The Minnesota State Board of Education has provided the best argument so far for school choice: a chance to escape from the diversity police the board wants to unleash. Under a proposed set of "Rules Relating to Educational Diversity," each school district in the state would have to set up a diversity committee and adopt a plan for a "multicultural, gender fair, and disability aware" curriculum. Naturally, the board gives detailed orders. The committee would include people of diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, and also persons of both sexes and with disabilities. The committee would release an annual report including "measurable data on implementation and progress toward district educational diversity." The data would show how students -- categorized by race, sex, English-language ability, and eligibility for "special education services" and subsidized lunches -- fared in the following areas: enrollment, academic progress, attendance, graduation, absenteeism, expulsion, suspension, and participation in extracurricular activities. All areas had better come up equal. If not -- if the data suggested that a district had failed to implement the state-required diversity plan -- the district could lose its funding.
The Minnesota State Board of Education was poised to pass the rules without a public hearing until Katherine Kersten, a Star Tribune columnist, blew the whistle. The board, which is appointed by Republican governor Arne Carlson, was in unanimous accord. Carlson has been a leader on school choice, but it looks like someone on his staff was asleep at the switch when it came time to appoint the board.