It was one of the simple errands required of parents sending their children to school for the first time.

But when Portia Bordelon went to Mary Morrisson Elementary School in Groton to register her son for pre-kindergarten, she was suddenly forced to make an uncomfortable decision.

Is Isaac black or white?

The answer is both, but it's one the state of Connecticut does not accept.

The state cites federal rules on reporting race and ethnicity that gives parents five options: American Indian, Asian, black, white or Hispanic/Latino.

Bordelon is black, and her husband, Joshua, Isaac's father, is white.

"I don't feel as a parent I should have to pick one," Bordelon said. "He's 50-50, and I want to pick both. To choose one is denying the other."

When Bordelon refused, she was told that a school employee would simply pick one for her. That shocked her even more. She wondered how a stranger could have the right to pick a race, and on what basis. Since she took her son in to register, the school employee would probably pick black, but if his father was with him, the choice would probably be white, she said.

Besides being arbitrary, Bordelon said, the choice means school districts would report the wrong data to the state and the U.S. Department of Education.

"It's not accurate and it's not identifying these students appropriately, because you're making them pick one," she said.

Bordelon, who works part-time at a pharmacy, said the state has informed her she can't enroll her son if he is not classified in a racial category.

She says she is so disgusted she will likely seek a private preschool for her son. When he is old enough for kindergarten, she will think about home schooling until the rules change, she said.

The wait may not be too long. The U.S. Department of Education is considering changing the way it collects data on race -- though the concept has been in the works for 10 years.

A proposal was finally formalized a year ago, with changes based on the 2000 U.S. Census. For the first time, in that census year, individuals could identify themselves as belonging to more than one race.

The result: 2.4 percent of the total population, or 6.8 million people, identified themselves as belonging to two or more racial groups. Connecticut's population with two or more races was only slightly lower, at 2.2 percent.

For the U.S. population under 18 years old, 4 percent, or 2.8 million children, selected two or more races.

The U.S. Department of Education's proposal is first to ask if a child is a Hispanic of any race (Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South/Central American, etc.) or non-Hispanic.

Then a parent could select one or more of five races: American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian (origins in the Far East, Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent), black/African American, Native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islander, or white (origins in Europe, the Middle East or North Africa).

Those who pick more than one race would be reported to the federal government in one category of multiracial.

Patrick Sherrill, who has been soliciting public comment for the DOE on the proposal, said the department is still reviewing the information. It was originally scheduled to take effect in 2009, but it may be delayed.

Collecting racial information is required to ensure students are being treated fairly, he said.

Some groups are concerned about changing race identification data.

When the U.S. Census rules changed, groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People were worried that the new categories could dilute estimates of racial populations and threaten both the enforcement of equal-rights laws and funding for government programs aimed at minorities.

Similar concerns have surfaced in reporting of students.

One letter to Sherrill pointed out that the DOE's proposal of creating a single "multiracial" category "hides the specific racial and ethnic mix of students" and could have a "severely negative impact on the public's ability to access usable and accurate data on the racial and ethnic composition of students ... ." The groups signing the letter include the NAACP, Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Funds, Asian American Justice Center, and the National Education Association.

The department also recognizes the cost involved with changing so many data systems -- a cost that has hampered Connecticut from making any reporting changes, said Robert Lucco, director of the state Department of Education's Bureau of Research, Evaluation and Student Assessment.

"You would think to add a category would be a simple matter," Lucco said. "But it would affect all data systems in local school districts. It has a domino effect."

While other states have gone ahead with letting parents identify their children as more than one race, Connecticut is awaiting the final federal guidance.

Lucco agrees with Bordelon that allowing an "observer" to select a child's race or ethnicity if the parents or students do not is "obviously inherently inaccurate." But it's the federal guidelines that spell out that process.

"There are errors in our data and in the reports we produce," he said. "School districts are really caught. It's archaic, but that's what we're stuck with."

Lucco said the state must follow the federal government's standards in order to receive federal funding.

Massachusetts, however, didn't wait for the new guidelines. It changed its reporting categories to reflect the DOE's pending proposal, starting in the 2005-06 school year.

Sherrill said that states, and even districts or counties, can collect the data however they choose, as long as they come up with an acceptable report to the DOE.

According to the group Project RACE, laws in Ohio, Illinois, Georgia, Indiana, Michigan and Maryland now allow students to identify themselves as more than one race, while North Carolina and Florida have made the change administratively.

Project RACE's executive director, Susan Graham, began the advocacy and awareness campaign after facing a situation almost identical to Bordelon's. Graham is white and her husband is black. When their son enrolled in kindergarten in Georgia and Graham was asked to fill out a form, she said, "My child's race is not on here."

Graham was told she didn't have to complete that part of the form. Later, she discovered a teacher had decided her son was black.

Her son was black at school, white on the 1990 Census -- after an official told her a child takes the race of the mother -- and multiracial at home, she said.

She eventually worked to get the school form changed.

"What's really important is what the children see," Graham said. "Kids want to be part of the group. Otherwise it makes them feel like a space alien.

"They should be able to embrace all of their heritage."

Reprinted from The Day, August 10, 2007
© 2007 by The Day