Charters, in black and white: Integrating charter schools is long overdue
Sunday, May 29th 2011, 4:00 AM
About 90% of students attending charter schools in New York City are minorities. This has provoked some to accuse charter schools of creating "racial isolation" and rolling back the integration efforts that started with the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education ruling of 1954.
At the national level, UCLA's Civil Rights Project issued a report lamenting that "charter schools enroll a disproportionate share of black students and expose them to the highest level of segregation."
As a charter school trustee and husband of a charter school operator, my first reaction to hearing this was disbelief: How could anyone complain about giving too many minority kids a good education? But perhaps these critics have a point.
Charter schools justify high minority enrollment as helping close the racial achievement gap. Seats in good schools shouldn't be "wasted" on white students, who usually already have access to the better public schools in any given geographic area. It's a logical
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2011/05/29/2011-05-29_charters_in_black_and_white.html#ixzz1NkYoWSj2