by Yaël Ossowski
Watchdog
April 28, 2015
At the recent Education Writers Association national seminar in Chicago, a small breakout session asked the following question: Is school choice a tool for opportunity and equity, or further segregation?
Following the latest negative spin on charter schools around the country, it seems most education journalists decidedly choose the latter.
“If you’re an education writer and aren’t covering segregation in schools, I’d ask you why,” said Nikole Hannah-Jones, winner of the EWA award for best education reporting, in her acceptance speech.
Her comments echo the controversial study released by Duke University researchers in conjunction with the National Bureau of Economic Research earlier this month, which claims charter schools in North Carolina are further segregating public schools and leaving minority students behind.
The Washington Post says this is proof white parents are using charter schools to “secede” from the traditional public system. But the figures show otherwise.
According to Watchdog.org reporter Moriah Costa’s report on Washington, D.C. schools, charter schools in the nation’s capital have 78 percent black students, a full 10 percent ahead of normal public schools.
And it’s not just in Washington, D.C.
The Center for Education Reform’s 2014 Charter School Survey finds charter schools serve more low-income students, more black and Hispanic students.
“Charter students are somewhat more likely to qualify for Free and Reduced Lunch due to being low-income (63 percent of charter students versus 48 percent of public school students), to being African-American (28 percent of charter students versus 16 percent of public school students) or to being Hispanic (28 percent of charter students versus 23 percent of public school students),” says the study.
Even applied locally, charter schools provide more academic results to a more diverse student body.
A March 2015 study from the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, an institute hosted at Stanford University, examined 41
