Charter Schools and So-Called Civil Rights
Civil rights industry types are worrying about the wrong thing, as usual.
For instance, the University of California’s Civil Rights Project argues in its 130-page “Choice Without Equity” report that charter schools have been a “civil rights failure.”
Are the researchers implying that government officials are blocking school doors so children can’t get in? Is there some law still on the books that mandates separate charter schools for different races?
No. The Civil Rights Project is up in arms because charter schools tend to be predominately one race or another—not by government mandate, but by choice, a word that sticks in the craw of liberals, unless the topic of discussion is abortion.
Whereas the civil rights movement’s focus was dismantling legal segregation, today’s movement focuses on racial bean counting. The top priority is not to give students of all races a quality education; it’s to put minority students next to white students. Otherwise, their civil rights are hanging in the balance. (Cue panic riff.)
According to the report, charter schools—government schools with fewer rules and regulations than traditional government schools, and attended by choice—are more segregated than traditional government schools. Charter schools tend to be located in urban areas. “As a result, charter school enrollment patterns display high levels of minority segregation, trends that are particularly severe for black students.”
What’s wrong with that? According to the researchers, “Decades of social science studies find important benefits associated with attending diverse schools, and, conversely, related educational harms in schools where poor and minority students are concentrated.”
The researchers use words like severe and harm and intensely and segregation and white flight and apartheid to insinuate something sinister is going on. To them, there is: choice.
Although whites attend charter schools in lower proportions, they’re “overrepresented” in charter schools in the Southwest and states like North Carolina. In the West, the study notes with alarm, whites are the lowest percentage of students in traditional government schools, but the highest percentage of white charter school students. Again, what’s wrong with that? Watch the researchers make a leap (emphasis added):
It would be very damaging to invest public money in schools that finance white flight from regular public schools and take with the departing white students, state and federal funding badly needed for the students left behind in even more segregated regular public schools. The fact that a number of these “white flight” schools do not report any students on free lunch suggests that they may be segregated by both race and class.
It’s all in the way you frame it. The researchers assign underhanded motives to white parents, rather than viewing them as people exercising school choice. What motives do they assign black parents for doing the same? Well, none. Most are given the choice of an inferior traditional school, according to the report, or an inferior charter school.
On the one hand, the researches call segregated charter schools a civil rights issue; on the other hand, they say charter schools’ supposedly “superior academic education performance” is “not sustained by the research.” So why all the complaining about segregated charter schools?
The researchers acknowledge that charter school enrollment almost tripled this decade, and received “increased level of funding and support from federal, state and local education agencies,” yet charter schools dominated by one race or another are problematic to them.
The selling point for charters is they claim to offer a better education than traditional government schools. The researchers are not convinced, and in any case, they believe lack of skin color diversity undermines the schools. If a predominately black charter school receives its share of funds, why is the school’s racial make-up a cause for concern? (Can you imagine a group of white parents complaining that their kids have to sit next to other white kids in school? Do parents of black charter school kids complain about the schools’ racial makeup? I fervently hope not.)
Ironically, America was transformed by a movement that sought to end government-mandated, race-based school enrollment decisions. Today’s civil rights industry wants the government to do the exact opposite.
What a shame.
The answers offered in the report on how to solve the segregation crisis aren’t groundbreaking or insightful, just the same old dated “civil rights” complaints. Among the recommendations to “promote diversity and prevent racial isolation” in charter schools are more rules and regulations. Make charter schools more like magnet schools (“specialized” schools with geographically open admission polices to draw whites — these schools still end up mostly one race or another). Other recommendations include providing free transportation, community outreach, and — surprise! — reducing choice.
Parents with choices exercise those choices. Too much government coercion, and they’ll choose a different school. Neighborhoods play a big role in the racial make-up of schools. Just short of telling people where to live, there isn’t much the government can do about that.
Addendum: Are charter schools a civil rights failure? Some of the answers on the National Journal’s education blog are priceless.
