Charter Schools To Discuss Segregation - Education News Story - KCRA Sacramento

Charter Schools To Discuss Segregation - Education News Story - KCRA Sacramento:

"SACRAMENTO, Calif. --

Charter school leaders from across California are gathering in Sacramento Tuesday, and one of the hot topics for discussion is a new study that criticizes those schools on allegations of being racially segregated.

When classes let out at Sacramento Charter High School, more than half of the students who leave are all one race.
Before Sac High became a charter school in 2003, four ethnic groups made up roughly equal parts of the student body."

Now, African-Americans account for nearly 56 percent of students at Sac High, while Asians and whites are each less than 6 percent.

The recent study by researchers at UCLA said across the country, charter schools show "high levels of minority segregation."

Funded by tax dollars, but free of many of the rules that govern traditional schools, charter schools are rapidly growing in California.

Charter school leaders meeting in Sacramento this week reject the segregation study.

"In fact, if anything, what I hear is that parents realize that academic achievement is the thing that is most important for their kids," Jed Wallace from the California Charter Schools Association said.

At Sac High, students say if there is de facto segregation at their school they don't mind -- that what counts for them is not what their classmates look like, but the quality of their education.

"I think it's just because of the neighborhood and where Sac High is centered," student Danny Thach said.

The authors of the new study are not calling for a return to the days of forced busing, but say charter schools should spend more on transportation so that they can attract students from further away.

"We are turning back the clock. Since the early 1990s when the Supreme Court authorized dissolution of desegregation plans, we have been becoming more segregated and are now extremely segregated in California," Gary Orfield with the UCLA Civil Rights Project said.