too long.

Clearly, parents of all backgrounds who have any interest in their children's future understand that a sound education is absolutely essential. The Public Agenda study confirms that there is far greater interest in what schools are teaching than in the racial makeup of the classroom.