CHARTER SCHOOLS, SEGREGATION AND CIVIL RIGHTS
The current buzz in local educational circles around billionaire Eli Broad and cohorts’ controversial half-billion dollar proposal for 360 new LAUSD charter schools is getting louder. Expanding the debate, a previous column on charter schools is revisited. Coincidentally, LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines recently cited a report that found while charter schools generally score higher on state tests than traditional schools, “the stellar performance of LAUSD magnet schools outperforms charter schools at all grade levels.”
The UCLA Civil Rights Project’s annual report, Choice Without Equity: Charter SchoolSegregation and the Need for Civil Rights Standards (2014) calls the charter school movement a political success but a civil rights failure. The report was especially timely, given the election to replace Marguerite LaMotte in Board District 1 where charter schools are a prominent issue-it has LAUSD’s largest concentration of Black students, those most harmed by segregation.
“Our analysis of the forty states, the District of Columbia, and several other metropolitan areas with large enrollments of charter school students, reveals charter schools are more racially isolated than traditional schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area.
While charter schools are increasing in number and size, charter school enrollment presently accounts for only 2.5% of all public school students. Despite federal pressure to increase charter schools—based on the notion that charter schools are superior to traditional public schools, in spite of inconclusive evidence in support of that claim- their enrollment remains concentrated in just five states. We show charter schools, in many ways, have more extensive segregation than other public schools. They attract a higher percentage of Black students than traditional schools, in part because they tend to be located in urban areas. As a result, their enrollment patterns display high levels of minority segregation, trends that are particularly severe for Black students.
At the national level, 70% of Black charter school students attend intensely segregated minority charter schools, or twice as many as the share of intensely segregated Black students in traditional public schools, by far the highest percentage of any other racial group.
Major gaps in multiple federal data sources make it difficult to answer basic, fundamental questions about the extent to which charter schools enroll and concentrate low-income students and English Language Learners (ELLs).
Charter schools are public and, therefore, should be equally available to all students regardless of background. However, approximately one in four charter schools does not report data on low-income students. Since eligibility for receiving free lunch is proof that families cannot to provide it, the lack of a free lunch program at school would impose a severe economic barrier to attending a charter school. In general, state charter school legislation is less likely to contain requirements for enrolling ELL students than for racial balance or diversity standards. The lack of data on these traditionally underserved groups makes it difficult to assess charter schools as an education reform or monitor their compliance with basic civil rights regulations and state charter school legislation.
Decades of social science studies find important benefits associated with attending diverse schools and conversely, related educational harms in schools where poor and minority students are concentrated. In the State of the Union address, the President recognized the persistent link between segregated neighborhoods and schools, saying, “In this country, the success of our children cannot depend more on where they live than on their potential.” Ironically, charter schools held an early promise of becoming more integrated than regular public schools because they are not constrained by racially isolating school district boundary lines. This report shows instead, that charter schools make up a separate, segregated sector of our deeply related stratified public school system.
The Obama Administration should take immediate action to reduce segregation in charter schools and work instead to achieve their integrative promise. The Education Department should update its guidance on civil rights regulations for charter schools and strengthen it by including provisions known to be successful in other programs like magnet schools CHARTER SCHOOLS, SEGREGATION AND CIVIL RIGHTS - Los Angeles Sentinel | Los Angeles Sentinel | African-American News:
