A Closer Look at Charter Schools and Segregation: Flawed Comparisons Lead to Overstated Conclusions

Autor/inn/en	Ritter, Gary; Jensen, Nathan; Kisida, Brian; McGee, Joshua
Titel	A Closer Look at Charter Schools and Segregation: Flawed Comparisons Lead to Overstated Conclusions
Quelle	In: Education Next, 10 (2010) 3, S.69-73 (5 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1539-9664
Schlagwörter	Stellungnahme; Charter Schools; Racial Segregation; School Segregation; Racial Composition; School Statistics; Data Interpretation; Social Justice; Public Schools; Disproportionate Representation; Comparative Analysis; Enrollment Trends; Achievement Gap + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Charter school; Charter-Schule; Rassentrennung; Data evaluation; Datenauswertung; Soziale Gerechtigkeit; Public school; Öffentliche Schule
Abstract	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.) (ERIC).
Anmerkungen	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/
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10