Diversity in schools, cont...

This article discusses a successful school at a time where schools (especially schools in poor neighborhoods) seem to be failing all over the place...

One comment, though...look at the racial mix of the class: 98% black and 2% Hispanic.

One of the buzzwords in education today is 'diversity'--the idea that upper echelon colleges that have predominantly white and Asian students need more black and Hispanic students (through affirmative action programs and the like) for the sake of 'diversity'. The implication being that everyone's education is improved by having a 'diverse' set of classmates. (The implication is also that all blacks and Hispanics think alike, so adding a few colored faces to a classroom automatically adds 'diversity' of opinion and philosophy [Teacher: "That's fine...but now we want to hear the "Black" opinion on this matter from one of our black students...] but we'll ignore that for now...)

I'm not criticizing the school--which appears to be doing things right. (Although may I ask if poor white or Asian students were even included in the 'lottery' for a chance to attend the school? The article doesn't say...) I'm just wondering if the same people who support 'diversity' would level the same criticisms at this school for limiting the education of its students by not having 'diverse' enough classmates.

People consider LDS Church members to be a pretty homogenous group--yet anyone who has spent any time among them (us)--or even better, perused any of the LDS blogs online--would know that within any group of members there's significant difference of opinion regarding just about anything you can think of: tithing, Sabbath observance, Word of Wisdom, literal vs. figurative scripture interpretation, etc...

I know (as I think everyone does) that there is already great diversity inside the 98% of the student population that are black in this SEED school as far as personalities, interests, backgrounds, philosophies, etc. But why do I get the feeling that if the school was 98% white and 2% Asian, we'd be hearing a lot of 'diversity' arguments from the major affirmative action groups...