traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the country. Charter schools are often marketed as incubators of educational innovation, and they form a key feature of the Obama administration’s school reform agenda. But in some urban communities, they may be fueling
de facto
school segregation and undermining public education.
Original Sources: E. Frankenberg, G. Siegel-Hawley, and J. Wang, “Choice without Equity: Charter School Segregation and the Need for Civil Rights Standards,” Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles, University of California, Los Angeles, http://www.civil-rightsproject.ucla.edu/news/pressreleases/pressrelease20100204-report.html ; Danny Weil, “Obama and Duncan’s Education Policy: Like Bush’s, Only Worse,”
Counter Punch
, August 24, 2009, http://counterpunch.org/weil08242009.html ; Michelle Chen, “Equity and Access in Charter School Systems,”
Race Wire
, August 19, 2009, http://www.racewire.org/archives/2009/08/special_education_equity_and_a_1.html ; Paul Abowd, “Teacher Reformers Prepare for Battle Over Public Education,”
Labor Notes
, October 13, 2009, http://www.labornotes.org/node/2472 .
Update: While there has been some coverage on segregation in charterschools in independent sources, there has been very little coverage throughout the corporate media.
Newsweek
had an article regarding charter schools featured in their June 2010 magazine. The article starts by praising charter schools for comprising fifteen out of the top one hundred public high schools while the population of charter schools is only at 4 percent of all public schools. A study was conducted by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Educational Outcomes which found that “37 percent of charter schools produce academic results that are worse than public schools, while only 17 percent perform significantly better. Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, made a priority of opening new charters in the $4 billion Race to the Top competition for federal funding.” The
Newsweek
article suggests that there is a problem in the academic role of charter schools; however, it fails to address the additional problem of segregation in charter schools.
Unlike the corporate media, independent news sources did cover the issue of segregation rather than only addressing academic performance. As reported in the Washington, DC–based
US Fed News Service
in February 2011, Erica Frankenberg, the assistant professor of educational leadership in Penn State’s College of Education, found that “in 15 states, nearly 70 percent of the black students in charter schools are attending hyper segregated schools, which are defined as having at least a 90 percent minority population.” Likewise, the Civil Rights Project at UCLA shows that the majority of charter school students are either low-income or minority students. Frankenberg says, “Little state or federal direct action has been taken to change or correct racial isolation in charter schools despite numerous past reports by The Civil Rights Project and others highlighting this persistent and growing problem.”
Although many news sources have suggested this problem with charter schools, some dispute this conclusion despite statistics showing otherwise. An alternate opinion has been presented in
Times Union
in an article titled “Charter Schools Don’t Segregate.” Their main argument is that charter schools have appealed more to minority families who seek a better education for their children. Their subsequent conclusion is that charter schools may wrongly be characterized as “segregated … simply because minority head counts are a bit higher than for the school system as a whole.” People may hold differentopinions regarding why charter schools are segregated, but either way it is an important issue that was hardly covered by the corporate media even though charter schools and public schools have oft been a point of
de facto
school segregation and undermining public education.
Original Sources: E. Frankenberg, G. Siegel-Hawley, and J. Wang, “Choice without Equity: Charter School Segregation and the Need for Civil Rights Standards,” Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles, University of California, Los Angeles, http://www.civil-rightsproject.ucla.edu/news/pressreleases/pressrelease20100204-report.html ; Danny Weil, “Obama and Duncan’s Education Policy: Like Bush’s, Only Worse,”
Counter Punch
, August 24, 2009, http://counterpunch.org/weil08242009.html ; Michelle Chen, “Equity and Access in Charter School Systems,”
Race Wire
, August 19, 2009, http://www.racewire.org/archives/2009/08/special_education_equity_and_a_1.html ; Paul Abowd, “Teacher Reformers Prepare for Battle Over Public Education,”
Labor Notes
, October 13, 2009, http://www.labornotes.org/node/2472 .
Update: While there has been some coverage on segregation in charterschools in independent sources, there has been very little coverage throughout the corporate media.
Newsweek
had an article regarding charter schools featured in their June 2010 magazine. The article starts by praising charter schools for comprising fifteen out of the top one hundred public high schools while the population of charter schools is only at 4 percent of all public schools. A study was conducted by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Educational Outcomes which found that “37 percent of charter schools produce academic results that are worse than public schools, while only 17 percent perform significantly better. Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, made a priority of opening new charters in the $4 billion Race to the Top competition for federal funding.” The
Newsweek
article suggests that there is a problem in the academic role of charter schools; however, it fails to address the additional problem of segregation in charter schools.
Unlike the corporate media, independent news sources did cover the issue of segregation rather than only addressing academic performance. As reported in the Washington, DC–based
US Fed News Service
in February 2011, Erica Frankenberg, the assistant professor of educational leadership in Penn State’s College of Education, found that “in 15 states, nearly 70 percent of the black students in charter schools are attending hyper segregated schools, which are defined as having at least a 90 percent minority population.” Likewise, the Civil Rights Project at UCLA shows that the majority of charter school students are either low-income or minority students. Frankenberg says, “Little state or federal direct action has been taken to change or correct racial isolation in charter schools despite numerous past reports by The Civil Rights Project and others highlighting this persistent and growing problem.”
Although many news sources have suggested this problem with charter schools, some dispute this conclusion despite statistics showing otherwise. An alternate opinion has been presented in
Times Union
in an article titled “Charter Schools Don’t Segregate.” Their main argument is that charter schools have appealed more to minority families who seek a better education for their children. Their subsequent conclusion is that charter schools may wrongly be characterized as “segregated … simply because minority head counts are a bit higher than for the school system as a whole.” People may hold differentopinions regarding why charter schools are segregated, but either way it is an important issue that was hardly covered by the corporate media even though charter schools and public schools have oft been a point of
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