Charter schools and the risk of increased segregation

In remarks at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan emphasized the importance of “compelling educational research” and expressed concern that “today educators and policy makers still have a large unmet need for relevant research. . . . Sadly, school leaders and educators too often have to guess when they make education policy.”

The fact is we don’t have to guess about the consequences of one of the Obama Administration’s most visible policies: the national expansion of charter schools. We need only turn to a large body of relevant research showing that charter schools, on average, don’t have an academic advantage over traditional public schools, but they do have a significant risk of leading to increased segregation.

In spite of this, the policy on charter schools remains a centerpiece of the administration’s initiatives (as it was, in a different form, in the Bush Administration), despite abundant evidence that the policy is inconsistent with the longstanding goal of promoting school integration.