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The Charter School Swindle – Selling<br />
Segregation to Blacks and Latinos<br />
!<br />
"#!$%&'(&)!*+!$,)-&.!!<br />
Segregation now! Higher suspension rates for black students! Lower quality schools for Latinos!<br />
These may sound like the campaign cries of George Wallace or Ross Barnett. But this isn’t the<br />
1960s and it isn’t Alabama or Mississippi. These are the cries of modern day charter school<br />
advocates – or they could be.<br />
School choice boosters rarely if ever couch their support in these terms, but when touting charter<br />
schools over traditional public schools, this is exactly what they’re advocating. According to the<br />
Civil Right Project at UCLA, “The charter school movement has been a major political success,<br />
but it has been a civil rights failure.”<br />
It’s choice over equity. Advocates have become so blinded by the idea of choice that they can’t<br />
see the poor quality of what’s being offered.<br />
Because charter schools DO increase segregation. They DO suspend children of color at higher<br />
rates than traditional public schools. And they DO achieve academic outcomes for their students<br />
that are generally either comparable to traditional public schools or – in many cases – much<br />
worse.<br />
In Brown vs. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it is Unconstitutional to have<br />
“separate but equal” schools because when they’re separate, they’re rarely equal. Having two<br />
parallel systems of education makes it too easy to provide more resources to some kids and less to
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