In the landmark Supreme Court case Brown vs Board of Education Chief Justice Earl Warren stated, “We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.” This decision was handed down more than 50 years ago, but its message remains relevant today. Today, the government is funding schools that actively increase inequality in the education system, by separating students based on class, race, or any other number of characteristics. The mission of public education should be to provide high quality education to every student regardless of demographic characteristics. Charter schools directly contradict this goal and should therefore not receive government funding.
Charter schools tend to increase social and racial stratification. The UCLA Civil Rights Project stated in a report in 2009 “Education studies both in the U.S. context and abroad, from England to New Zealand to Chile, all highlight a basic point. Unrestricted choice results in stratification.” Charter schools actively increase social isolation and inequality substantially more than public schools do. A UCLA Civil Rights Project Report published in 2010 stated “black students in charter schools are far more likely than their traditional public school counterparts to be educated in intensely segregated settings. At the national level, seventy percent of black charter school students attend intensely segregated minority charter schools (which enroll 90-100% of students from under-represented minority backgrounds), or twice as many as the share of intensely segregated black students in traditional public schools.” The separation of children though charter schools is a version of separate but “equal” schooling and it should not stand.
Secondly, charter schools fail to provide equal education. Publicly funded schools must provide equal education according to the UCLA Civil Rights Project. Charter schools often exclude those with disabilities and English language learners. According to a Boston Globe article by James Viznis published in 2016, 13% of the students who attended charter schools in Boston could not speak English fluently; in contrast a third of Boston public school attendees could not. According to the same article, students with disabilities also make up a smaller percentage of students at charter schools than public schools. Charter schools in Los Angeles also lag behind public schools in students with disabilities according to a report by Robert Skeels published in 2009 by the Office of the Independent Monitor in Los Angeles. Charter schools use the tactic of excluding traditionally low achieving or high maintenance children from their schools to maintain high test scores according to James Viznis.
More than 50 years ago the Supreme Court declared that separating students while providing “equal” educations was unconstitutional. Charter schools may not be as explicit in their separation, but the consequences are the same. Students are separated by demographic effectively prohibiting them from achieving integrated education. This makes charter schools contradictions to the goals of public education and should lead to their demise.
Liberal Talking Head 