Charter School Re-Segregation and Audacity of Chris Latvala

Representative Kionne McGhee voted against HB5105, a $200 million Republican led “Schools of Hope” charter school plan which would allow for the rapid expansion of select charter school networks across Florida and mandate that persistently low performing public school close or become part of such networks. “This bill, in my humble opinion, creates a separate but unequal system” that “runs afoul” of the Florida and U.S. Constitutions, McGhee said during a committee meeting. The bill passed the House along party lines.

“Charter schools, on average, don’t have an academic advantage over traditional public schools, but they do have a significant risk of leading to more segregation.”- Education Week, 2014

The landmark case, Brown v. Board of Education (1954) ruled that “separate education facilities are inherently unequal.” McGhee is not the only one concerned that creating charter school networks will lead to unequal, re-segregated schools:

Implications from the Education Week included:

“Even apart from the negative effect of increased segregation, justifying federal advocacy of charter school expansion is difficult when there’s no evidence that charter schools, on average, are academically superior to traditional public schools or even that they can be more innovative given the Common Core State Standards and the testing associated with them.

The finding in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that “separate education facilities are inherently unequal” has been demonstrated repeatedly in the United States and throughout the world in the 60 years since that decision. It also has been demonstrated in the results of the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2010). It is ironic that the political rhetoric surrounding this assessment focuses almost exclusively on test-score differences among countries, which account for only about 11% of the variance, while little attention is paid to the far more important finding that the remaining variance is accounted for by differences within countries. On average, almost 60% of the differences in reading test scores within member countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development are explained by the SES of students and schools. In the United States, the SES of students and schools explains almost 80% of the variance in performance. That finding is certainly not a strong recommendation for policies that further increase the segregation of schools.

It is also ironic that as other countries become increasingly concerned about the social implications of their school choice programs the United States is promoting the expansion of these programs. Until now, the link between charter schools and segregation has been partially masked by the fact that a large proportion of charter schools are in urban areas that are already highly segregated. However, as charter schools expand into areas with more diverse student bodies, their segregating effects will become even more extensive and visible. That expansion already is under way; although the largest increases in charter schools to date have occurred in cities, significant increases are also occurring in towns, suburbs, and rural areas that are more diverse (Landauer-Menchik, 2006; National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, 2013b).

It is not that government has an agenda to increase segregation. Proponents of charter schools believe they’re giving low-income and minority students opportunities they otherwise would not have had. That belief is true in some cases; all charter schools do not result in segregation. But far too many do, and the trend is unfavorable. It takes a lot of care through targeted funding and oversight to mitigate the pressures that lead to yet more segregation. But whatever motivations drive the choices families and schools make, it is important that government does not exacerbate the problem of segregation by ignoring the unintended consequences of its policies. The risk is an increasingly divided public education system.”

The rapid expansion of charter “Schools of Hope” networks, especially when they are targeted primarily at low income schools with large minority student populations, risks “an increasingly divided public education system” in Florida.  To be clear, we are not accusing the bill’s sponsor of creating a system to achieve re-segregation. Frankly, we think the sponsor wants to privatize public education and truly believes this plan will give struggling students “hope”, but further segregation should be an expected outcome, as well.

“We need more Jack Mashburns”

“Members, that’s sad because we are up here to do big things. We’re not here to worry about the next election. On the Speaker’s Designation Day, we learned about a man who served one term in the house. The room where my committee meets, that I’m honored to chair, the Education Innovation Committee, is named after this man. It was Jack Mashburn. He served in the 1950s for one term, he was 22 years old, he faced some difficult decisions, he stood up for what was right and he knew that his stand that he took was going to cost him the next election and you know what, he stood up for what he believed in and he was defeated the next election… We need more Jack Mashburns in the Florida Legislature today and we need more people to stand up for courage and not worry about what your caucus is going to think, not worry about what the teachers union is going to think.”