In New Jersey, where I live and work as an educator, there are eighty-eight charter schools.
Seventy-three of these charter schools are located in municipalities with poverty rates above the national rate. Of the 23,795 black students enrolled in New Jersey charter schools, 93 percent attend charter schools in municipalities whose poverty rate is above the national average—compared to only 52 percent of white students.
Unfortunately, charter schools have exacerbated segregation like this in many other states, too.
A new study in Education Sciences by Julian Vasquez-Heilig—the newly named dean of University of Kentucky’s College of Education and, like me, a Public School Shakedown fellow with The Progressive—found that the rate of double segregation by race and class is
Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig is the newly named dean of University of Kentucky's College of Education.
substantially higher in charter schools than in traditional public schools.
Vasquez-Heilig and his co-authors, T. Jameson Brewer of the University of North Georgia College of Education, and Yohuru Williams of the University of St. Thomas College of Arts and Sciences, analyzed publicly available data to confirm what public school advocates have said for years: Nationally, higher percentages of charter students of every race attend “intensely segregated” schools.
I had an opportunity to speak with Vasquez-Heilig about his study and the urgency to address the hard truth of his findings.
Q: What questions were you were looking to answer with this study?
Vasquez-Heilig: So what we really wanted to know is, are charter schools more segregated, when you look at the state-level data, the national level data, and the local level data. We wanted to determine if the one reason why charter schools are more segregated is because they sit in segregated communities, as is often discussed.
We found that across all levels, charter schools are more segregated where African American and Latinx students are in the majority. We found geography didn’t explain that away, and that it’s growing worse.
Q: Did your research find any variation with respect to segregated charter schools from state to state?
Vasquez-Heilig: That’s a good question. There are a couple of states—and cities—where neighborhood public schools are slightly more segregated—Los Angeles, and Hawaii, for example. But those are the exceptions. In the vast majority of states and the vast majority of cities, African American and Latinx students were more segregated in charter schools.
Q: Can you explain “double segregation” in charter schools?
Vasquez-Heilig: Segregation by race is single segregation and segregation by race and economic status is double segregation. When we’re talking about double segregation, we’re focusing on the concentration of students who are both of color and poor. Triple segregation is when you have schools that are not only segregated by race, but also by class and another factor like English language learners.
Q: You acknowledge that only 7 percent of U.S. students attend charter schools. So why are the results of your study important for public policy consideration?
Vasquez-Heilig: In the last decade or so, the number of charter schools has doubled. So what’s happening is that charter schools went from being a boutique approach to being a rapidly growing segment of the education industry in the United States. In fact, one in every eight African American kids in the United States now attends a charter school. The African American and Latinx communities are more often concentrated in urban areas where charter schools are trying to open.
“I think there’s a good argument to be made that the things that we consider to be rights in our society should be publicly managed.”
Q: What is to be done? Is it a matter of trying to make charter schools more inclusive?
Vasquez-Heilig: I think we have to step back and ask, “what is the difference between rights and privileges in our society?” I think there’s a good argument to be made that the things that we consider to be rights in our society should be publicly managed. We are more likely to be okay with private control of things that we consider to be privileges.
We need to think about the role of the public in providing education and holding schools accountable. If charter schools don’t want to be diverse, they don’t have to be. They can be what they want to be, because they’re privately operated schools that aren’t accountable to the public. But, should the public be able to have a say in how their tax dollars are used to educate?
Q: That really matters when you consider how many charter schools have failed in providing black and brown families with the sort of education that can uplift communities.
Vasquez-Heilig: You know, I’m a former charter school parent and instructor. I served on a charter school board. I’ve donated to charter schools and visited many of them. The challenge is that charter schools evolved from being innovative practice to being direct competitors to neighborhood public schools.
Policymakers aren’t really thinking about what happens to education in five and ten years. If we continue growing schools that are privately managed, that means we have a few choices. Either we can continue to grow charter schools and accept that districts are going to go out of business and that all of our schools are going to be run by corporations, or we can cap charter schools at a certain number and keep our neighborhood districts allotted. A third option is that we can ban charter schools altogether and only have the schools that are community-based and democratically-controlled.
We’re going to have to make a choice. If we make no choice, then charter schools will cause our school districts to go extinct.