Charter schools split along racial lines

 

New study finds parents' choices accelerate re-segregation

Charter schools operated by corporations are “accelerating” resegregation of American schools by race, income and disabilities, according to a new study released last week and co-authored by Western Michigan University researchers.

“Charter schools aren’t doing it on purpose, but they are facilitating” white and black flight from public schools, said Gary Miron, WMU professor of educational leadership, research and technology, and lead researcher on study. “The issue is lack of diversity because families are self-selecting” charter academies with high concentrations of either white or minority students.

The new study, “Schools Without Diversity: Education Management Organizations, Charter Schools and the Demographic Stratification of the American School System,” looked at almost 1,000 charter schools across the country operated by educational-management companies.

The study was written by Miron, WMU research assistants Jessica Urschel and Elana Tornquist, and William Mathis of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The study showed that:

• Charter schools tended to be less diverse than the districts that send students to those schools. “Only one-fourth of the charter schools had a composition relatively similar to that of the sending district,” the report said.
• The charter schools in the study tend to serve either largely high-income or largely low-income populations. “Between 70 percent and 73 percent of the schools were in the extreme categories of the scale, depending on the comparison,” the report said.
• Most of the charters in the study enrolled substantially fewer special education children than their home districts, although a small number of charter schools focused almost exclusively on students with special needs.
• More than half of the charters enrolled far fewer English language learners than did their home districts. About one-third of the schools had an ELL population similar to their district.

Miron acknowledged that the segregation that is occurring is a result of parent choice. But he also said that charter schools tend to reinforce segregation through the marketing campaigns and policies. For instance, the schools operated by National Heritage Academies in Michigan, which includes Paramount in Kalamazoo, do not offer bus transportation and push parents to volunteer in the schools. As a result, NHA schools tend to have very few single parents and tend to draw white, middle-class families.

Miron said the findings of his study are particularly pertinent at a time when U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is aggressively pushing for more charter schools nationwide. Miron suggested that may be fueled by Duncan’s experience as superintendent of Chicago Public Schools. He added that Chicago has been unusually successful in holding charter school accountable and closing down underperforming academies.

“But here’s the real problem. Researchers, including myself, can poke holes and say that charter-school companies aren’t working, but we don’t have any better solutions for urban schools.”

The entire study is available online at http://epicpolicy.org/publication/schools-without-diversity.

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Source: Kalamazoo Gazette, 2.15.2010