Charter schools and their segregating effect
Last week, the NY Times ran a very eloquent oped by a Brooklyn parent entitled How Charter Schools Can Hurt, pointing out how the aggressive marketing of a Success Academy charter outside her neighborhood public school could very well lead to her school to suffer even more budget cuts, and become less racially and economically diverse, as white middle class parents choose to enroll their children in the charter school instead.
In response, a parent and an employee of the Success Academy chain wrote a letter, apparently to the applicants to their new Brooklyn charters, that was subsequently posted on our NYC Education List serv. His letter claimed, among other things, that the charter school his children attend, Upper West Success Academy, “is among the most socio-economic and racially diverse schools in the entire city.” His letter evokes several concerns. First of all, If Upper West Success charter is so diverse, why didn’t he include any data about its racial/ethnic breakdown in his letter?
At the forum last fall called Miseducation Nation, sponsored by FAIR, I noted how in Brooklyn public