The “Choice Watch: Diversity and Access in Connecticut’s School Choice Programs” report released last week suggests ways that “open choice” schools in Connecticut should work to reduce segregation across racial, linguistic, and ability lines. The report finds that most school choice programs are actually integrated as far as socioeconomic status is concerned, with integration defined quite broadly: enrollment between 25-75% minority students.
Robert Cotto, Jr. and Kenneth Feder, authors of the report, found that 70% of charter, 81% of magnet, and 88% of technical schools have somewhat or substantially lower special education enrollment than that of local public schools. The notable exception to this is in Stamford where both of its charter schools have more than 20% of their students requiring special education services; however, the report notes, these schools had been “specifically designed as alternatives to traditional education.”
Technical schools, the report notes, are neither required to recruit or enroll students with disabilities; in fact, Cotto and Feder report, tech schools can refer back to district any children with disabilities whose needs interfere with their participation in the vocational aspect of the program. The report is not more specific in this, so we do not know to what extent these decisions are reasonable, given how some programs involve carpentry, heavy equipment, electrical work, and the like.
Students for whom English is not a first language were described as another demographic facing under-enrollment, with 88% of charter, approximately 84% of magnet, and 87% of technical schools having somewhat or substantially lower ELL (English Language Learner) enrollment than that of local public schools. Hartford’s local public schools report 18% of students as being ELL, while 3% of the students in its charter schools are ELL.
There are multiple possibilities for these disparities, according to the report. The magnet and technical schools have no explicit requirements regarding ELL enrollment; charter schools can have their charters not renewed if they are found to not “make sufficient effort to ‘attract, enroll, and retain'” ELL students, but no charter has been denied for this reason to date. Another factor in the linguistic disparity is the convoluted [my term, not theirs] school choice process. Even with the translation of documents, many of the parents who do not have strong English are also lacking the time and social networking that makes the process easier. There is some chicken-or-the-egg happening with this situation too, as choice programs are not obligated to offer bilingual education until twenty of its students qualify as ELL, so seeing such services lacking, others may steer their children to schools that already offer more expansive services.
As for racial segregation, it was found that 64.7% of charter schools in state are hyper-segregated, with more than 90% of the student body identifying as racial/ethnic minorities. With the exception of technical schools, all of Connecticut’s public schools are obligatied to “reduce racial, ethnic, and economic isolation.”
Dacia Toll, the co-CEO and President of charter school Achievement First, stated at a Hartford BOE meeting last year that AF is “not responsible for meeting Sheff standards,” a claim that is simply not true.
In contrast, the magnet schools are described as the “only choice program with quantifiable desegregation standards,” according to the report. Nearly 62% of magnet schools are considered integrated by the standards outlined in Sheff.
The State’s technical schools are not required to recruit or integrate.
Any time this topic is raised, we hear someone quip about how his child is not going to learn better by sitting next to a white child. The report states that “segregation is detrimental to the education of all children, both white and non-white” and that the “State should not be subsidizing this segregation.”
For those who would like their children to have interactions with people of varied abilities and backgrounds, the report suggests ways that such experiences could be opened up for a broader number of public school students.
Connecticut Voices for Children recommended, for starters, a greater level of transparency and disclosure when it comes to comparing local public schools to those that fall under the “choice” category. Because fewer local public schools enrolled economically, linguistically, and ability-disadvantaged students, the assessments of these schools may appear stronger, giving the impression that the educational quality from one school to the next is vastly different. The report says that failure “to account for these demographic differences will result in incomplete and misleading assessments and comparisons between choice programs and local schools.”
Beyond disclosure, Connecticut Voices for Children suggests that all school choice programs create “clear, quantifiable, and enforced integration standards, and sufficient resources to comply with those standards.”
It is also suggested that the State “investigate barriers to enrolling ELL students and students with disabilities” and remove those obstacles.
