Do you think charter schools contribute to a more segregated society?

[cjbgreen]

Charter School Report Finds Widespread Segregation, Including in Minnesota
by Beth Hawkins http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/02/11-7
Hawkins cites recent reports on charter schools and notes:

A second study released earlier this week found that charters operated by so-called education management organizations - private corporations - segregate by race, income, disability, and language. "The student population is pushed out to the extremes," researchers at Western Michigan University and the University of Colorado at Boulder concluded. "Most charter schools were divided into either very segregated high-income schools or very segregated low-income schools."/div]

[ixion]

1. charter schools are what public schools ought to be

the difference in the quality and depth of education is considerable, from my experience. In that regard, charter schools contribute to a segregated society.

[Vincardog]

2. The purpose of charter schools is to de-fund public education. They should not be allowed.

[alstephenson]

3. That's B.S.

And you know it. What information do you base this statement on?

[tonysam]

7. It has EVERYTHING to do with destroying public education

Why do you think billionaires are up to their eyeballs funding these things?

[Vincardog]

8. I base this on 30 years of watching rePIGlickers implement their anti-education agenda.

[Goldstein1984]

10. New Orleans

See "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein.

[frazzled]

4. I can speak to Minnesota ...

because I during the time I lived there (1985-1999) my children were continuously enrolled in the public schools. During that period, Minneapolis was still operating under a voluntary desegregation policy that worked extremely well. Parents chose a "type" of school from among the following options: contemporary (your regular neighborhood school, with one teacher per class and desks in a row facing the blackboard); open (mixed grade levels with team teaching units); continuous progress (too complicated to explain to you, but this is the one we chose); Montessori; and Fundamentals (strict behavior and dress codes, emphasis on basic reading and math skills). Plus there were a few magnets: science and technology on the elementary level, and on the high-school level International Baccalaureate, etc.

This was very effective in segregating an otherwise fairly neighborhood-segregated city because (a) upper-middle class neighborhoods were given the most unpopular choices (fundamentals schools, say), while poorer neighborhoods got the more attractive choices (open, continuous progress), thus sending parents looking for choices into other neighborhoods across districts in the city. So, for instance, we chose to send our kids on a decent bus ride every day across town to attend the program we thought fit them best. There were many southeast Asian kids, African American kids, some Native American kids ... and white middle and upper-middle class kids. It was a dream, actually. We loved it.

Near the end of our time in Minneapolis (and my kids were at the end of junior high and high school), this system was changed, and neighborhood schools were reinstituted. I argued at the time that it would lead back to "separate but equal." Maybe charter schools have only fed into this. But the resegregation came right out of school board policy and the mainstream public school system. I regret it greatly, and think it was a huge mistake. But I do not believe charter schools are the main problem.

The rationale for returning to neighborhood (meaning mostly segregated) schools was that busy working parents couldn't become involved in the schools if their kids were a few miles away. This was, of course, ridiculous, since working parents very rarely work in the neighborhoods their kids attend school at anyway. It was the encroaching conservative ideology, imo.

[T Wolf]

5. As with EVERYTHING, it depends on the people running the charter school. Some are terrrible

and some are the best schools in their district.

Some foster segregation and some, like my wife's, is diverse to the nth degree.

The same could be said about home schooling. While many (most?) are merely mechanisms to avoid "those people" - there are some DUers who would assert that they home school their children in order to promote a "liberal" philosophy not found in the public schools in their area.

Charters are nothing more nor nothing less than the consequences of the education environment and can be a positive or negative "solution" depending on who runs it and what their goals are.

[alstephenson]

6. Many charter schools are run by mission-oriented non-profits.

They choose to serve low-income communities and students with a high percentage of "at risk" students. The fact that these communities and students are comprised primarily of minorities speaks more about our society than it does about charter schools. So charter schools MAY be segregated, but they DO NOT segregate.

[tonysam]

9. Oh, sure.

Buy a clue, please, instead of shilling for charters.

[pampango]

11. Well said. In Dayton, whites abandoned the public school long before charter schools

entered the picture. It went from 60-40 white to 80-20 minority in 20 years. The district ended busing when their wasn't enough diversity left to achieve anything by it.

Many of the schools in Dayton are almost all-minority, since they went back to a neighborhood-school concept when busing was ended. There are also many charter schools and most of them are targeted at minority students.

[proud2BlibKansan]

12. No but they are destroying traditional public schools

[frebrd]

13. This is shown on the Latest Threads page as a poll.......

I don't see a poll.

:shrug:

[stray cat]

14. I think good schools versus crappy schools is a bigger issue and fits with poverty

[stray cat]

15. Maybe if we just get rid of crappy schools?