Four years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Seattle's school-assignment racial tiebreaker, the federal government issued new guidelines affirming that districts can consider race to help integrate schools.

The guidelines issued Friday warned that students in racially isolated schools — which are on the rise nationally — often lag behind their peers at more diverse schools.

Seattle Public Schools administrators expressed surprise at the new voluntary guidelines, saying that for now they have no immediate plans to change school-assignment policies.

Civil-rights advocates hailed the guidelines, released jointly by the departments of Justice and Education, as an important tool that should help school districts reverse decades of worsening segregation in the nation's public schools.

"It's the two great federal departments agreeing on explicit interpretations of the Supreme Court decisions, and telling education authorities around the country they have latitude to act within the law," said Gary Orfield, director of the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles.

He added that "we are more segregated than we've been since before 1968 — we've lost all the progress we made since the '60s, and we're going backward each year."

Opponents, however, blasted the guidelines as an effort by the Obama administration to skirt the Supreme Court's decision.

"The DOJ (Department of Justice) memo is trying to take the perspective that we need to inject race in school," said Joshua Thompson, a staff attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, which joined in the lawsuit against Seattle's policy. "Their intent should be to limit the use of race instead of trying to find ways to get around the Supreme Court."

In practical terms, the new guidelines appear unlikely to significantly impact Seattle schools anytime soon. The district no longer uses the controversial "Open Choice" student-assignment plan, which used race as a factor in assigning students to increase diversity.

Most students are now assigned to their neighborhood schools, and race is not an explicit factor in any aspect of district decision making, said Holly Ferguson, the district's executive director of partnerships, policy and strategic communications.

District leaders have not had a chance to study the guidelines to see if any policies are now allowed that they have not considered, Ferguson said.

But School Board member Harium Martin-Morris predicted the guidelines would not change assignment policy.

"I still think there is a reluctance within our community to base it more on race," he said. "In order to serve all of our children, we have to make sure that all schools are quality. That is to me what is the most important thing."

Seattle case cited

In Friday's announcement, the government cited the Supreme Court decision in the Seattle case.

In the 2007 case, the court sided 5-4 with Seattle parents who challenged the "Open Choice" policy, although they supported the value of integrated schools.

The next year, the Bush administration issued its own guidelines for following the ruling. But many civil-rights advocates argue that framework "misstated what the legal guidelines were," said Dennis Parker, director of the Racial Justice Program for the national office of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Parker said he believes the 2008 Bush administration guidelines were too inflexible and restrictive. As a result, a number of school districts around the country pulled back from programs that promoted diverse schools.

"A lot of people interpreted that (Seattle case) to mean we can't do anything, and this document is saying there are a number of things you can do," said Orfield.

For example, school districts can make schools more diverse by allowing students in a predominantly African-American or Hispanic neighborhood a chance to enroll in a school in a white neighborhood, Orfield said.

"It's a very different tone from what we heard from the Bush administration," Orfield said of the new guidelines. "But it doesn't require anybody to do anything. It's expanding and clarifying the authority of school districts to act, if they wish to act."

In a statement, the two federal departments said the guidance "makes clear that educators may ... consider the race of students in carefully constructed plans to promote diversity or, in K-12 education, to reduce racial isolation."

"Learning benefits"

The statement says the guidelines were issued because the departments recognize "the learning benefits to students when campuses and schools include students of diverse backgrounds."

In the statement, Education Secretary Arne Duncan noted that racial isolation is on the increase across the nation, which "denies our children the experiences they need to succeed in a global economy, where employers, co-workers, and customers will be increasingly diverse. It also breeds educational inequity, which is inconsistent with America's core values."

For K-12 schools, the guidelines address school attendance boundaries, grade realignment and where districts can site schools and programs, among other options.

The guidelines also address how colleges and universities can take race into account in admissions, among other things.

But University of Washington officials said that Initiative 200, a 1998 Washington voter-approved measure that prohibits racial and gender preferences by state and local government, already prevents state higher-education institutions from using racial preference in college admissions.

When the UW staff reads college applications, they are not given any information about the students' race or ethnicity, said admissions director Philip Ballinger.

He said many of the suggestions in the new federal guidelines are already being followed at the UW.

Katherine Long: 206-464-2219 or klong@seattletimes.com. On Twitter @katherinelong.

Brian M. Rosenthal: 206-464-3195 or brosenthal@seattletimes.com. On Twitter @brianmrosenthal.