PROPOSITION 54, which would ban public schools from collecting data on the racial or ethnic backgrounds of students or teachers, could drastically set back school integration efforts across the state.

In a recent meeting with Chronicle editors and reporters, former UC Regent Ward Connerly, who came up with the idea for the initiative, said, "I don't care whether they are segregated or not . . . kids need to be learning, and I place more value on these kids getting educated than I do on whether we have some racial balancing or not."

Connerly rightly points out that there is a debate going on across California about how effective school integration has been in promoting student achievement. A growing number of parents, including many minorities, would prefer to have strong neighborhood schools, rather than a school that may be more diverse, but requires transporting their kids across town.

But Proposition 54, which will appear on the Oct. 7 recall ballot, would make an end run around the entire issue, if it passes. Barred from collecting any racial or ethnic data, school districts would have no idea how diverse their schools are. Harvard University's Civil Rights Project has already documented an alarming trend toward school resegregation, especially in Latino neighborhoods in California. Without any data to point to, school districts will be relieved of any pressure to try to slow this disturbing slide.

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Connerly notes that Proposition 54 allows federal laws to take precedence over any provisions of his initiative. He points out that the federal government's "No Child Left Behind" legislation still requires districts to collect racial and ethnic data on students, which local schools could then use.

That is a weak argument. Congress could change federal laws at any time, which would leave California schools without the data they need to maintain diversity. It is also preposterous to argue that certain kinds of data would be banned from use in California -- but then to also argue that schools could still use the same "tainted" data they are required to provide under federal law.

California schools might also need or want to gather data more specific than what they are required to provide to the federal government. But Proposition 54 would prevent them from doing so.

We think most parents in California prefer to send their children to schools with some diversity. But under Connerly's plan, schools could end up even more racially imbalanced than they are already, a situation that no one could officially acknowledge -- let alone do anything about -- because there would be no data to back them up.

Proposition 54 would also make it impossible for districts trying to ensure there is not a total mismatch between the racial or ethnic backgrounds of students in a particular school, and the teachers who work there. That's because the initiative bars schools from collecting racial or ethnic data on teachers as well.

An even more fundamental problem is that the initiative sets up almost insurmountable obstacles in the way of local districts voluntarily trying to ensure a modicum of racial or ethnic diversity in their schools. The San Francisco school district, for example, no longer assigns students to schools by race, but has begun to use a pioneering race-free "diversity index" measuring such factors as a parents' income and level of education. But San Francisco continues to ask parents to provide information on their racial or ethnic background, because it wants to monitor the impact of the diversity index on the racial makeup of its schools. But Proposition 54 would prohibit the district from doing so.

In its recent landmark ruling upholding affirmative action in Michigan, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that achieving racial and ethnic diversity in educational settings represents a "compelling state interest." It's obvious that segregated residential neighborhoods make it increasingly difficult to satisfy that interest in our public schools. But Proposition 54 would render the task of achieving racial or ethnic diversity even more difficult, if not impossible, to carry out.