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| But segregation is sneaking back in via charter schools. Look at Connecticut's experience. |
Wendy
Lecker, a civil rights attorney who lives in Connecticut, writes here about
the hypocritical claim by charter schools that they are a part
of the civil rights movement of our day. She points out that charter schools in
Connecticut are hyper segregated and are setting back the clock on civil
rights.
She
writes:
Education “reformers” often proclaim they are carrying on the
tradition of great civil rights leaders, employing the rhetoric of that
movement while in reality pushing measures that exacerbate inequality and
impact most harshly on children and communities of color-like school closures,
privatization, and over-testing.
Last week, noted civil rights expert Gary
Orfield, of UCLA’s Civil Rights Project, issued a report on Connecticut school
integration that included an indictment of the practices of Connecticut’s
most-practiced purveyors of civil rights doublespeak — charter schools. The
report also called out state officials for their willful blindness to charter
school practices.
The report further remarked that national education
policies, including the expansion of charter schools, ignore race and poverty
and have “consistently failed” to meet the goal of improving education for our
neediest children.
Connecticut law on segregation is far-reaching. While the federal
constitution only prevents intentional segregation, our Supreme Court, in the
1996 decision in Sheff v. O’Neill, prohibited “unorchestrated,” i.e. de facto
segregation. Thus, state officials have an affirmative obligation not just to
prevent intentional segregation, but to eliminate even unintentional
segregation.
Most Connecticut charters are intensely segregated. They routinely
fail to serve English Language Learners, students with disabilities and often
our most impoverished students.
Yet, as the Civil Rights Project writes, Connecticut state
officials have refused to do anything to stem the tide of charter school
segregation….
School integration is fundamental to advancing the democratic
purpose of education. As the court noted in the Sheff decision: “If children of
different races and economic and social groups have no opportunity to know each
other and to live together in school, they cannot be expected to gain the
understanding and mutual respect necessary for the cohesion of our society.”
Decades of evidence prove that school integration achieves this
goal, reducing stereotypes and enabling adults to function successfully in a
variety of settings. The benefits of school integration are more lasting and
meaningful than the empty pursuit of higher test scores….
In his report, Dr. Orfield exhorts the state to bring charter
schools in line with Connecticut’s law and policies against segregation and to
ensure that charter operators live up to their “civil rights responsibilities
under state and federal law.”
He even suggests pursuing litigation against
charters that receive public funds, yet operate segregated schools in violation
of Connecticut law.
Given the unwillingness of state leaders to do anything about
charter school segregation, communities may have no choice but to look to the
courts. In December, the Delaware ACLU filed a federal complaint against
charter school segregation.
One can only hope that a civil rights organization
here will follow the lead of the Delaware ACLU and pursue a real civil rights
agenda when it comes to school segregation in Connecticut.