Is segregation back in U.S. public schools? (A cheerleader for charter schools says, so, WTF? Let them eat charters.)

Focus on Better Education Instead

Lance T. Izumi is the senior director of education studies at the Pacific Research Institute.

UPDATED MAY 21, 2012, 11:25 AM

Falling back to 1970s-style desegregation policies like busing ignores new schooling 

options that weren’t available decades ago and which offer better educational 

opportunities for minority students.

Greater access to charter schools is what low-income minority communities need, not busing. (You better make goddamned sure that these charters are fully funded and that their teachers are very competent, because charter schools per se can suck worse than the worst public school in the country.)

Steve Rivkin, a professor of economics at Amherst 

College, warns that, “transporting students long distances to reduce segregation in schools is costly, time-

consuming for students and likely to reduce parental 

participation in the schools.” Most important, regarding 

whether desegregation programs improved outcomes for 

African-Americans, he says, “there is little good evidence 

to bear on this question.”

Desegregation supporters then and now say that 

improving access to better quality education for minority 

children is one of their key goals. If so, then why not 

focus on newer education models that are producing 

better results for these students? Take, for example, 

charter schools, the autonomous deregulated public 

schools which first appeared in the 1990s.

A 2009 study of New York City’s charter schools by researchers from Stanford, the 

University of Pennsylvania and the National Bureau of Economic Research 

found thaton average, students who attended charter schools for grades kindergarten 

through eighth grade could close the achievement gap among white and black 

students by about “86 percent in math and 66 percent in English.” The study used the 

most rigorous experimental design, randomized control trial, which compares 

students who were admitted to charters through a lottery selection process versus 

those who lost in the lottery and attended regular public schools.

Jay Greene, a professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas, notes 

that all studies of charter schools using this rigorous methodology have found that 

charters improve the performance of urban disadvantaged minority.

Parents from low-income minority communities continue to rally for access to 

charter schools and other new choice options that offer hope and better outcomes 

for their children. Our energies should focus on meeting their demands.