Should Segregated Charter Schools Integrate?

Students at KIPP LA's “no shortcuts, no excuses” charter schools are beating the odds by thriving academically. Does it matter that their schools are segregated?

KIPP LA’s Executive Director Marcia Aaron doesn’t think so. She says that integrating her schools would take away coveted seats from students who need them the most.

Eric Grannis, charter school trustee and husband of charter school operator Eva Moskowitz, disagrees. He claims that integration’s benefits are overwhelmingly positive, and that all schools should strive to attain diversity.

KIPP LA Schools operates five charter schools in under-resourced communities in Los Angeles. When middle school KIPPsters start fifth grade, they’re typically two to three years below grade level. By eighth grade, they outperform Los Angeles Unified School District’s students by almost 30 percent. Many are accepted into top college-prep high schools, and collectively they earn millions of dollars in scholarships.

Out of 1,260 KIPP LA students, 98 percent are African American or Latino.

With lawmakers, researchers, educators, and parents at odds over whether segregated charter schools should integrate, TakePart consults policy experts David Armor and Erica Frankenberg for further insight.

COST-BENEFIT APPROACH

Dr. David Armor is a professor of public policy at George Mason University who participated in more than 40 school desegregation and educational adequacy cases. He tells TakePart that there is no clear relationship between desegregation and academic success.

“There are studies that show no relationship,” he says. “There are some studies that show small relationships. There are a few studies that show larger relationships. . . . It’s not reliable to say that if you desegregate schools, you’re going to get better achievement.”

Since integration doesn’t automatically improve academic outcomes, Armor recommends using a cost-benefit analysis to determine its necessity.

“Mandatory desegregation methods like busing have been extremely controversial,” he explains. “They generally often lead to counterproductive results like white flight or middle class flight, loss of support for the public schools, turmoil, and general unhappiness. The public schools have a number of problems anyway, so why add another burden and another level of problems that you’re going to deal with for uncertain, very small gains?”

When students in racially isolated schools are struggling academically, Armor recommends less disruptive alternatives, like pedagogical interventions, to raise achievement. He also designs and supports voluntary desegregation programs, which are far less costly than mandatory ones.

Armor says that people use high-performing charter schools like KIPP to prove that desegregation is overrated.  But he cautions against using KIPP schools to draw general conclusions about all minority students, because KIPP kids are a self-selected group and not a representative sample.

“You certainly wouldn’t want to eliminate KIPP schools because they’re predominantly one minority race,” he says. “You don’t have to have a desegregated school for black students to do well.” 

INTEGRATION FOR INTEGRATION’S SAKE

Dr. Erica Frankenberg is an assistant professor at Pennsylvania State University. She co-edited Lessons in Integration: Realizing the Promise of Racial Diversity in America’s Schools with Gary Orfield, and Integrating Schools in a Changing Society: New Policies and Legal Options for a Multiracial Generation to be released later this year.

In her view, the research is clear: Integration improves academic outcomes. “There are decades of social science studies that demonstrate a fairly strong consensus that diverse schools are associated with higher academic achievement and attainment for minority students,” Frankenberg tells TakePart.

She adds that the benefits of integration go well beyond higher test scores. In her words: “Research finds psychological benefits for students of all races, like challenging stereotypes and reduced prejudices. There are a number of studies that find students live more integrated lives as adults when they have attended diverse schools, and minority students have improved life chances compared to minority students who went to segregated schools.”

Frankenberg explains that high-performing schools like KIPP are the exception in the charter school world, not the rule. There are plenty of low-performing segregated charters that should be factored into the desegregation debate.

“I also think that charter or not, even the highest quality segregated schools (white or minority) still don't provide students an opportunity to have substantial interracial experiences, which given the diversity of the current and future population, is an extremely important experience for students to have,” she says. “Thus, school leaders might want to think about ways they might partner with other schools or communities to provide integration opportunities.”

In his New York Times opinion piece, Bob Herbert writes: “I favor integration for integration's sake.” When TakePart asks Frankenberg to comment, she replies: “I agree with him. I think there are empirical reasons—not to mention constitutional reasons—to favor integration that you can achieve in no other way than via diverse schools.”

And so the debate rages on. Do you think segregated charter schools should integrate?

Photo: Knight Foundation/Creative Commons via Flickr.