Schools Matter: Corporate Charter Schools: The New Model for School Segregation

Schools Matter: Corporate Charter Schools: The New Model for School Segregation

Corporate Charter Schools: The New Model for School Segregation

by Jim Horn

Two important studies, here and here, from 2010 provide incontrovertible evidence that charter schools have strong segregative effects on the education of minorities, the poor, ELLs, and special education students. In other cases, especially in the South and Southwest, charters harken back to the private Protestant academies of the 1970s, when the preservation of white-only schools required white flight. Today that flight often ends behind iron gates in leafy suburbs with names like Plantation Estates. The added benefit today is, of course, that public dollars pay for these private academies of white privilege.

And yet Team Oligarch Obama continues to support the unregulated and racist expansion of charter schools that routinely violate federal Civil Rights laws. Civil rights laws, in fact, are viewed as a violation of the autonomy of corporate welfare charter school operators.

An extensive examination of Florida charter schools by the Orlando Sentinel shows more of the same. When will the revolt begin?

First of two parts

Segregation is making a comeback in Florida's public schools with the new wave of charter