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Opinion of the Court
program and later orders and imported those findings wholesale to reject the State's request for a determination of partial unitary status as to the quality education programs. See id., at 761-762. It found significant the District Court's determination that although "there had been a trend of improvement in academic achievement, . . . the school district was far from reaching its maximum potential because KCMSD is still at or below national norms at many grade levels." Ibid. It went on to say that with respect to quality education, "implementation of programs in and of itself is not sufficient. The test, after all, is whether the vestiges of segregation, here the systemwide reduction in student achievement, have been eliminated to the greatest extent practicable. The success of quality of education programs must be measured by their effect on the students, particularly those who have been the victims of segregation." Id., at 766.
The Court of Appeals denied rehearing en banc, with five judges dissenting. 19 F. 3d, at 395. The dissent first examined the salary increases ordered by the District Court and characterized "the current effort by the KCMSD and the American Federation of Teachers . . . aided by the plaintiffs, to bypass the collective bargaining process" as "uncalled for" and "probably not an exercise reasonably related to the constitutional violations found by the court." Id., at 399. The dissent also "agree[d] with the [S]tate that logic d[id] not directly relate the pay of parking lot attendants, trash haulers and food handlers . . . to any facet or phase of the desegregation plan or to the constitutional violations." Ibid.
Second, the dissent believed that in evaluating whether the KCMSD had achieved partial unitary status in its quality education programs, the District Court and the panel had
"misrea[d] Freeman and create[d] a hurdle to the withdrawal of judicial intervention from public education that has no support in the law. The district court has,
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