On January 31, the U.S. Department of Education opened an investigation of the Red Bank Charter School, which local groups accuse of excluding minorities. Will Betsy DeVos continue this investigation or will she shelve it?
Local civil rights groups complain that the charter school is far whiter than the district school and contend that this is no accident.
“Critics of the charter school have long complained that minorities are underrepresented in the charter school, contributing to an over-representation of minorities in the public school district, where the population is also more economically challenged than the charter school’s enrollment.
“According to state data, the charter school is 50 percent white, while the borough schools are about 7 percent white. Hispanics comprise just 38.5 percent of the charter school, while they are 81 percent of the borough schools. Both are about 10 percent black.
“The complaint was brought by Fair Schools Red Bank, a group of parents with children in Red Bank public schools, and the advocacy group Latino Coalition of New Jersey. Both the Education Department and the Justice Department received the complaint, which was filed in November, according to a Education Department official.
“Their complaint accuses the charter school, by virtue of its enrollment practices, of making Red Bank “the most segregated school district in the state of New Jersey.”
Charter schools long ago figured out that careful selection of students is key to high test scores. Unfortunately, they can’t share this lesson with public schools, which must enroll everyone who walks in, at any time of year.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
From the article: “Red Bank Charter opened in 1998 to give borough parents and students another alternative to the public school district. Charters are public schools that exist independent of the centralized decision-making and costly collective bargaining agreements that typically bind public school districts.”
Wow, what a biased anti-public school statement. The author of this article appears to have a pro charter attitude or am I missing something.
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SAVE US from CHARTER Schools and Vouchers. I have NO USE for them at all. Their record of deceit and stealing from states are enough for me. I support Public Schools and Public School Teachers.
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Shared this on a state union members page and got this response:
While the post might seem like a good thing to share with friends and family, the advertisements on the page project that charter school test better than public schools. Just a reminder to preview all pages before sharing a link. This link seems to be free of advertisements for charters, although, that might change. https://www.redbankgreen.com/2017/02/red-bank-feds-take-on-segregation-case/
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I really urge people to start reading ed reformers. These are the people our lawmakers take direction from.
How do you solve the problem of under-funded schools according to ed reform? Advertise!
“Because state aid is tied to the number of students served by a district, increasing enrollment can provide additional cash. Oregon’s rural Douglas County School District #15 consists of a single K12 charter school.
Superintendent Mark Angle has introduced “a really aggressive marketing campaign” to raise enrollment from 149 students to 202 students in two years.”
It is just amazing that such supposedly smart people don’t understand systems at all.
When this charter school operator advertises and increases enrollment all he’s doing is putting the neighboring schools in worse shape, financially. They cut funding STATEWIDE. That means all the schools are hurting. One getting an edge by enrolling students from another school doesn’t fix the SYSTEM WIDE problem. Obviously they ALL can’t advertise to “solve” the problem. There’s X number of students and Y levels of total funding.
You know what will happen next? The school 10 miles away will start advertising too and they’ll be off to races taking each others funding and they’ll all be worse off.
This “solves” nothing. It simply moves the same amount of funding around. It actually makes it worse because it’s less predictable. They can’t budget if they don’t know how many students to budget for.
These are the people who advise our lawmakers on public schools. People who don’t have the most basic grasp of how universal public systems work.
https://www.districtadministration.com/article/keeping-lid-personnel-costs
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