A new round of segregation plays out in charter schools
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In keeping with national demographic shifts, the Twin City suburbs have been growing more diverse in recent years, with an increasing African-American and Hispanic population. But that diversity is not always reflected in the area schools.
At Seven Hills Classical Academy, a charter school in Bloomington, Minn., for instance, 80 percent of the student body is white, compared to 57 percent in the Bloomington Public School District. Indeed, the number of predominantly white charters in the Twin Cities metro area has risen from 11 in 2000 to 37 in 2010.
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Charter schools and their proponents argue that charters must take any student who wants to attend– and randomly select students through a lottery if too many apply – and, as such, can’t control who enrolls. Yet someexperts are concerned that this trend is an example of the next phase of white flight, following a long history of white families seeking out homogeneous neighborhoods and schools.
School choice was once seen as a means of helping to