Charter Schools Help Re-Segregate New Orleans Public Schools

This entire column is courtesy of Michael Martin.

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A May 15, 2010, Report by the Institute on Race and Poverty, at the University of Minnesota Law School commissioned by the Loyola Institute for Quality and Equity in Education has some interesting findings. The report is titled: “The State of Public Schools in Post‐Katrina New Orleans: The Challenge of Creating Equal Opportunity.”

Some interesting findings:

“The reorganization of the city’s schools has created a separate but unequal tiered system of schools that steers a minority of students, including virtually all of the city’s white students, into a set of selective, higher‐performing schools and another group, including most of the city’s students of color, into a group of lower‐performing schools. The extremely rapid growth of charter schools has not improved this pattern.”

“In the new system, public schools operate under five distinct governance structures that serve different student populations: Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) traditional public schools (which educate 7 percent of the city’s students); OPSB charter schools (20 percent); Recovery School District (RSD) traditional public schools (36 percent); RSD charter schools (34 percent); and Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) charter schools (2 percent).”

“In 2009, 87 percent of all white students in the city attended an OPSB or BESE charter school, while only 18 percent of black students did so. In contrast, 75 percent of black students attended an RSD school (charter or traditional public) in 2009, compared to only 11 percent of white students.”

“Students of color were much more likely to attend a high‐poverty school than white students in these two sectors. For instance, in 2009, students of color in OPSB charter schools were nearly 12 times more likely to attend a high‐poverty OPSB school than white students.”

“The charter school sector in the city of New Orleans has been growing in a haphazard way in response to strong financial incentives and not because of their superior educational performance. The increasingly charterized public school system has seriously undermined equality of opportunity among public school students, sorting white students and a small minority of students of color into better performing OPSB and BESE schools, while confining the majority of low‐income students of color to the lower performing RSD sector.”

“OPSB and BESE schools in the city provide some of the most advantageous educational settings in the region. However, they do so mostly by skimming the easiest‐to‐educate students through selective admission requirements that allow them to set explicit academic standards for incoming students. They also shape their student enrollments by using their enrollment practices, discipline and expulsion practices, transportation policies, location decisions, and marketing and recruitment efforts. These practices certainly contribute to the selective student bodies and superior performance of these schools.”

“RSD charter schools still skim the most motivated public students in the RSD sector despite lacking the selective admission requirements OPSB and BESE charters have. They do so by using their enrollment practices, discipline and expulsion practices, transportation policies, location decisions, and marketing and recruitment efforts. These practices almost certainly work to increase pass rates in RSD charters compared to their traditional counterparts.”

“As a result of rules that put RSD traditional schools at a competitive disadvantage, schools in this sector are reduced to ‘schools of last resort.’ This sector continues to educate the hardest‐to-educate students in racially segregated, high‐poverty schools.”

“The new, post‐Katrina, public school system in New Orleans is becoming more and more reliant on charter schools. The sector grew rapidly as a result of the coordinated efforts of a number of charter school proponents, in response to strong financial incentives (from the federal government and the philanthropic community), and not necessarily because of superior educational performance by charters.”

“As charter schools begin replacing traditional public schools at the district level through school conversions, parents, students, and teachers may be forced to choose a charter school because of the lack of high‐quality traditional public schools. In fact, this is already happening in parts of New Orleans, where traditional public schools have not been reopened in the aftermath of Katrina. When charter schools become the only option, rather than being one among many, choice options are narrowed for students.”

“An improving traditional public school sector should remain as part of an expanded portfolio of choices available to the city’s students. The current playing field is clearly not level. This report documents the rules and practices that put RSD traditional schools, which educate 36 percent of the city’s students (the majority low‐income students of color), at a competitive disadvantage.”