Frankenberg, Erica, & Lee, Chungmei
Researchers: Chungmei LeeErica Frankenberg
University Affiliation: UCLA
Email: crp@ucla.edu
Research Question:
Whether or not charter schools offer a less segregated experience than the public schools to the increasing numbers of students they serve.
Published: 1
Journal Name or Institutional Affiliation: The Civil Rights Project
Journal Entry: July
Year: 2003
Findings:
- Charter schools are largely more segregated than public schools. Segregation is worse for African American than for Latino students, but is very high for both.
- Charter schools in most of these states enroll disproportionately high percentages of minority students resulting in students of all races being more likely to attend schools that, on average, have a higher percentage of minority students.
- In almost every state studied, the average Black charter school attends school with a higher percentage of Black students and a lower percentage of White students.
- Because of the disproportionately high enrollment of minority students in charter schools, White charter schools students go to school, on average, with more non-White students than Whites in non-charter public schools.
- The pattern for Latino segregation is mixed: on the whole, Latino charter school students are less segregated than their Black counterparts.
- Instead of creating schools of diversity, many charter schools are places of racial isolation, particularly for minority schools.
- There is little evidence of serious effort at the state level to ensure racial balance.
- In most of the sixteen states, Black and Latino charter school students are attending segregated minority schools at an even higher rate than those in the increasingly resegregating public schools.
- Conditions that may help address issues of racial isolation by creating a system that allows students to choose to attend charter schools on a equitable basis: full information, the provision of free transportation to all students, providing for an welcoming all groups, including students from all racial/ethnic groups, English Language Learners, and special education students; NO screening of children fro charter schools, both academic and otherwise.