Civil rights attorney Wendy Lecker calls out the charter
sector of Connecticut for its unabashed practice of racial
segregation.
A new report from Connecticut Voices
for Children finds that charter schools are hyper segregated and that they
exclude children with disabilities and English language learners.
Don’t expect the State Commissioner
of Connecticut to care: he was co-founder of one of the state’s most segregated
charter chains.
“As the Voices report notes, the
practices engaged in by charter schools and condoned by the state reveal a
troubling approach to choice. For them, choice is about advancing the
individual interests of families, rather than any broad community wide
educational goals; such as desegregation. The authors found that when individual
interests are the goal of choice, then choice policies undermine the goal of
equitable educational opportunity for all students.
“The idea of equity for all was the
driving force behind the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr. declared
that “I am never what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.”Lyndon
Johnson’s motto was “doing the greatest good for the greatest number.”
“The principles of communal good
underpinned Connecticut’s commitment to school integration. Connecticut’s Supreme
Court deemed that having children of different backgrounds learn together is
vital “to gain the understanding and mutual respect necessary for the cohesion
of our society.” The late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall
maintained: “Unless our children learn together, there is little hope that our
people will learn to live together.”
The charters have a peculiar idea of
civil rights, one that does not reflect the views of Dr. King or Justice
Marshall:
“Choice as practiced by charter
schools perverts the notion of integration. In its annual report, under the
goal of reducing racial isolation and increasing racial and ethnic diversity,
Achievement First Bridgeport wrote that the school’s “African-American,
Hispanic and low-income students will outperform African-American, Hispanic and
low-income students in their host district and state-wide, reducing racial,
ethnic and economic isolation among these historically underserved subgroups.”
“Achievement First defines
integration as children of color getting better standardized test scores.
Justice Marshall must be spinning in his grave.”
In the eyes of charter leaders,
higher test scores–achieved by pushing out or excluding low-performing
students–trumps integration.
