Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project and professor at UCLA, submitted the following:

Why does describing a one-race institution or neighborhood as segregated arouse such fury from critics of the Civil Rights Project’s charter school report? Segregation is simply a description of the degree of isolation of one group from another or from several others—it is a fact and the term has been used that way for generations by researchers to describe conditions of housing, schooling, workplaces, etc. and it can be white segregation or any other group. We have used exactly the same terms for years in describing public schools with very few objections.

Resegregation, or intensification of the intensity of segregation, has been occurring in schools across the country now for two decades. In our research on this pattern in a variety of studies, including the books, Dismantling Desegregation and School Resegregation, we have found that officials living in the midst of, or even causing, the
resegregation process never call the newly segregated schools as “segregated.” No one wants to have it said that they created a new segregated school even when they set them up in a way that would almost inevitably be segregated and did nothing to counter that trend. When a school is set up in a segregated area, staffed and with a curriculum designed to serve only one group and no parent outreach or information or transportation are provided it is designed to be segregated. Critics want a word that takes away the consciousness of segregation and makes it sound like something harmless that just happened, or even something potentially positive. They like to use words like “community” or “choice” and they almost always suggest that they know how to make segregated schools equal to white or integrated schools.

We and a half century of research find that such equalization never happens on any large scale anywhere even if one considers only the most simple (test score) outcomes because highly segregated schools are almost segregated not only by race or ethnicity but also by concentrated poverty and sometimes by linguistic segregation. These schools are systematically different both in terms of some critical inputs, such as teacher quality and experience, level of peer group performance, graduation rates, etc. and outcomes when compared to well integrated schools. Segregation does not just have a connotation of inequality; it is usually deeply unequal. Calling it something else does not make it more equal but it does shift attention away from this basic structural issue. Our goal is to use a word that has a clear meaning that will provoke thought about the consequences. When I use the term “apartheid” school I am discussing schools that are within one percent of the kind of absolute segregation that South Africa’s apartheid laws and those of the seventeen states with de jure segregation produced. Prof. Douglass Massey and other leading demographers have used the term to describe much less extreme segregation. These schools are not the product of a law but they are just as isolated from the rest of the society and there are an astonishing number of them among charter schools.

The word choice is very often used, as it was during the almost totally segregated “freedom of choice” period in the South when the schools remained 99% segregated almost a decade after Brown, to suggest or imply that minority families prefer segregation or that when they chose to go to a segregated alternative that everything is fair, even if it is their only alternative to a school that they want to escape. Of course you can only chose among the options that are available. If all the options are segregated or if there are almost no options, there is no basis to assume that these are choices for segregation. These discussions are often loaded with the assumption that if families make such a choice, the school will be better and provide all they need. We know from decades of experiences in metro Boston and St. Louis and elsewhere that many families of color will voluntarily choose very long and difficult transportation if their children can have access to good middle class suburban schools and that those schools have transformative powers in their future lives. Survey data shows that only a tiny minority of families of color prefer a segregated school or neighborhood all of their own race. Millions of families have chosen magnets and other forms of choice within public systems, especially when there are strong options available. These results have been consistent for many years. We think that it does not help the charter argument to ignore these realities or to push for a policy that gives charters funds that are not available to other forms of choice options which are less segregated.

Many of the complaints of charter school supporters simply assume that charter schools are better, but this claim simply is not sustained by research, though there are some wonderful charter schools. This is a political claim and is often accompanied by an unfair description of public schools which implies that they are inferior because they are public. Often the discussion compares the best known charters to some of the worst regular public schools. This is a rhetorically effective but deceptive comparison. There are very excellent public and magnet schools and very weak charters out there.

I certainly do not say that charter school operators force segregation or that their plan is to create the much more segregated set of schools that exist. The claim of the Civil Rights Project report is different but very important. I do say, however, that planning for these schools often simply accepts the realities of neighborhood segregation, which is itself the product of historic and contemporary housing market discrimination.

The schools are highly segregated. It is important that this fact be faced. They are not systematically better and they rarely offer a “choice” that is equivalent to what most middle class suburban students get automatically. Some of them do an excellent job in imparting basic skills in very difficult circumstances and that should be praised. In some cases, however, it appears that the schools are drawing white students out of public schools in parts of the county with many students of color and not providing the free lunch that poor children would need to attend and there is evidence that some are not serving the poor, the ELL students and the special education children. The policies and oversight that could expand parent choices significantly in many instances are not in place. This must be corrected since charter schools receive public dollars and are subject to all civil rights laws.

Whenever there is bad news about civil rights there seems to a temptation to try to discredit the messenger. There are a number of messengers now and the evidence is strong and growing. Why don’t we stop calling names and asking that words be replaced by euphemisms and instead think about solutions? Why don’t we take the example of very good and diverse charters and try to expand their number? I strongly believe that good civil rights policies would produce stronger charter schools and more options for families.

Under the best of school choice plans there would still be a good deal of segregation in our largest metro areas, given the vast scope of housing segregation, but there are many places where we could produce schools that would be more effective in helping students of all races prepare to live and work effectively in a diverse society. We are not
proposing to shut down charters or to force students to attend other schools (though both have been claimed by those who have not read our report). But we do insist, based on the demographic trends we found in charter schools, that as public resources and pressure to create such schools increase that charters must also grow with strong equity policies and work to achieve diversity in the many places where it is feasible.

We do not believe that dealing with school segregation is a panacea for educational opportunity, though desegregation and seriously working toward equal status within diverse schools can provide major advantages to students and the society. Beyond that, there is so much to do, which is why we have worked so hard on reforming NCLB, on fighting discrimination in special education, discipline, and education of language minority children. It is why we have commissioned studies and held conferences around the country on the dropout crisis and produced five books on issues of college access and success. Once we get this problem of civil rights standards settled there are many common issues on which we would be very happy to work with charter school leaders.

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Are charter schools a Civil Rights failure?

Underlying this debate is whether anyone – except a few – actually care if schools are multi-racial or see it relevant these days or see any connection between the racial makeup of public schools and provision of educational equity and opportunity. The strong reaction from some to the Civil Rights Project report suggests that this is not only irrelevant to them but it is not even a question that ought to be asked in education policy today. Indeed, in the debate around charter schools in Ohio, the issue of racial makeup has rarely, if ever, surfaced in the public debates and fights about charter schools.

Sadly, it was within our generation that public schools intentionally created unequal systems of education for blacks and whites all the while maintaining that these systems may be “separate but equal.” So it should not be so far outside the norm that we need to ask and answer the questions about whether these new systems of schooling can and do lead to the same systems that the old ones led to by segregating students even more and then also providing inferior educational opportunities to African-Americans, other people of color, or the disadvantaged.

I would argue that far from criticizing the notion of charters, the authors of the study seem to saying that charters have a great potential to be one of those equalizers – like magnet schools are and were – because they are not typically bound by district boundaries and neighborhoods that are often segregated. Charters can draw students from a wide area, as long as transportation issues are addressed, and this could tend to blunt the effects of the 1974 Milliken v. Bradley decision that kept desegregation remedies within single district boundaries even though evidence suggests that those boundaries have also contributed to segregation.

But the authors of the study find a disturbing trend toward more segregation in the practice of charters and offer thoughtful policy recommendations that would merely push this important public policy question to the front of the debates and compel charters to pay attention to student enrollment demographics. Those recommendations center on making sure information about charter enrollment and processes to enroll don’t exclude certain racial groups and that transportation is not left to those who have the means to provide it for themselves.

Those whose arguments rest on a foundation that the segregation question is irrelevant today might benefit from reading the history on segregation that still leaves us with inequality in opportunity and in results for all students.

Finally, I found it interesting that another UCLA report, this brief from the Center for Mental Health in Schools, finds that arguing about charters vs. “traditional” schools masks the failure of school improvement policy and practice to enhance equity of opportunity. The brief then examines what type of policy shift is needed to stimulate development of a comprehensive, cohesive and coherent system to replace the prevailing piecemeal and marginalized approach to student and learning supports.

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For all the noise this week, I don’t see anyone arguing with the central finding of this report, which is that charter schools are not integrated. If you believe that quality education is a more important American value than integration, fine, but charter or otherwise, wouldn’t it be even better to argue in favor of high-quality, fully integrated schools?

And what if the segregation is not only the re-segregation of blacks for the sake of a supposedly better education, but also the exclusion of high-need children who are denied a seat for reasons more malign? The Civil Rights Project points out two disturbing trends: the phenomenon of white-flight charters in the South and the absence of Latinos in the charters of the Southwest. Where is the outcry from all the civil rights enthusiasts on this blog, as they stump away for charters?

I ask this because a recent study from my own organization found that in NYC the charter movement has given rise to a system that is separating students along class lines and by the level of their academic need. Charters in New York City serve far fewer ELL’s and far fewer students in severe poverty (free lunch status, rather than reduced) than the publics schools. Free-lunch status is at 87% in the South Bronx public schools, for example, but 61.6% in the charters. ELL populations are virtually non-existent in the Harlem and North-Central Brooklyn charters, even though these students average over 10% of the students in the public schools in the same area. Similarly alarming statistics on ELL’s hold for the South Bronx.

The UFT report also points out the disparity in special education rates (16.5% vs. 9.5%) but that number does not begin to tell the story because the charters are not required to release data on the percent of their special education students who require self-contained classes. Self-contained students require intensive academic, social, and/or emotional support in order to succeed. These kids face significantly more challenges than special education students who are placed in general education classes and need only a speech therapist, say, or moderate additional teacher support. Based on anecdotal evidence, I suspect that self-contained students are virtually never accepted at charter schools. Their denial of a seat is troubling given that these charters are public schools.

The charters will have their own justifications for the new segregation emerging in America’s schools, and we have heard some of them here in the past week. However, it seems worth adding that given the differences in populations, it is very difficult to say anything much about differences in the quality of education. As I found recently in New York, much-ballyhooed measurements of school quality are often little more than a measurement of the buried demographic of students in self-contained special education classes. (see here, here, here, here and here, for example).

The UFT report offers six recommendations for…. I list them here:

• Reform the Process for Student Admissions
• Reform the Charter Funding Formula, Process and Allowable Expenses
• Require Greater Transparency and Public Accountability
• Promote System-wide Equity and Collaboration

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Mike Petrilli at the Fordham Foundation had a back-and-forth with Gary Orfield, head of the UCLA Civil Rights Project. Petrilli writes that he thinks they uncovered some common ground.

Read the exchange here">http://www.edexcellence.net/flypaper/index.php/2010/02/gary-orfield-responds-to-his-critics/">here.

On one hand, you’ve got to throw up your hands and laugh. Well, it’s some Ivory Tower professor trying to relive the 60s (idealism) and the 70s (busing), and what does he know? I read up on the study’s author, Gary Orfield, and it was noted in all his bios that he was formerly of “Harvard University.” That got me thinking. I would like to see a study of why there are not more former Harvard professors in more state universities. Think about it. At Harvard, you have all those Harvard professors and none or too few at other schools – especially state-run universities. Why should Harvard have all the Harvard professors? Shouldn’t more universities do research with former Harvard professors? Would the dreadful quality of research go up or stay the same? I don’t know.

Cough. Hem. Cough. Sorry I know the paragraph above is a transparent attempt to audition for Andy Rooney’s gig – should Andy ever decide to call it quits and hang up the old typewriter.

The Civil Rights Project’s study is just—in the words of Andy Rooney—“stupid–it’s an embarrassment really.” But it could be dangerous. Congress reads this stuff sometimes, gets all excited and writes a law. That’s the real danger here. Congress might write a law, or Sacramento might, or Denver or Trenton or Albany or take your pick. The mischief that might be caused by a professor in his Ivory Tower trying to take opportunities away from African-American students because charter schools don’t fit his world view should not be underestimated.

I shared the study and its findings with the parents at some of my schools – 84% of ICEF’s students are African-American – and they were incensed.

“Who is this man [Orfield] that is making decisions about where I can send my child to school?” - Debra Price

“Finally, I have found a school that will prepare my baby to go to college and he wants to take it away? No. No. We got to organize.” - Monique Bacon

“I have to say, this study is infuriating and the whole thing is a waste of time, money and energy. It makes UCLA look really out of touch.” - Corri Tate Ravare.

And my own personal favorite is from parent Rena Taylor: “This study is from UCLA? What? They have like three black students in the whole university, out of what, 40,000 kids? He should fix his own school before he tries fixing everybody else’s.”

UCLA has its own problems, and I don’t find it coincidental that this study emanates from this university. Los Angeles is the epicenter of the charter school movement with more than 60,000 students in charter schools and 160 charters – more charter students and schools than in any other city in America. The L.A. Times recently ran a story with the headline “An Unplanned Revolution in LA’s Public Schools” splashed across the front page. Their special report concluded, based on state test scores that, “Los Angeles charter students score significantly higher on standardized tests than their counterparts in traditional schools.”

The article in the Times noted what we all already know, that parents in Los Angeles are now convinced by their own experiences that charter schools are better than traditional schools:

“This last idea is driving desperate parents to charters in droves, people such as Katrina Calvert of Compton, who yanked her daughter out of their neighborhood school and took her to (ICEF’s) Fernando Pullum Performing Arts High School, a new charter in the South Park neighborhood of South LA. ‘Thank God we’re here!’ she declared. ‘It’s a breath of fresh air compared to where we came from.’”

The Times also reported on January 10 that “Charters and magnets do especially well with African-American students, who on average are the district’s lowest achievers.” Gary Orfield and his supporters want to trap our kids in a system (he suggests in his study that a cap be placed on charter school operators who have too many African-Americans) that is not working for them because he thinks they should go to school with white kids? Normally, you could excuse someone for not knowing what they are talking about, but in Orfield’s case he lives in Los Angeles and it is kind of difficult to imagine he doesn’t know that only 9 percent of the public school students in Los Angeles are white.

Instead of trying to ban charter schools that are delivering an excellent education to low income and minority students, why doesn’t he propose shutting down private schools? Private schools are mostly white (well over 60%), incredibly expensive (some as much as $30,000 a year), very selective (it’s harder to get into Marlborough than into Yale), very, very successful at getting every student into college (100%) and prepared to compete when they get there (over 75% graduate from college). That would be radical! Ban the private schools. Instead, this researcher wants to ban charter schools or “fix” us with legislation.

Here’s a news flash: ICEF Public Schools are mostly Black (over 85%), incredibly free (as in $0.00), all are welcome (admission is by lottery if there is a waiting list) and yet very, very successful at getting every student into college (100%) and prepared to compete once they get there (91% are still in college three years after our first graduating class at ICEF).

I’ll finish with letting Nicole Scott, ICEF’s VP of Human Resources, have the last word. Nicole was a lawyer in her past life—the last lawyer hired and trained by the great Johnnie Cochran. Nicole, who is African-American, asks, “So Orfield is asking the charter school movement to resolve an issue that not even the U.S. Supreme Court has been able to fix 55 years after the monumental Brown decision. The bottom line is that African-American communities don’t need “black schools” or “white schools”; we need great schools. In a perfect world, fully integrated schools would be ideal, but America can’t seem to figure out the diversity puzzle for education. In the meantime, charter schools are providing families living in inner cities with an advantage that wealthy families have always had – real options and real access to quality education.”

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Updated at 8:39 p.m. on Feb. 11.

Erica Frankenberg and Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, co-authors of the study at hand, submitted the following:

Last week, the Civil Rights Project released “Choice without Equity: Charter School Segregation and the Need for Civil Rights Standards.” Reports by the Civil Rights Project and others have long documented the rise of segregation in our nation’s public schools, by race and class. This report documents persistent and severe racial isolation for charter school students across the nation. We find particularly high levels of segregation for black students, a full 70% of whom attend intensely segregated charter schools where 90-100% of students are from minority backgrounds. This figure is nearly twice the rate of black student enrollment in intensely segregated regular public schools. We also found pockets of white isolation in charter schools in the West and in some parts of the South – the two most racially diverse regions of the country.

Beyond racial segregation, our analysis of federal data revealed gaping holes in charter school enrollment information for low income students and English Language Learners. California, for example, reports just seven ELLs enrolled in state charter schools. We also find that a sizeable share of charter schools across the nation show no evidence of offering subsidized lunches. Due to the lack of comprehensive data, it is impossible to know whether and how charter schools are serving these traditionally vulnerable groups of students.

We published “Choice without Equity” amidst an intensifying federal policy push promoting charter schools. Billions of dollars are at stake if states agree to expand the charter sector. In a time of fiscal crisis, many state governments are responding to the Administration’s incentives.

Ironically, heightened support for charters has occurred absent any real consensus in the educational research community regarding charter school outcomes. Research uncovers a mixed record, at best, of student achievement in charters, and a troubling lack of information about graduation and attrition rates. In fact, much of what we do know calls the federal policy focus on charter schools into serious question.

Charter schools encompass a wide variety of schools, and aggregate analyses of data like our report cannot possibly represent the reality of every charter school. Further, despite headlines to the contrary, we did not call for the end of charter schools, merely sought to understand whether they stratify students and suggest research-based recommendations for how these trends might be ameliorated. Charter schools and choice will continue to expand; we have the opportunity now to make sure this stratification doesn’t intensify already increasing public school segregation.

Reactions to our report, particularly in the blogosphere, have been varied, with a number of charter school advocates weighing in. We feel that many of the responses overlook key findings embedded in our study and mischaracterize some of the central issues and questions about charter schools that “Choice without Equity” sought to examine. Further, segregation is not just an issue for charter schools—diversity should be a high priority for all schools as we seek to educate students and prepare them to be productive citizens and workers.

Implicit in the attacks are a number of assumptions that simply aren’t true. We believe that a closer look at our report dispels many – if not all – of these presumptions. We do not seek to limit choices for parents, we desire the very opposite: for all families to have a real, meaningful choice—and the ability to take advantage of such choices—to send their children to schools that offer pathways to opportunity. Such schools contain a high quality, stable teacher force, adequate and sustainable funding levels, a variety of courses, exciting curriculum, high college going numbers and low drop-out rates. Not an exhaustive list, but certainly a reasonable one. Importantly, it contains characteristics that numerous social science studies show are more likely to be found in diverse schools. Countless public opinion polls also demonstrate that parents of all races value integrated schools, and local district leaders - and the Supreme Court - have endorsed the importance of diverse schools for students. A careful review of research on student outcomes in charter schools found that charters do not systemically perform better than other schools. Many actually perform worse.

A significant finding that has largely been overlooked in the discussion of our report is that a number of charter schools are places of white segregation, complicating the portrayal painted by some leaders of the charter community. Charter schools, as part of the larger universe of public schools, should not be exempt from civil rights oversight and requirements—and, indeed, our report calls for stronger guidance from federal and state governments.

We are not alone in finding these patterns of concern. We have posted on the Civil Rights Project website quotes regarding charter schools and equity issues from a number of scholars and advocates in response to our report (http://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/). We are eager to engage in a constructive conversation about charter schools and equity for all students with those who have read this report, and to help states and the federal government think about guidelines for protecting students’ civil rights as charter schools continue to grow.

Further, two other important and timely research projects support our analysis. In a study released this week, researchers at EPIC/EPRU reveal very similar findings regarding segregation in charter schools. The studies corroborate one another, and each adds important elements of understanding to the overwhelming trend of charter segregation. Segregation (by race, SES and language) exists across the charter sector, in both regular charter schools and within networks and organizations of charter schools. The EPIC/EPRU study also looked at the enrollment of students in Special Education and found that charters were seriously under-enrolling those students. Another study, from the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota, analyzed charter school enrollment and achievement in the Twin Cities, where charter schools were first pioneered in 1991. Researchers found that charter schools offered an inferior choice to parents, further segregating students and producing, on average, lower test scores than regular public schools.

The facts: charter school students experience well-documented and continuing patterns of racial and socioeconomic isolation. There is a serious lack of data on access for low income and ELL students, very little information on charter graduation and attrition rates, and an extremely mixed portrait of student achievement in charters. We stand firmly behind our conclusion that the federal policy push to expand this sector should immediately put in place appropriate civil rights safeguards. We must seek to create diverse charter and traditional public schools where possible. Otherwise, we run the risk of facilitating the expansion of what may be a second class system of schools for poor and minority students, and, in some places, an exit option from diversifying regular public schools for white students.

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My guess is that if you approach an African-American or Hispanic parent whose child attends a high-quality Los Angeles public charter school like an Alliance for College Ready School or an Aspire Public School and ask them to list the top civil rights barriers their child faces, their charter school would not be on that list.

No, high-performing public charter schools in urban centers stand in diametrical opposition to the real “civil rights” failures American communities have struggled with for centuries.

What matters in public schools today is whether students of all colors, particularly poor and minority students, have equal access to a quality education. In far too many inner city public schools – traditional schools, and some low-performing charters – the answer is a resounding “no,” and that’s where we should turn our attention. But to attack charters as, of all things, “a civil rights failure,” is baseless.

It is a laudable goal – and a deeply embedded American value – that every child should have equal access to a quality education. Our country has far more work to do before our schools are truly integrated. Strategies from busing to weighted distribution formulas have been tried. Many have been criticized; none are yet perfect.

But let’s not lose sight of the fact that few other public education reform efforts in decades has done more to restore civil rights for traditionally disadvantaged minorities than high-quality public charter schools. Ask one of the many Green Dot high school graduates in Los Angeles who now has a college diploma and a successful career. You’ll likely find that they’ll credit the very type of school this report would have us abandon for their success.

Under federal and state law, charter schools must use random lotteries if more students apply than can be admitted. If the result is that students of any color are disproportionately represented relative to the surrounding community, this may be a function of the color of the parents that came forward. If anything, charters need to make sure that they are doing adequate outreach to empower parents of all races – in their own language – to enter their child into that lottery.

But it becomes ironic when we start using “segregation” – the basis for arguing that some are being denied equitable educational options – to malign schools that in many cases are the reason why traditionally disadvantaged students, who have fled from failing traditional public schools, finally now receive their “civil right” -- the education they deserve.

Something doesn’t add up.

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Kevin Welner, professor and director of the Education and the Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, submitted the following:

So let me get this straight. The collective response of charter school supporters to powerful evidence that charters are even more segregated than conventional public schools is not to say, “This is a problem that those of us within the charter community should promptly address.” It wasn’t even, “Wow, if this is true, it’s something we should seriously address, but we should study it further.”

Instead, the response is to attack Gary Orfield for saying that separate by equal is no more acceptable today than it was 50 or 100 years ago. The response is also to say that families of color should be able to choose segregated schools. And, of course, the response is the usual argument that school excellence is more important than school diversity.

Before addressing these assertions, I want to point out that CU-Boulder’s policy center, along with its partner policy center at ASU (collectively, EPIC/EPRU) today released a study that, coincidentally, asks some of the same questions as did the UCLA study. Our study provides a comprehensive examination of enrollment patterns in schools operated by private corporations and finds these schools to be segregated by race, family income, disabilities, and English language learner status. As compared with their local public school districts, these schools operated by Education Management Organizations, or EMOs, are substantially more segregated, and the strong segregative pattern found in 2001 is virtually unchanged through 2007.

This new study, Schools without Diversity: Education Management Organizations, Charter Schools, and the Demographic Stratification of the American School System, is written by Gary Miron, Jessica Urschel, and Elana Tornquist of Western Michigan University, and William Mathis of the University of Colorado at Boulder. This new report is on the web at

http://epicpolicy.org/publication/schools-without-diversity

The fact that our conclusions are remarkably similar to the UCLA study is particularly noteworthy. The two studies, conducted independently using different data, different researchers, and different methods, both found extensive segregation in charter schools. This type of independent verification is extraordinarily important as it establishes that the findings are robust – are not just the result of one particular way of looking at the data. Together, these two new studies paint a powerful picture of charters adding to the school segregation caused by the nation’s highly segregated neighborhoods.

The EMO study is particularly important because the Obama administration has placed a great deal of faith in the scaling up of nonprofit EMOs (sometimes called Charter Management Organizations, or CMOs) as part of the administration’s turnaround strategy. The findings of this new study suggest that these policies have the very real potential to be harmful to the nation’s social and educational interests.

So what do these studies tell us, and what is the appropriate policy response? Contrary to the various assertions made by others here, pointing out segregation is in no way condemning the schools, teachers, or students at those segregated schools. Individually, these can be great schools. What these studies highlight is a policy shift away from the Brown v. Board understanding and ambition. As Gary Orfield pointed out, prompting this near-universal hand-wringing, we’ve moved from “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” back to a version of Plessy’s “separate but equal,” generally stated as something like, “segregation doesn’t matter; what matters is that we hold every school accountable for excellence.”

While high-quality segregated schools – whether charters or not – deserve praise for their excellent academic outcomes, I am troubled by the abandonment of the diversity goal. Why, in reading the responses to the UCLA study, do I see so many people buying into a false dichotomy between excellence and diversity? We should approach charter schools with the foundational understanding that diversity and high achievement are mutually reinforcing and then structure our charter policies accordingly. Yes, there are no guarantees of better outcomes with integrated schools, but on average they have improved outcomes in a variety of areas, including academic achievement. Please see this National Academy of Education report that I co-edited with Bob Linn: http://www.naeducation.org/Meredith_Report.pdf

Both the EPIC/EPRU study and the UCLA study show racial stratification in both directions. That is, we’re seeing both “White flight” and “minority flight”. Several comments I’ve seen therefore conclude that we’re attacking Latino and African American students for choosing non-diverse schools. Speaking for myself, I would never condemn a parent for making such a choice. If a parent perceives his or her best schooling option to be a segregated school, I would certainly hope that the segregation isn’t the reason for that conclusion. But ultimately I’m not in a position to question any given parent’s choice. I should note that surveys consistently show that parents of all races state a preference for integrated schools, all else being equal. So what I do question are state policies that fail to create incentives for schools, including charter schools, to have that diversity.

Finally, let’s consider the argument that school excellence is more important than school diversity. The reality is that charter schools as a whole do not appear to generate improved test scores. So, looking at these two new studies, it seems that we are getting the harms of segregation without any significant achievement benefits. Yet charters and choice are here to stay, so the questions we should be asking concern how to best structure choice policies to further both goals – diversity and excellence. The UCLA Civil Rights Project offers several recommendations for restoring equity provisions and integration in charter schools, including establishing new guidance and reporting requirements by the federal government; incorporating some features of magnet schools into charter schools; heightened enforcement of existing state-level legislation with specific provisions regarding diversity in charter schools; and monitoring patterns of charter school enrollment and attrition, focusing particularly on reporting the demographic information of charter school students on low-income and ELL characteristics. Do the other commentators here disagree with these? If so, why?

Ultimately, I hope those who criticized the UCLA report and who might be tempted to criticize the new EPIC/EPRU report take a step back and consider the long-term benefits to the charter movement if it embraces reforms designed to create greater school-level diversity. Yes, these reports do raise serious concerns about the current situation, but they aren’t calling for charters to be abandoned. They are calling for meaningful reflection and change so that these schools can help move the country toward its ideals.

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Mike Petrilli over at the Fordham Foundation muses over the two sides to 'elitism' behind the discussion about this report:

In the brouhaha over last week’s UCLA Civil Rights Project report on charter school “segregation,” one talking point seems unimpeachable: that it’s paternalistic or worse for Gary Orfield and his team at UCLA to want to keep minority parents from choosing their preferred schools because they serve “too many” black or brown children

to see the full comment, go here

As a member of the board of both the KIPP Foundation and the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, I am a strong proponent of charter schools for their potential to give low-income kids of color a good education. And precisely because I am a strong advocate of charter schools and want them to serve their students and communities as effectively as possible—to give their students the rigorous academic education they may not be getting from public school systems--I welcome a robust dialogue about whether they’re achieving their objective. We see the CRP report as part of that dialogue.

As president and CEO of UNCF, I also believe that students can get a good education in a variety of settings. We award 10,000 scholarships each year to students who take them to more than 900 colleges and universities, including select private colleges and flagship state universities. And 55,000 students each year attend our 39 member historically black colleges and universities—which are open to all races and ethnicities and have growing representations of Hispanic American and Asian American students, but whose student bodies are predominantly African American. Both these models, highly heterogeneous and homogeneous student bodies, can cite examples of high-achieving students who have entered as freshman and graduated as degree recipients.

Which is why I think we need to be careful about making overbroad generalizations about exactly what kind of enrollment demographic distribution is most conducive to student achievement. I am not sure that the authors of the report to which we are responding have been as careful as they might have been in that regard, and have thus, perhaps inadvertently, brought on themselves a good deal of the strong reactions from those who have previously posted.

In particular, their use of terms like “segregation” and “apartheid” seems designed more to generate heat than to shed light. These are terms associated with forced separation of the races.

But students who attend charter school are there voluntarily, because they and their families felt that the charters they chose offered them a better option for the education they need so they can attend and graduate from college. In fact, it is exactly the failure of many public schools to give minority and low-income children a good education that created the educational niche that charter schools occupy. So we shouldn't be surprised that charter schools have had their strongest appeal in minority communities, or that the families who have responded to their call have come predominantly from those communities.

We would all prefer that all students could learn in richly diverse environments. But we reject what seems to be the implication of the CRP study that schools with students who come predominantly from minority populations cannot offer the rigorous education that students deserve. KIPP, MATCH, YES Prep and other charter networks operate on principles of high expectations and rigorous academics, and they are intentionally located in districts that are populated predominantly by people of color.

The success of charters, as of any kind of school or any institution, also requires rigorous accountability. Just as there are more and less effective conventional public schools, there are more and less effective charters. Low-performing charters need to be held accountable, their deficiencies cured or their charters terminated. There needs to be an appropriately critical lens applied to the charter movement to ensure all schools meet the standards they claim to embrace.

If there are structural barriers that limit choice and serve as impediments to full and free choice, they should be addressed. The authors of the CRP study, for example, cite lack of free transportation to charter schools as a barrier that can serve as a disincentive to students who do not live near the charter they wish to attend, especially younger children and children in communities without adequate public transportation. The freedom granted to charter schools cannot serve as a license for exclusion or separation.

But let us not forget the central objective of charter schools: to give students the strong academic education now denied not only to students of color but to all too many students from majority-population communities. Charter schools that fall short should be held accountable, both by their authorizing authorities and by families who vote with their feet. But charter schools that succeed will draw students both from their immediate neighborhoods and from surrounding communities. With this geographic diversity will come racial and ethnic diversity.

We look forward to the day that the old and discredited paradigm of desegregation, forcing minority children to leave their neighborhoods for schools in majority areas, will be reversed, drawing diverse student cohorts to city-based charter schools whose records of achievement become engines of diversity. Charter schools are an important innovation in education that should be supported and not undermined.

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In his response, Gary Orfield both demands a "higher and more civil form of discussion" and then, at the same time, charges his opponents with clinging "to the central premises of the shameful Plessy decision." Hmmm. That sounds civil.

He essentially accuses his opponents of passively accepting the awful and illegal ways of "separate but equal," by cynically behaving as if "nothing can be done about it anyway because of white resistance."

So, I'm wondering what charter schools could do proactively to avoid being the "civil rights failure" Orfield deems them to be.

Eureka! I figured it out!

Here's the plan each charter school should put in place immediately: close down all new slots this year to African American applicants and open them only to white applicants. Tell the African American moms who call, disappointed that their children will now be forced to less desirable education opportunities, that, having "clung to Plessy" in the past, the charter is trying to make amends by admitting whites only for the foreseeable future!

Gary Orfield says: "One of the missing facts is that I am not the author of the report. I believe that I have been chosen because the critics believe I am a better, more visible, target for a personal attack."

I can't speak for anyone else, but I directed my criticisms at Orfield because he's the one who irresponsibly used terms like "apartheid schools" and "civil rights failures" in the foreword to the report, which he wrote. It wouldn't have occurred to me to ascribe those words to the authors, just as I wouldn't blame anyone else for the incredible assertion that I'm among "those who have implicitly or explicitly clung to the central premises of the shameful Plessy decision." Those are Orfield's words and (I hope) his alone.

Accusations of ad hominum argumentation are, of course, just another way of avoiding the issues at hand. It's telling that Orfield spends most of his space trying to establish ever-more-extreme analogies--apparently, people who disagree with him not only support Jim Crow but are against health care reform to boot--without addressing the basic observation that defining equity exclusively in terms of racial integration distorts the complex question of educational opportunity beyond recognition.

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Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project and professor at UCLA, submitted the following in response to this week's question:

When you are in a debate if you have the facts, you use the facts, if you have the law, you use the law, if you have the logic, you use that, if you have none of these you use the lowest forms of argument—systematic distortion of the argument you are attacking and ad hominum personal attacks on those on the other side. In civil rights research this lowest form of argument is all too common.

The Civil Rights Project is, of course, used to being attacked in its several hundred studies of many forms of racial inequality and unequal opportunity. In fact, virtually every good proposal for civil rights change in the last several generations has been attacked as irrational, impossible, illegal, or unnecessary. Ever since the Supreme Court’s Brown decision there have been those who have implicitly or explicitly clung to the central premises of the shameful Plessy decision that led to passive acceptance of deep institutionalization of segregation for six decades –the premises that separate but equal works in American society and that nothing can be done about it anyway because of white resistance.

Our report is full of facts, taken from our analysis of the official data submitted by schools and state governments, it is based on our analysis of the law that applies equally to all schools receiving public funds, and in addition to a much more complex discussion of the segregation issue it focuses on four other basic issues that the critics have chosen not to discuss. Do they think that there should be white flight schools, that the schools should not report free lunch and ELL data, that underenrollment of Latino students in California and elsewhere is not a problem or that it is fair to privilege charters over magnets and other forms of choice? One of the missing facts is that I am not the author of the report. I believe that I have been chosen because the critics believe I am a better, more visible, target for a personal attack.

What we’re facing in this reaction is the kind of political attack that was used against President Obama in the “kitchen sink” strategy, against Linda Darling Hammond in the campaign to avoid progressive leadership of the Education Department, and in the attack on the current health bill. We have no intention to let our work be distorted and smeared in this way and would be happy to engage in vigorous discussion of the facts, the law, and the better possibilities of our schools, including the models of some excellent charter schools. First, we hope readers will actually read the report at civilrightsproject.ucla.edu.

They should also be aware of a recent report on the Twin Cities, where charter schools were born, from the Univ. of Minnesota Law School and a new report from centers at the Univ. of Colorado and Arizona State Univ., which were done by independent scholars, each using different data and methods but reaching similar conclusions. These are issues that will not go away and we will be very happy to discuss them in great detail. Lets engage in a higher and more civil form of discussion of important issues.

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Justin Cohen, Sandy Kress, Kevin Carey, and Tom Vander Ark have pretty much wrapped this one up. I particularly appreciated Mr. Cohen’s “Means vs. Ends” distinction. There’s a helpful rubric there for the types of discussions that further future progress and the types that keep us mired in the past. None of us is above the occasional resort to ideology. But, in this forum especially, we should be aware of how limiting ideological discussions can be, and how easy it is for ideology to trump reality when any of us sticks too closely to the same old script.

As someone who went to school in a big city school district during the era of desegregation, I can appreciate the concerns stated in the report. But it’s hard to see them as civil rights issues. Brown v. Board of Education said unequivocally that “separate but equal”, while possible in theory, was never achieved in practice. Equity was the ruling; desegregation the most logical remedy, but not the only one. I don’t see anything in charter schools that renders them inherently inequitable, though I suppose abuses of all kinds exist to some extent in all aspects of education.

I think the question here is one of basic values: Do we value integrated schools? Quality schools? or Both? And while I don’t pretend to speak for any group beyond my own tiny organization, we have always worked for quality over all else. Often this has meant serving highly segregated schools. When we worked in Arizona, almost all the kids were Hispanic. When we worked in South Carolina, almost all the kids were black. When we worked in Michigan, almost all the kids were white. But each of these groups was bound together by the same thread of lost educational opportunity. We do our best to spin that thread into gold. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But race, ethnicity, and socio-economics have never changed how hard we try or what we do whether we’re working in Allendale, SC or Grosse Point, MI.

This does not mean I am insensitive to statistical realities or historical truths, or that I don’t believe that kids of poverty and of color get a raw deal in many places. But I don’t think they get a raw deal just because of their color or lack of means. For example, in my home district, we have what I believe to be the largest achievement gap in the United States. But the issue is not as black and white as it seems. Here, the issue runs along “have” and “have-not” lines, which often coincide with color lines, but even then there are plenty of exceptions. Recently, I have begun arguing in our local paper for a commitment to send all of our kids to college by 2020. This would not be hard since most of our kids go to college already and because we serve a relatively small population of children of poverty. But my rallying cry has been met with silence from all sides—no one from the local NAACP chapter has contacted me or commented on my articles, nor has any local civic leader or member of our school board.

If we had a true civil rights issue here in our happy little version of Stepford, it would certainly make my job easier. But it’s pretty obvious that we don’t because no one—other than one middle class white guy (that would be me)—is raising this issue in a substantive and constructive way. So if we have the largest achievement gap in the country but we don’t have a civil rights issue, what do we have?

I’d say we have mostly apathy on all sides compounded by equal measures of misdirected anger and debilitating confusion. My recent foray into the public sphere has shown me that there is no constructive constituency interested in addressing the problems of educational opportunity that exist in our community. Even though everyone agrees that such problems exist, few seem committed to doing much about it.

But I’ll bet a few charter schools would make a difference.

I’ve been chatting recently with a friend who teaches at Yes Prep, a charter secondary school in Houston. My friend tells me that most of their kids are poor and minority, and that all of them will go to college. So here’s a charter, highly segregated, doing what most integrated schools cannot. Doesn’t seem like a bad deal to me. And I don’t suppose it seems like a bad deal to Yes Prep’s students and parents either—even though I’m sure they’re all aware that they attend a heavily segregated school.

Virtually all charters I’ve worked with have been heavily segregated. Recently, I worked with a charter school where, as far as I could tell, every student was black. Neither I nor the school’s principal thought the school was anywhere near perfect. But their test scores run 20-30 points higher than just about any cohort of black kids in just about any school in our state. By contrast, the all-white charter school I worked with a few years back, lags state averages by 10 points or so. So where’s the civil right and where’s the civil wrong? Would exchanging half the black kids in School A for half the white kids in School B make any difference? In diversity, of course. In achievement, I doubt it.

With regard to the effect of charter schools on diversity and achievement, the forward of The Civil Rights Project’s study states:

“We know that choice programs can either offer quality educational options with racially
and economically diverse schooling to children who otherwise have few opportunities, or choice programs can actually increase stratification and inequality depending on how they are designed.”

But there is something else we also know: that choice programs can offer poor educational options to racially and economically diverse populations and to segregated populations as well. So is the issue diversity or quality? Or must we have both in order to fulfill our civil rights aspirations?

My hunch is that most people want quality and that the rest are struggling too much to meet the challenges of their daily lives to put much energy into thinking about the issue. Their struggle is not to be taken lightly. If, for whatever reason, they neglect to participate in choice programs because they simply neglect to choose, it is not with scorn that we should meet them, but with support that increases their participation. This effort alone might alleviate some of the concerns people have about excessively segregated charter schools, the composition of which is often determined by lottery.

But since most of the charter schools I know of are heavily segregated, and because I see no evidence of overt prejudice in their classrooms, hallways, and playgrounds, I’m left to conclude that segregation by choice is exactly what most people want whether they find themselves in the majority or the minority. As long as the schooling kids receive is of high quality, I see no lack of equity even where there is a lack of diversity.

This laissez faire solution doesn’t help much here at home in my own personal struggle to get my local district to address its shortcomings. But you know what would? Two K-8 charters and one charter high school. With this, I believe we could send a significantly higher percentage of our poor and minority students to college. And since virtually no middle or upper middle class white family would remove its children from the public schools that already serve them so well, my hunch is that we’d have three heavily segregated charters on our hands. But this bothers me far less than the statistical reality that about 20% of our kids are currently consigned to academic failure every year—in a far more diverse system than the one three new charters might create.

Some people have said that “Education is the civil rights issue of our time.” I confess to loving the sound of this statement, but I’m not sure what it means. Nor have I found anyone yet who can articulate its meaning with crystal clarity. This doesn’t make the statement any less true or any less important, nor does it make me aspire to its implied goal with any less fervor. But the fact that it is so hard to define, when previous civil rights like the right to vote or the right to public accommodations were so clear, suggests to me that as a nation we may be arguing over something we don’t understand, and by doing so, creating ancillary arguments of no practical consequence like the one we’re discussing here about charter schools, school choice, segregation, and civil rights.

For better or worse, the language of the Civil Rights Movement no longer seems to carry the moral weight it once did. I’m not sure why this is so. After all, our society is still rife with injustice. But the fact remains that many of us have matured since the 1950s and 60s, and with that maturation we have developed a taste for nuance. These days, most issues don’t seem as black and white as they once did. Shades of gray shadow every claim and contention, every speech and statistic.

So I keep coming back to simple points of agreement. I believe we all want schools that offer children—regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual preference, or other defined difference—a fair shot at college, a good chance at a fulfilling career, and the opportunity to develop a deep reverence for the privilege that is American citizenship. Perhaps it would be best to have these things in more heterogeneous schools. But if I had to choose between diversity, or college, career, and citizenship, I’d take the last three over the first one every time. Even if I don’t have to choose, I’ll probably still be more interested in helping kids on their way to a good life than in whether or not the kids I’m helping are all black, white, Hispanic, rich, poor, or anything else. And I don’t think this attitude makes me indifferent to the civil rights challenges of our time, whatever those challenges may be.

On the specific issue of charter schools and segregation, I am not an apologist for either. I do not think charter schools are the answer to our ed reform prayers. Nor do I think that grouping kids, intentionally or by chance, according to any attribute is inherently good or bad; it depends on how they are treated. When we demonize something, we give it power. So when we blame the charter school movement for increasing segregation in our schools, we tacitly imply that charter schools have the power to do so. They do not. Charter schools sprout up with an almost annoying randomness. And they operate randomly as well. Their increased freedom results in increased divergence from the norm. Sometimes this divergence is positive, sometimes it’s not. But it’s easy to predict. Given my own experience with highly segregated charter schools, you would have no difficulty convincing me that their existence increases segregation. But you’d have a much harder time convincing me that this was a bad thing in and of itself. Personally, I’d be much more interested in whether the kids in question were getting a good education—something that can happen in a school of any mix and any method of formation, public, private, religious, or charter.

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"Is this a fair characterization of the charter school movement?" Of course not. Read Nelson Smith's response for a particularly eloquent takedown (eloquent takedowns are my favorite kind).

Since I don't have anything new to add on the substance, I'll mention something about the ideological underpinnings here. Kevin Carey started a bit of an inter-blog discussion last week about the nature of the education reform debates, and it morphed into a question about whether or not there is real ideological content at all in those discussions.

A smart friend of mine remarked that debates tend to become ideological when "Means" are privileged over "Ends." I think that is what's happening here. I argue that "student achievement" is the most important end when discussing education reform strategies. Here, "integration" - rather than student achievement - is being held up as the desirable end. This also happens when folks privilege "choice" as an end in the education debates. I would argue that both are means, not ends, and it's not a good idea to conflate the two. Are choice and integration important? Absolutely. But more important than student achievement?

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For charter schools, decisions made by parents for their children to attend are crucial to their very existence. It's really life or death for the charter. Either parents choose the charter school, or the charter school doesn't exist.

Here comes Gary Orfield again, hiding ideology beneath "science." This time he wants to call charter schools "a civil rights failure."

Let me get this straight. Parents, largely minority parents, are choosing charters willingly, consciously, and contentedly as the best choice for their children's education. Each day, each week, each semester, each year - they make that choice.

So, whose judgment about civil rights success or failure should we trust - the African American moms and dads across the country who keep making the charter choice for their children, or Gary Orfield?

Hmmm. It doesn't take a genius to answer that one.

It wasn't that long ago that charter school opponents warned of precisely the opposite problem. As Georgetown University law professor James Forman Jr. noted in this 2007 article:

"Supporters of traditional public schools have long feared that by providing additional exit options, charter schools allow the most advantaged parents and children to flee the public system. Charter schools “tend to attract parents who live and work in relatively privileged communities,” worried Michael Apple. Geoff Whittey argued that charter schools in the U.S. “are being colonized by the already advantaged.”

As we all know, those fears were completely un-founded. Instead, many charter school founders expended great effort to build schools in some of the most disadvantaged communities in America. In return, Gary Orfield has denounced them by association with the murderous apartheid regime. If nothing else, this report will stand as a kind of reductio ad absurdum example of blindered anti-charter school propaganda.

This report is almost too ridiculous to comment on. None of us want segregated schools, but to criticize charters for serving low income minority communities is unproductive and unfair. The best thing that has happened in education in the last ten years is the development of high performing urban CMOs serving high need communities with uncompromising quality. The breakthrough performance of the No-Excuses schools outlines the path forward not just for education but as the most powerful antidote for chronic poverty in historically under-served neighborhoods.

The concentration on high need communities is a function of the charter school founder's mission but also steering from funders and authorizers. Given growing penetration in many urban areas, these groups along with community organizations can and should begin to plan for a wider ring of influence--a new round of schools that are more integrated in every way. This conversation is beginning in metro Newark, Washington DC, Houston, New Orleans and LA. With a reputation for quality, top school operators are positioned to open schools that will attract suburban as well as urban kids.

This perceived problem will work itself out, but it's a shame that CRP is shooting at folks doing the best work in the sector for the kids most in need.

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This response is lengthy (especially for a Monday), so be warned. But this intentional deceit merits a strong response.

Here is Merriam-Webster on the topic:

Segregate:

1 : to separate or set apart from others or from the general mass : isolate
2 : to cause or force the separation of (as from the rest of society)

Choose:

1 a : to select freely and after consideration <choose a career> b : to decide on especially by vote : elect
2 a : to have a preference for b : decide <chose to go by train>

The power of language matters enormously. Those of us who embrace the civil rights movement as one that liberates individuals from rules that satisfy the needs of others must get these definitions straight.

“To segregate” somebody, the “somebody” must assume a passive role. The protagonist in the action is not the affected party. We “segregate” students when we “assign” them to the school next door. The one that is failing, for example.

“To Choose” is something we do for ourselves. We are the actor, the protagonist, the decider, if you will. “Choice” is the essence of freedom.

Those who hurl hateful language at the schools families have chosen, take for granted that most people know nothing about the current assignment of students into failing schools. They assume that few of us know that parents are choosing public charter schools as a way out.

The words “segregated” and “apartheid” are meant only to brand public charter schools as oppressive versus free. But those terms are intentional lies. Free choice, by its very nature, cannot result in segregation. They are antithetical acts.

Free choice can indeed result in a population of students that is not diverse. Just as forced integration can result in a student body that looks “integrated” if you are a bird that flies over the school.

If that same bird took the time to walk into the school, they may see that the Calculus class is filled with White students and the “Checkbook Math” class seats are filled with Latino and African-American students. I am afraid that is the integration story for far too many families.

The issue I struggle with is not the color of the students in the school; it is the intention of the leaders in that school to make sure each and every student is challenged to the utmost.

How about schools in the inner city run by African American leadership where students are excelling yet the schools are accused of “segregation” for offering an Afro-centric curriculum? How do we feel about that?

In Arizona, we have a number of outstanding schools run by Latino leadership that also emphasize a study of Central and South America. The schools, not surprisingly, are largely chosen by Latino families. Is that a problem?

These are serious issues for each of us to grapple with, so I will just give my own analysis. We charge our schools to develop our children’s intellect and character. We ask them to teach in a way that will give students the genuine confidence and ability they will need to lead a full life as a partner in this society we share. And for families in poverty right now, when we assign students to schools we fail in that task at least half the time.

I believe that families are choosing the environment THEY believe will help their children overcome whatever challenges they face. These families know their children, and know what will inspire and motivate them. The leaders of schools they choose are appealing to that family’s desire for their child to be at the center of the school’s mission.

Children of color ought not to be used as pawns in a school assignment scheme that makes some sector of our society feel better about schematics. They deserve to be at the center of the school. They deserve to be the protagonist. They deserve to be in the calculus class. Let their families choose.

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Integration and academic achievement are both important goals for our nation. Yet, the top-down strategies of the 1970s (e.g. court orders, bussing, selective enrollment magnet schools) that were intended to produce integration and academic achievement unfortunately produced neither.

Charter schools may not create integration - in the midst of communities that are not integrated - but they do provide many African-American and Hispanic parents the opportunity to choose a school that provides more safety and higher academic achievement for their children. For that, we should all be thankful.

The civil rights of minority and low-income children are endangered every day by schools that fail to prepare them for college, careers and citizenship in the 21st century. These students are disproportionately found in neighborhoods that have unfortunately grown more racially concentrated and economically stratified after decades of middle-class flight. Charter schools have flourished in these neighborhoods because the parents of those children see them as beacons of hope for their children’s future – and a growing body of research provides impressive evidence that these charter schools are moving students ahead at a faster pace than their peers in neighborhood district schools.

For the Civil Rights Project to call this a “civil rights failure” -- and to label some of these charters “apartheid schools” -- is a slander on the schools and on the parents who freely choose them. It’s also evidence that Dr. Orfield and his colleagues wear ideological blinders. In their view, there is only one right way to deal with the reality of urban segregation, by counting heads according to ethnicity, deriving formulas representing the ideal, and then transporting kids so they fit the formulas. The path chosen by so many charter schools -- to go where the kids in need are, and to create schools that organize time, budget, and adult effort around their success – simply does not fit the Orfieldian orthodoxy.

The CRP seems impervious to a major lesson of NCLB: that neatly-balanced school districts can seem to perform well by coasting on the success of their white students while letting their Black and Latino populations languish. The resulting achievement gap is the educational scandal of our time. The leaders who founded the great urban charter schools – the KIPPS, the Amistad Academies, the North Stars -- have chosen to tackle the gap by going directly into urban centers and providing Black and Latino kids a world-class education. They create a culture of high expectations including conscious attention to the middle-class values and skills that lead to success (see David Whitman’s Sweating the Small Stuff), and produce tremendous gains for their students. We’re seeing broad results as well: Rand’s eight-state study found that public charter school students were 7 percent to 15 percent more likely to graduate from high school and attend college than students at traditional public schools. (I do concur with the CRP that we need more comprehensive data about long-term outcomes, a job the feds should take on promptly.)

A lot of people who care passionately about the issues CRP raises will be disappointed by this report because it’s based so extensively on a set of bizarre apples-oranges comparisons. Are the charter schools in Harlem more racially concentrated than the public schools in Long island? Are the charters in Chicago more likely to be full of Black and Latino kids than schools throughout the greater metropolitan area (new to me) known as “Chicago/Naperville/Joliet?” Well of course they are. A more appropriate comparison would match charters with their direct counterparts in the urban school systems. In the hypothetical world of academic research, broad metropolitan areas are big checkerboards with pieces that can be moved around as policy planners decide. In the real world, people live in actual neighborhoods and confront actual choices – one of which is whether to send a precious child to a big, dysfunctional school down the street, or to take a chance on a new charter school. Do the Black and Latino parents who make these choices look at the racial makeup of the charter school? Maybe they do – but they probably see a school that’s indistinguishable on that count from their other actual choice, the neighborhood school. And then they’ll ask whether the charter school is safe, whether the teachers and principal will really care about their child, and whether the school has an academic program that will help their child graduate, go to college, and get a good job.

If the charter school can do that for their child – who is the Civil Rights Project to second-guess them?

I hope the folks who read this blog will actually read the CRP report. I’m confident that any sensible person who cares about the future prospects of inner-city kids will see through its silliness and reject its groundless charges about public charter schools.

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Ross Wiener, executive director of the Education and Society Program at the Aspen Institute, submitted the following response to this week's question:

The Choices Without Equity report from the Civil Rights Project mischaracterizes charters as civil rights failures by equating “equity” with “integration.” This is overly simplistic and misguided.

The report’s blithe embrace of integration as the paramount concern is oblivious to serious inequities often found in integrated schools. And it’s dismissive of the priorities of black parents – 80% of whom told Public Agenda that raising academic achievement is their top priority for schools, compared with 8% of whom list integration and 11% who want to prioritize both.

While I personally believe there are unique benefits that can be gained from diverse schools, integration is not a panacea. As a trial attorney responsible for desegregation cases, I saw first-hand that integration and equity in education are not the same thing. Far too often, I observed diverse schools that did not ameliorate gaps but exacerbated them. Indeed, many of the burdens of integration have been borne by students of color who disproportionately saw their schools close and their travel times to school increase – only to be tracked into lower-level courses once they arrived in newly diverse schools.

The report is openly disdainful of families’ rights to make choices about education unless those choices foster greater racial balancing in schools. Without apparent irony, the report refers multiple times to nearly all-black charter schools as “apartheid” schools, despite the fact that these are schools created by parents’ demands and not any forced assignment. Students at Amistad Academy in New Haven (named for a slave ship revolt) and North Star Academy in Newark (named for the Underground Railroad) could be forgiven if they thought they were attending anti-apartheid schools. Maybe the Civil Rights Project should organize these students to overthrow their oppressors (who happen to be providing a great education where the traditional public system had failed to do so).

This shouldn’t imply everything is OK in the charter sector. Not surprisingly, the range in performance is as broad as with traditional public schools. Surprisingly and disappointingly, however, it has proven too hard to close low-performing charter schools. Charters that aren’t good should be closed, but the touchstone must be whether the schools are providing a good education to all who seek it, not whether they are racially diverse.

The most serious issues raised by the CRP report relate to whether students with disabilities and English-language learners are fairly treated by charters. Recent reports have raised questions about charters’ low rates of students with disabilities, and this issue should be examined (while keeping in mind that CRP and others have documented that regular public schools over-identify students of color with disabilities, so don’t jump to conclusions here). The CRP report also cite available evidence that ELLs are proportionally represented in charters and that ELLs learn more in charters than traditional public schools – but still implies that something isn’t quite right. In fairness, this is the most compelling issue raised by the report, and better data on these issues (from charters and traditional schools) is undoubtedly a civil rights priority.

Moreover, the principle that parents should have choices doesn’t mean that states and districts shouldn’t work to promote and support diverse schools. Where such choices don’t exist, leaders can work to create them – researching successful models, offering technical assistance, and locating new schools in areas likely to attract diverse students. The Civil Rights Project is oddly silent on the precarious legal issues that are implicated, however, and smugly self-righteous in arguing that “real” civil rights advocates must seek integration above all else.

It’s frustrating that such complicated issues get treated with such broad strokes. We need better schools for students of color and students from low-income families. Integration is a fine and noble thing to support, but its absence alone isn’t a civil rights violation – and the Civil Rights Project should know that.

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