Editor’s note: We’re publishing a series of op-ed articles from students in The Writing Program at USC. Every student in the class taught by Stephanie Bower and Dr. John Murray was required to make a short documentary about education by profiling a local school and/or program. Following the film project, the students wrote op-ed articles in response to their experiences and tackled some of the issues they discovered while making the shorts. We will be posting a new op-ed daily for the next two weeks.

by Bianca Carneiro

Call it what you like – “promoting diversity,” “closing the achievement gap” or even “affirmative action” – now you can add another name – “successful.” Minority quotas in school programs are providing equal opportunities to all students.

California ranks as one of the lowest states in terms of achievement in education with Los Angeles Unified School District serving its most diverse students.  Troubles in the economy such as rampant mortgage failure and unprecedented unemployment rates are leading to rapid demographic shifts, especially in urban areas, where Blacks and Latinos have become an overwhelming majority.  In these areas, there are huge discrepancies between the academic performance of minorities and white students.  With less than 20 percent of schools in the district following minority inclusion practices, parents and educators should be concerned with transforming their facility into a positive learning environment.

While the idea of mandating minority enrollment can send anyone from white supremacists to the NAACP running to the Supreme Court claiming discrimination, the benefit of having diversity in the classroom has opponents jumping sides.

Parents who were once demanding the repeal of affirmative action from schools in the late 1990’s are now demanding their children be enrolled in culturally diverse schools, going out of their way to ensure that little Hannah and Zach can learn side-by-side with the Cosby family.

Programs such as the LAUSD’s “Choices Magnet Program” are showing how affirmative action programs are churning out a new class of students.  One of the most culturally enriching experiences in my 18 years in public and private education was attending Venice Senior High School in L.A..  Venice has more than half of a dozen middle schools around the fiscally and ethnically diverse Westside feed into its student body. These kids are further siphoned upon enrollment into one of its five separate learning communities, which includes the regular high school.  I was placed into the Foreign Language Magnet, the only to openly use race as a factor for admittance to maintain a relatively balanced ratio of Latino, Asian and White students.  The program offered exclusive access to classes that fostered diversity, from seven languages to Asian Studies and Mexican American Literature.  I noticed that while my magnet courses had an array of ethnicities, classes on the regular side tended to be heavily mono-cultural.

According to LAUSD’s Choices website, the court-mandated magnet program was created to address the “five harms of racial isolation.” Low achievement, diminished self-worth, lack of access to higher education, gang involvement, and overcrowded conditions were the targets of the program, mirroring the tenets of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon’s efforts in the 1960s, which were later deemed to violate the American principle that all individuals are equal under the law.  Studies have since shown that all students thrive in ethnically diverse classrooms thanks to what researchers call “peer effects.”

They contend that performance levels are raised when classrooms host kids from a variety of socio-economic, racial and religious backgrounds, providing for healthy discussion and competition.  In the magnet environment, I saw some of my peers who otherwise may not have had access to high caliber professors and rigorous college preparatory curriculum matriculate at Ivy League universities like Yale, Brown and Columbia. Schools like Berkeley and UCLA have been nicknamed amongst my friends as “UC Venice” for the high number of students who are accepted each year.

So why isn’t this proof that affirmative action was and still is an effective measure in the field of education? Conversely, why aren’t there mobs in the street protesting the promotion of certain minorities over others? Our education system is in shambles and now, more than ever before in the history of our nation, there is a great need to promote diversity in schools. Homogeneous environments are essential for fostering growth and promoting change. Isn’t that exactly what President Obama ordered?