by Gabriel Arana in Tapped, the blog of The American Prospect | http://bit.ly/9TYeZC
Charter schools are often touted as labs for novel approaches to education, but one of these innovations isn't so new at all. The Civil Rights Project at UCLA today released a report showing that charter schools have become bastions for racial re-segregation.
The racial segregation cuts both ways. In certain states with high minority populations -- in the West and South in particular -- the composition of charter schools is overwhelmingly white. In other places, it is primarily black or Latino. And because these schools operate independently of state school districts, they are more free to skirt guidelines for racial and economic diversity.
The Civil Rights Project suggests turning to magnet schools for the specialized approaches to education currently offered by charter schools. But it's an incomplete recommendation: Magnet schools function just like charter schools, but operate within the purview of school districts -- and draw on their students. There is no guarantee that they will draw a representative sample of the district's students. So unless school districts make it an active goal to ensure a diverse student body, they just become segregated charter schools with an institutional blessing.
Personally, I have never understood why specialized educational initiatives can't be implemented as programs at public schools. My high school, on the U.S.-Mexico border, was plagued by many of the problems that school districts serving high-immigrant, low-income students face (35 percent ELL learners, low college grad rate). And yet the school offered the International Baccalaureate program, allowing nerds like me to get the specialized education we needed without having to be shipped off to another school.
Study: Charter school growth accompanied by racial imbalance
By Nick Anderson | Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 4, 2010 -- Seven out of 10 black charter school students are on campuses with extremely few white students, according to a new study of enrollment trends that shows the independent public schools are less racially diverse than their traditional counterparts.
The findings from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, which are being released Thursday, reflect the proliferation of charter schools in the District of Columbia and other major cities with struggling school systems and high minority populations.
To the authors of the study, the findings point to a civil rights issue: "As the country continues moving steadily toward greater segregation and inequality of education for students of color in schools with lower achievement and graduation rates," the study concludes, "the rapid growth of charter schools has been expanding a sector that is even more segregated than the public schools."
Gary Orfield, a UCLA education professor who oversaw the study, said that racially segregated schools tend to face more problems than integrated schools in teacher retention, graduation rates and other areas. He also said charter schools have not been proven to be better academically than regular public schools -- a conclusion some researchers debate.
Charter school proponents say that their movement is giving families options they would otherwise lack.
"I'm less concerned about the comparison of the racial composition of the charter schools to public schools generally, than I am in looking at whether charter schools are getting the job done in providing a viable, meaningful alternative to the regular public schools," said Brian W. Jones, vice chairman of the D.C. Public Charter School Board.
In the District, about 28,000 students attend charter schools; the school system has about 46,000 students. Recent data show that 84 percent of the city's charter school students are African American, compared with 78 percent in regular public schools.
Nationally, according to 2007-08 federal data that the study cited, black students account for 32 percent of charter school enrollment. That is roughly twice their share of enrollment in regular public schools.
The study also found that 70 percent of black charter students are in schools in which at least 90 percent of the student population is nonwhite, and 43 percent of black charter students are in schools with virtually all-minority enrollment. For black students in regular public schools, the comparable shares were 36 percent (in the high-minority enrollment schools) and 15 percent (in virtually all-minority schools).
The study recommended that federal and state governments push for racial diversification of charter schools.
"We actually are very proud of the fact that charter schools enroll more low-income kids and more kids of color than do other public schools," said Nelson Smith, president and chief executive of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, based in Washington. "We're happy to talk about those demographic issues. We're also happy to talk about how to increase diversity overall in all facets of public education. The real civil rights issue for many of these kids is being trapped in dysfunctional schools."
Study finds segregation in charter schools
LOS ANGELES, Feb. 5 (UPI) -- Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles said a study of segregation at schools nationwide found racial divisions exist in charter schools.
The UCLA study found compared with public schools, charter schools nationwide more commonly showed signs of de facto segregation, particularly in terms of black student enrollment, The San Francisco Chronicle said Friday.
Study results indicate nearly 75 percent of all African-American students who attend charter schools in the United States are in schools with student populations where minorities make up at least 90 percent.
UCLA Civil Rights Project researchers said study results indicate those numbers doubled the findings from regular public schools nationwide.
The Chronicle said the study found among those black charter school students, nearly a third attended schools where white students made up as little as 1 percent of the student population.
The researchers said such charter schools are "the very kind of schools that decades of civil rights struggles fought to abolish in the south."
Specific study details, including the margin of error, were not reported.
Google News:
Charter schools' growth promoting segregation, studies say
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A UCLA study is one of two finding that the increasingly popular campuses skew toward racially separate student bodies. Charter advocates criticize the ...
Study: Segregation rife at charter schools
San Francisco Chronicle - Jill Tucker
De facto segregation is alive and well in public schools in virtually every state, but is more common in charter schools - an educational option ...
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Indianapolis Public Schools Superintendent Eugene White argues that charter schools have an unfair edge over the traditional schools he manages. ...
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Democracy Now - 7 hours ago
In education news, a new study suggests charter school growth is increasing classroom segregation. According to UCLA's Civil Rights Project, ...
Charter schools segregated, UCLA report warns
89.3 KPCC - Feb 4, 2010
Public charter schools in the Southland and the rest of the country are increasingly segregated, UCLA researchers outline in a report released today. ...
New report: “Charter schools' political success is a civil rights failure”
The Progressive Pulse (blog) - Rob Schofield - Feb 4, 2010
Experts at the University of California, Los Angeles' Civil Rights Project (Proyecto Derechos Civil
The Sky Isn’t Falling—-Despite the Hype
Posted by Joe R. Hicks | LA Jewish Journal
Is the growth of the nation’s charter schools a throw-back to the racially segregated schools that once consigned the children of minority families to separate, but mostly unequal, educations? This is the alarming claim today of some civil rights advocates. But raising false alarms is mostly what the advocates of “social justice” do these days—-with or without facts.
Case in point is UCLA’s Civil Rights Project which argues that charter schools have increased segregation for black students. Nationally, 70% of black students attending charter schools are at schools where approximately 90% of the students are black. Researchers at the UCLA group say that in Los Angeles, a typical black student goes to a charter schools where three out of four students are black. Gary Orfield, the director of the UCLA advocacy group, argues this means we’re in a new era of “enforced segregation….a race to the past”
Not addressed by Orfield or his group is the reality that the LA public school district is only 9 percent white. Given this, how would he suggest we go about “desegregating” schools - without resorting to some version of the old, bankrupt notion of cross-town bussing and even then, you would need lots of mirrors to spread 9% of students among the other 91%?
The Superintendent of LA’s public school district bravely addressed the claim that LA’s charter schools are “segregated.” Ramon Cortinas (sic) said “If charter schools are doing the job for the student, and it is a better job … I’m not as concerned about racial isolation.” >>">>>>more|http://bit.ly/d8Fuoc>>>
smf: racial isolation / segregation /ghettoization / redlining / discrimination/ profiling – we should be ‘so concerned’ …all are antonyms for equity
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