Segregated by choice, state's charter schools face a test
State weighs whether to include charters in integration plan, and a lawsuit blames charters for heightening segregation in Minneapolis and St. Paul schools.
The cafeteria at Noble Academy charter school in Brooklyn Park is adorned with Laotian-style ornamentation, a nod to its mostly Hmong student body. Employees at St. Paul’s Higher Ground Academy can converse in the first languages of its predominantly East African population. Nearly all the students at Friendship Academy of the Arts in Minneapolis are black.
To compete for students, Minnesota’s charter schools mold themselves with distinct identities that often appeal to individual racial or ethnic groups. That approach has helped create schools so racially homogeneous that more than three-quarters of elementary students at Twin Cities charters attend schools with 80 percent or higher white or nonwhite enrollment.
It’s a higher rate of racial concentration than traditional public elementary schools, which in Minneapolis and St. Paul have reached levels of segregation not seen since the 1980s. And many charter schools have served homogeneous student bodies from the start.
Charter school supporters make no apologies for the lack of diversity in their classrooms.
“Choice is like a civil right,” said Bill Wilson, executive director of Higher Ground Academy. “Choice is democracy.”
Yet in a lawsuit filed against the state this month, attorneys blame charters for heightening segregation in Minneapolis and St. Paul schools. The lack of diversity in charters also has caught the attention of the Minnesota Department of Education, which is considering whether charters should be subject to state integration rules for the first time.
Advocates for charters say mandating integration would remove the pillar of charters: parental freedom to choose the best-fitting school. Others say segregated schools do a disservice to students.
Diversity in schools gives students increased critical thinking skills and resiliency in different environments, said Halley Potter, who studies integration at the Century Foundation, a public policy think tank in New York.
“It’s a mistake to settle for an education approach with a more segregated student body, even when you’re producing strong academic results,” Potter said.
Mandate would cause chaos
A majority of charters in the Twin Cities enroll heavy concentrations of students of color, while some lean toward mostly white student bodies. Only 16 of the metro area’s 72 elementary-level charter schools are integrated with what education researchers consider a healthy mix of white and minority Segregated by choice, state's charter schools face a test - StarTribune.com:
