Jersey Jazzman: Charter Schools Do Not Promote Diversity

Jersey Jazzman: Charter Schools Do Not Promote Diversity

Charter Schools Do Not Promote Diversity

Peter Greene had a useful post the other day about how to spot bad education research. One sure sign is cherry-picking: focusing on a few observations – or even just one – and then suggesting these few are representative of the whole. This tactic is a favorite among charter school cheerleaders, who will extoll X's high test scores and Y's high special education rates – without mentioning X's special education rates and Y's test scores.

Here's a recent example from New Jersey:

Earlier this month, the New Jersey Charter School Association (NJCSA) filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit: Latino Action Network v. State of New Jersey. The lawsuit contends New Jersey has some of the most segregated public schools in the nation (it does), and proposes a series of remedies. One notable feature of the lawsuit is that it is critical of charter schools:

Because charter schools are thus required to give priority in enrollment to students who reside in their respective districts, and because they tend to be located predominantly in intensely segregated urban school districts, New Jersey’s charter schools exhibit a degree of intense racial and socioeconomic segregation comparable to or even worse than that of the most intensely segregated urban public schools. Indeed, 73% of the state’s 88 charter schools have less than 10% White students and 81.5% of charter school students attend schools characterized by extreme levels of segregation, mostly because almost all the students are Black and Latino. [emphasis mine]

As you can imagine, this didn't sit well with the NJCSA:

On Thursday, September 6, the New Jersey Charter Schools Association asked a state court judge for permission to intervene into the historic school desegregation case [Latino Action Network v. State of New Jersey] on behalf of its member schools. Charter schools are part of the desegregation solution—they are not the problem. In fact, an important tool to combat school segregation is empowering parents with meaningful public school choice.While we share the values and goals of diverse, high-performing schools that serve a broad range of students, we are intervening to address baseless attacks on charter schools and ensure that our students and families have a seat at the table. [emphasis mine]

Now that is a provocative claim: NJCSA is stating not just that New Jersey charters aren't making school segregation worse, they are actually contributing to the desegregation the Continue reading: Jersey Jazzman: Charter Schools Do Not Promote Diversity