Anti-charter school boards and superintendents no doubt are bookmarking a report that found that charter schools nationwide and in California are more racially and ethnically segregated than traditional public schools. They’ll cite the study, by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA,  as a rationale for denying a charter application or creating new demographic obstacles, under the guise of integration, that many urban charter schools cannot overcome.

That would be disastrous for minority families who choose charters as an alternative to their neighborhood failing schools.

“Choice Without Equity: Charter School Segregation and the Need for Civil Rights Standards” found that charter schools are more racially isolated than traditional public schools in nearly every state and large metropolitan area in the country. Nationally, 70 percent of black charter school students attend schools where at least 90 percent of students are minorities. In California, the study found that whites and African-American students disproportionately  attend charter schools, although that varies regionally.  Charter schools comprise 4.4 percent of the state’s 6 million students, including  9 percent in Los Angeles Unified.

As the study points out, there has been a trend toward racial isolation in America’s schools for several decades, as urban areas have become more stratified by race and income. Widening disparities in academic achievement between white middle class children and  minorities and poor children have followed.

Charter schools shouldn’t be held accountable for de facto segregation caused by poverty and housing costs. The best charter schools in California’s urban areas are graduating large percentages of students from high school and sending them on to college, offering a path out of racial and geographical isolation and into the economic mainstream. They’re doing this by setting up shop in neighborhoods where schools are failing and deliberately targeting students at risk of dropping out.

UCLA Professor Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project, dismisses this as an irrelevant, though perhaps a noble goal. “You can’t decide to just serve one group of kids,” Orfield told the San Francisco Chronicle. “If you’re taking public funds, you’re subject to civil rights laws.”

The Civil Right Project report gave me a sense of déjà vu – and offered an omen of what may lie ahead for some charter applicants. Three years ago, San Jose Unified School rejected a proposal for an elementary school charter that would serve low-income Hispanic children because the school would not reflect the district’s overall ethnic mix, which is one-quarter white, one-quarter Asian and three-eighths Hispanic. It didn’t matter that the school planned to locate in racially segregated, low-income  downtown. Saying the school would further racial segregation, in violation of the district’s integration consent decree, was specious legal talk  to justify a denial. (Rocketship Mateo Sheedy Elementary won an appeal to the county board of education and has become one of the state’s high-achieving charters.)

Recognizing that charter schools’ admissions  are not restricted by district boundaries, the UCLA study looked at charter enrollments by 15 regions. But the results may include distortions of geography and district oddities. I suspect that the high proportion of whites in charters in some areas opposed to charters may include home schooled children under charter umbrellas. In the San Jose-Sunnyvale region, two elementary school districts converted to charters to escape state ed code restrictions. They are in largely white, middle class neighborhoods, and race and ethnicity were irrelevant factors.

The study suggested that that the federal government restrict funding to charters that achieve racial diversity. But most charters have no money for transportation or marketing – and shouldn’t be tying up money that could be better used for classroom instruction or longer days.

Federal civil rights lawyers should be scrutinizing instances, particularly in the South, where charters are a transparent tool for white re-segregation. But the Obama administration shouldn’t alter its strategy of promoting charters in urban neighborhoods  where integration is neither practical nor relevant to turning around troubled schools.

By John Fensterwald on February 8th, 2010