President Obama's education initiatives include major incentives for creating more charter schools. Policymakers at all levels of government are all currently touting charters as a big fix for our nation's troubled schools and California has made one of the deepest commitments to
charters. Before further expansion, however, Californians need to take a long look at some hard numbers.
charters. Before further expansion, however, Californians need to take a long look at some hard numbers.
There are, of course, some excellent and famous charter schools. In California, as well as nationwide, however, disturbing trends are emerging in charter schools where intense segregation is upending student body diversity and ignoring civil rights. Further, the lack of charter school data documenting the enrollment of English Language Learners makes it very difficult to know whether California's charter schools are equitably serving these students.
Charter schools stratify students by race, class and possibly language, and are more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the country, according to a report issued by the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA. Because separate is still fundamentally unequal, and because integrated schools prepare all students to live and work in our extremely diverse state, charter school stratification matters.
The number of California students in charter schools has more than doubled from 2000-01 to 2007-08. By 2007-08, charter students accounted for 4.1 percent of all public school students in the state, higher than the national share. California has changed its law to permit rapid expansion of the state's charter sector, though the great majority of students will surely remain in regular public schools.
As in charter schools across the West and some Southern states, white students are over-represented in California's charters. More than half of California's public school students are