A judge in Arkansas ruled that the state must continue to stay involved in desegregation efforts but then ruled that charters skimming white students are okay. Even Arkansas objects vets saw the contradiction.
And not coincidentally, Republicans are moving to strip the state board of education of its power to rule on charter applications. The Walton family wants more privatization, faster.
Says a local commentator:
“Re charter schools: Judge Marshall is a heckuva judge. If he says no reasonable fact-finder could argue that charter schools breach the 1989 agreement, that’s an opinion worth respecting. But no reasonable fact-finder could deny that open enrollment charter schools have skimmed middle income and white students from the Little Rock School District as a whole, particularly at the middle school level, and thus made it harder to desegregate those schools. As a matter of law, that might be irrelevant. His analysis focused on charter schools and the interdistrict magnet schools financed by the 1989 agreement. It IS a matter of fact in daily schoool business, however, though I’d concede a lot of these students would have gone elsewhere (private schools for example) absent the charter schools. Or so it seems to me. The judge, however, concluded that the charters had had very little, if any, impact on desegregation, on the magnet schools or on majority-to-minority transfer programs.
“To the extent that overall racial percentages and magnet enrollment haven’t changed greatly, that’s true. In practical terms, it isn’t. An inner city middle school magnet like Dunbar, which lost many students to charters, is a good example of the direct impact. The judge looked only at direct losses from magnets to charters, not the universe of potential students lost to the charters and the sorts of students those were, though he does note that charter students tend to be better off economically than Little Rock students and the transfer group was whiter than the Little Rock District as a whole. This is particularly true in some coveted, well-financed charter schools with predominant white and middle class enrollments.
“Still, there’s no doubt, as the judge notes, the 1989 agreement didn’t mention charter schools. They didn’t exist then, after all. But he also rejected the argument that creation of charter schools — independent school districts in function and fact under state law — were analogous to the creation of a separate Jacksonville school district, something the court has prohibited until the deseg case is completed with all districts unitary. He said state funding for desegregation wasn’t guaranteed for Little Rock, in any case, but for any school, including the newer charters. The explicit state commitment to six interdistrict magnet schools does not bar open-enrollment charter schools that function as magnets themselves, he said.
“The judge noted that Little Rock went nine years without objecting to the charters in court. It’s irrelevant, he said, that the district HAD protested many of the charter applications at the state Board of Education because of impact on desegregation. He said this was not the same thing as arguing in court that the settlement had been violated. The district should have spoken up sooner, he said. The judge also said the state had an obligation under law to consider desegregation impact; had vowed to do so and failure there was a state issue. This is another sad part of this story. The state Board of Education now takes this responsibility seriously. In the beginning, it did not. Early charters were located in white majority neighborhoods and, unsurprisingly, attracted white majority student bodies, despite promises to seek greater diversity.
“Many more charter school applications are waiting in the wings. And, if the wealthy tycoons financing the charter movement have their way, they’ll soon have control of the state approval process. No matter. Judge Marshall has ruled the charter school issue has been decided for good. It is a day of celebration for the Waltons and charter school advocates. The Little Rock School District now must consider the future and much more than whether to file a pro forma appeal of this decision.”
