President Obama's education initiatives include major incentives for creating more charter schools... Californians need to take a long look at some hard numbers...Charter schools stratify students by race, class and possibly language, and are more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the country, according to a report issued by the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA...
...More than half of California's public school students are Latino but only 41% of charter's students... White charter school students are also more likely to attend intensely segregated white schools with 0-10% nonwhites. These figures suggest that some California charters serve as havens of white flight from traditional public schools.
There's more. In California, with its burgeoning immigrant population, it's alarming to find that almost no federal data exists on English Language Learner (ELL) enrollment in California charter schools. Federal data on charter schools in California, the largest gateway for Latino and Asian immigrants, report just seven ELL students attending its state charter programs, which is obviously wrong. Without accurate enrollment information, we have no way of knowing how well charters are serving English Language Learners who constitute about a tenth of U.S. students.
Nationally as well as statewide, a strong lobby that claims educational superiority for charter schools is drowning out the evidence:
- There is very little data reported on graduation rates - a vital goal of any school - and research shows no significant academic advantage.
- A massive Stanford study found no overall evidence of the superiority of charters. A recent analysis by the Los Angeles Times found that magnet school students in LAUSD outperformed both charter and regular public school peers on statewide tests. Some charters outperform other public schools in the district, but many also performed worse and charters are doubtless serving students who differ in some significant ways.
- Adding to the confusion, the state does not currently monitor how many students exit charter programs prematurely - an important measure of educational support-since pushing out low scoring students would make the schools look more successful in reported average test scores.
In spite of these troubling findings, charter schools have proven to be the darling of the Obama Administration, prominently featured in the "Race to the Top," a competitive funding program that rewards financially strapped states... for raising or eliminating caps on establishing charter schools...
Congress has steadily increased funding for charter schools over the last two budget cycles. Magnet schools, which adhere more to federal civil rights guidelines and often have more effective equity policies, experienced a smaller funding boost after several years of flat or decreased allocations. Even with the 10% increase this year, MAGNET SCHOOLS STILL RECEIVE ABOUT A THIRD OF CHARTER SCHOOL FUNDING LEVELS...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-orfield/californias-charter-schoo_b_484821.html
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