Since the civil rights era, the United States has struggled with how best to integrate schools—and today is no different, as concerns mount over signs of school re-segregation. This report by the Century Foundation’s Halley Potter argues that charter schools might have a role to play, by using their “flexibility, funding, and political viability” to solve various integration problems.
Charter schools can prove helpful in at least five ways: available funding, the ability to enroll children across district lines, program and curricular autonomy, independent leadership and management, and battle-hardened political effectiveness. As integration programs continue to struggle against political barriers (frequently about funding), school choice leaders could prove to be valuable allies.
Two examples of successful and charter-backed inter-district integration are the Rhode Island Mayoral Academies and Connecticut’s Interdistrict School for Arts and Communication (ISAAC). The Mayoral Academy schools draw their students from four districts, two urban and two suburban, which encompass a broad socioeconomic range. The schools use a weighted lottery system to ensure that they admit an equal number of students from the urban and suburban areas and that at least half of their enrolled students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. Not only has the school fostered a diverse and accepting environment—it has narrowed the achievement gap.
Likewise, ISAAC admits students from a socioeconomically diverse collection of twenty school districts and uses similar techniques of weighted admission to ensure that all districts are fairly represented in the student population. In 2014, the school was recognized by Connecticut Voices for Children as one of the only charter schools to meet their high standards for integration.
Unfortunately, these two examples exceptions. The report argues that, too often, myriad obstacles stand between charter schools and integration. State law sometimes prohibits out-of-district enrollment. Elsewhere, impediments like limitations on weighted lotteries and a lack of transportation funding combine to make charters an infrequent tool for desegregation.
Potter views these obstacles as surmountable. The report includes recommendations for state and federal governments, charter authorizers, and communities. She advises lawmakers to rethink and clarify the vague or lenient laws mentioned above, which will give charters more flexibility and, in some cases, more funding. And authorizers and community members should not only give priority to creating schools with integration-centric missions, but also make efforts to continually foster the diversity within schools.
In the end, the report makes a convincing argument that charters can facilitate integration across districts. But myriad obstacles mean that any such trek will be lengthy and politically challenging.
SOURCE: Halley Potter, “Charters Without Borders: Using Inter-District Charter Schools as a Tool for Regional School Integration,” the Century Foundation (September 2015).