Wednesday, September 16, 2015
The Century Foundation Releases Report on Charter Schools and District Integration
Today, the options for families to escape racially isolated, high-poverty, poor-performing school districts are very limited—a major problem that has persisted since the civil rights era.
A new report, Charters without Borders: Using Inter-district Charter Schools as a Tool for Regional School Integration, outlines how charter schools can and should be part of the solution to addressing this issue of inter-district segregation.
The report’s author, The Century Foundation education fellow Halley Potter, recommends four key elements of a strong integrated charter school model, including:
1. enrolling students from multiple districts
2. using an admissions strategy that promotes diversity, such as a weighted lottery
3. providing transportation to students, and
4. committing to integration that extends through every element of the school (admissions, pedagogy, climate, governance, etc.)...