Segregation and Desegregation, TUSD Schools and Tucson Charter Schools | The Range: The Tucson Weekly's Daily Dispatch | Tucson Weekly

Segregation and Desegregation, TUSD Schools and Tucson Charter Schools | The Range: The Tucson Weekly's Daily Dispatch | Tucson Weekly:

Segregation and Desegregation, TUSD Schools and Tucson Charter Schools

Segregation and desegregation in Tucson schools has become such a hot topic recently, I decided to do a little research to see how the ethnic and racial numbers break down in TUSD schools. As I looked over the numbers, I began to be curious about what they look like in Tucson's charter schools as well. I've read often that charters tend to be more segregated than district schools, and I wanted to see if that was true here. I found that all the data I needed is on the Arizona Department of Education and TUSD websites.

I gathered together enrollment stats on 75 charters in Tucson—I believe it's a fairly complete list of the city's charter schools—using information from the Arizona Department of Education website. Then I did the same with the 85 TUSD schools listed in the enrollment stats on TUSD's website. TUSD keeps its enrollment information current, compiling each school's ethnic and racial composition on a daily basis, but the most recent numbers I could find for charters is from October, 2014, so I used the same date for TUSD to create an accurate comparison.  

Of Tucson students in publicly funded schools (I didn't include private schools in my research), 73 percent are in TUSD schools and 27 percent are in charter schools. Hispanics make up 61 percent of the total student population, 25 percent are Anglo and the remaining 14 percent are divided among African American, Native American, Asian American and Multi-Racial students.

Here is a graph showing the overall ethnic and racial compositions in TUSD and Tuscon's charter schools.

There's a large difference between student populations in TUSD and in Tucson charter schools. Charters have 11 percent fewer Hispanic student and 16 percent more Anglo students than TUSD. Though the numbers of other students are far smaller, it's clear that African American, Native American and Multi-Racial students are underrepresented at charters compared to TUSD—there's a consistent one-to-two ratio—while Asian American are slightly overrepresented at charters.

The numbers indicate there's a significant white (and Asian) flight from TUSD schools to charters, which indicates that charter schools are more segregated than TUSD schools. But the difference may be greater or smaller than the numbers imply. After all, students attend a variety of schools with unique ethnic and racial mixes, not the TUSD school district or charter schools as a whole. So my next question is, what are the ethnic and racial compositions of the schools students attend?

The chart below shows the percentage of students in TUSD and Tucson charter Segregation and Desegregation, TUSD Schools and Tucson Charter Schools | The Range: The Tucson Weekly's Daily Dispatch | Tucson Weekly:schools who