Julian Vasquez Heilig spoke at the Journey for Justice National Town Hall in D.C. on December 12. He addressed his remarks to the charter supporters who dismissed claims that charters exacerbate segregation. Specifically, he spoke in response to an article in New York magazine by Jonathan Chait, who said that charters don’t cause segregation, they help its victims. Heilig contends that charters exacerbate segregation, as choice always does, and that they draw resources away from the districts that enroll most students.
Heilig has been an active member of the NAACP and chair of its education committee in California.
This is his speech:
Members of the civil rights community have expressed that charters are more segregated, are underperforming, and lack appropriate transparency and accountability to the public.
As a result, in 2016, the Movement for Black Lives, the NAACP and Journey For Justice all called for a charter moratorium.
A national conversation about charters is especially important for the African American community because a report by the NAACP’s Task Force on Quality Education found that one in eight African American students in the United States now attends a charter school.
Even though the popularity of charter schools has plummeted in the public discourse and in many quarters of the civil rights community, the rise in the number of charters has been particularly rapid during the past ten years. Many states have lifted caps on the number of charter schools contained within the original state legislation, owing in part to millions of dollars in financial incentives created by government grant programs and funding that has poured in from foundations funded by billionaires such as Broad, Walton, Gates, Arnold and others
Considering the rapid growth of charter schools, it’s important for the public conversations about school choice to distinguish fact from rhetoric and sloganeering.
Are charters more segregated that neighborhood public schools?
The AP recently reported that about 1 in 7 charters schools are 99% students of color.
In addition to media reports, the predominance of peer reviewed research examining national and local data on the segregation of students in charter schools over the past ten years has demonstrated that school choice is exacerbating existing patterns of segregation.
The research has actually shown this for about two decades. For example, using three national data sets, one research study found that charter schools are “more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the nation.”
Research conducted by Vanderbilt University and Mathematica argued that charters are not “creating greater segregation,” but a careful reading of the data reveals that in the majority of states examined, white and African American students were more likely to choose even more homogenous charter schools.
Why are charters more segregated? The argument is often made by charter proponents that their schools sit in segregated neighborhoods. However, one of the big problems with school choice is that research is demonstrating that “Parents choose to leave more racially integrated district schools to attend more racially segregated charter schools.”
The peer reviewed research has shown that Whites are less likely to attend charters schools with large numbers of Black and Latinos because White families purposefully avoid charter schools that focus on test preparation and “No Excuses” discipline. Recent research has also shown that White families are more likely to attend charters that have parent voice on the board— charters predominately serving Black and Latinos are much less likely to have board members that are parents.
In sum, peer reviewed research has demonstrated that the purposeful choice of African American and white families leads to schools with more homogenous racial compositions than neighborhood public schools and “explains why there are so few racially balanced charter schools.”
So what about the argument that charters perform better? A prominent study found that choice was bad for achievement on average as, “the relatively large negative effects of charter schools on the achievement of African America students is driven by students who transfer into charter schools that are more racially isolated than the schools they have left.”
Even CREDOs most recent study of urban students shows that in 93% of measurements of reading and math in large cities across the United States, charters actually still have a negative impact on Black students. In the cases where charter perform better, the difference is typically minuscule, like the amount of difference between two football teams that are 1-10 and 0-11. In somes cases where charters perform better overall, such as Philadelphia, the overall positive performance of charter can be attributed to White and Asian students success, rather than spectacular academic success for Black and Latino students.
Furthermore, it is very clear that after more than 25 years of trying, charters have failed to dramatically change the inequality status quo in our nation. However, where they are succeeding is setting democratically-accountable districts like Los Angeles on a collision course with bankruptcy.
Our society has spent hundreds of millions of dollars building, financing and funding charters schools at great expense to taxpayers— considering the evidence to this point, the underwhelming results, and in many cases reprehensible, should be considered a national disappointment.
See Julian’s speech here:
posted at oped
https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Julian-Vasquez-Heilig-Cha-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Accountability_Choice_Education-Funding_Educational-Crisis-171213-704.html#comment682263
Diane Too many seem to forget that the nebulous South “chose” and institutionalized segregation and racism for way too-many years and then, when they were finally confronted with Federal mandates to adhere to the Constitution, “chose” to call it “States’ Rights.”
There is no evidence that market based education gets superior results without manipulating student enrollment. No industrialized nation has met with market based education success, and each of the countries that implemented market based education faced increasing inequities and segregation.
The United States has been promoting school “choice” for almost two decades without much success. In many cases students in poor communities have not be given any choice. The schools do the choosing. Where many urban communities have imposed mass privatization, poor students have been assigned to cheap,unsuccessful charters without any say in the decision. The top down order to privatize comes from the complicit mayor, legislature or governor, and large numbers of minority parents have no say. This disenfranchisement of many minority communities is undemocratic and unacceptable.
The whole test and punish agenda is designed to deliver large numbers of poor, mostly minority students to charter chains without community or family input. This is a second way that anti-democratic privatization railroads poor, minority students while suppressing any democratic expression or rights. Ironically, many of these privateers invoke the language of civil rights while simultaneously suppressing democratic input. This anti-democratic system is rigged against poor minority communities, and social justice groups should challenge this crooked system and fight for the rights of fellow Americans.
You’re right, retired teacher.
Succumbing To Walmart Ideology: The very fact that parent(s) are poor and often culturally different makes them easiest to exploit.
While charter schools, which I am against, have a bad track record segregation is not a bad thing.
The US Supreme Court got it wrong when it said that black kids felt inferior going to an all-black school. This was a liberal court to the nth degree. Truman had installed one so-called conservative justice, who just happened to be left leaning or what we might call a RINO today. FDR and Truman both packed the court.
So, there were essentially 9 liberal justices on that court. They were all born in the Gilded Age. I just think that these Justices showed their own prejudice by saying that. It is actually racist. It is racist if one believes that one can determine outcomes based on race. Trying to say that one would better off with one’s own kind or be better off with other races are both racist. It should not make any difference one way or the other.
A counter example to leftist view: There as a black girl that was a C student in an integrated high school but she went to an HBCU and she is graduating with honors and will probably pursue a Master’s degree. So, maybe you can tell me why she did better? Grade inflation or what?
Why would kids feel inferior going to an all-black school? We have over 100 HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities. I think 104 now.) fact they feel proud to have taught at or attended these schools. Why not?
I never felt inferior going to all-poor school. I did not know we were poor. Most of us are. I mean the Middle-class now starts at $40k per year and goes until $120K per year. Most of us (66-75%) earn less than $30k per year. Therefore, most of us are poor.
Most kids do not know about things like being poor. They do not have anything to compare their situation with. Now, their parents may think that their kids going to all-black school is bad. But if it is true that they opt to have their kids go to an all-black charter school then I cannot believe that they thought going to an all-black school was bad.
Again 104 HBCUs says this is not true, too.
So, the argument for desegregation is wrong. Separate but equal is another reason given for integration.
Education will never be equal. Life is not equal so how can education?
There are too many differences to account for and impossible to equalize the most of them. I have listed some of them off, in my most recent e-book, A Treatise on the American Education System of the 21st Century.
An impossible task/goal is unethical because it is impractical. One of the tenants of a good ethical theory is ‘Universalizability’, the ability to apply it universally the same. One must be able to put it into practice, hence practical. Also, “Prescriptivity’ or take ye or do ye. If one cannot do it then it is unethical. An impossible goal is not doable, therefore, unethical.
Insofar as, the amount of money spent it has been shown that that makes no difference. We now spend 4 times the amount of money, adjusted for inflation, to educate a 2nd grader compared to when I was in 2nd grade, 50 years ago, to no appreciable good.
A rich school may spend more money per student than a poor one but it has little effect. If it does better it is because of better students and not better technology or teachers.
Education is a two-way street, as is communications in general. The teachers cannot force kids to learn. It is the responsibility of the student to learn.
People both black and white are choosing to send their kids to same race schools, according to the article.