In response to the Urban Institute study (posted yesterday), Richard Buery, Jr. of KIPP writes in EdWeek that “it is just wrong to criticize charters for … problems are as old as the republic itself.” This is essentially a straw man. The problem is not excessive criticism of charter schools by integration advocates, but a false narrative (running for six years and counting) that charter schools are somehow uniquely positioned to solve the problems that our supposedly problem-ridden traditional public school systems cannot. The significance of the Urban Institute study is not that charters cause segregation, but that their claims (often served up with severe criticism of our public schools) need to be weighed against the evidence.
Read the Urban Institute study here and read the article here.
Support New York Appleseed’s work by contacting us here and donating below.
