ERIC Number: EJ910564
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2010
Pages: 5
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1539-9664
EISSN: N/A
A Closer Look at Charter Schools and Segregation: Flawed Comparisons Lead to Overstated Conclusions
Ritter, Gary; Jensen, Nathan; Kisida, Brian; McGee, Joshua
Education Next, v10 n3 p69-73 Sum 2010
In January 2010, the UCLA-based Civil Rights Project (CRP) released "Choice without Equity: Charter School Segregation and the Need for Civil Rights Standards." The study intended to report on, among other things, levels of racial segregation in charter schools across the United States. The authors use 2007-08 data from the U.S. Department of Education's Common Core of Data (CCD) to compare the racial composition of charter schools to that of traditional public schools at three different levels of aggregation: nationwide; within 40 states and the District of Columbia; and within 39 metropolitan areas with large enrollments of charter school students. Based on these comparisons, the authors conclude that charter schools experience severe levels of racial segregation compared to traditional public schools (TPS). In this article, the authors argue that their conclusions are overstated and they fail to acknowledge two significant truths. First, the majority of students in central cities, in both the public charter sector and in the traditional public sector, attend intensely segregated minority schools. Second, the fact that poor and minority students flee segregated traditional public schools for similarly segregated charters does not imply that charter school policy is imposing segregation upon these students. Here, the authors show that, when examined more appropriately, the data actually reveal small differences in the level of overall segregation between the charter school sector and the traditional public-school sector. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)
Descriptors: Charter Schools, Racial Segregation, School Segregation, Racial Composition, School Statistics, Data Interpretation, Social Justice, Public Schools, Disproportionate Representation, Comparative Analysis, Enrollment Trends, Achievement Gap
Hoover Institution. Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6010. Tel: 800-935-2882; Fax: 650-723-8626; e-mail: educationnext@hoover.stanford.edu; Web site: http://educationnext.org/journal/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Opinion Papers
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A