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129 The expansion of charter schools has been championed by every presidential administration since that of George H.W. Bush, under whom the first such schools were founded. These administrations have supported charters by escalating financial allocations for them and using the presidential bully pulpit to promote their virtues.1 Given such high levels of federal support, it is not surprising that charter school numbers have exploded over the past two decades, although nationally and in every state, charter schools still serve only a small fraction of the public school enrollment. in an extraordinary intervention in state education policy making, the Barack Obama administration used leverage created by a national economic crisis to make badly needed emergency funding dependent on the alteration of state laws and policies that excluded or limited the number of charter schools. Thirteen states—including some that eventually did not win race to the top funding— promptly changed their policies, essentially making what had been an educational approach of real significance in only a handful of states into a national movement.2 The Obama administration also focused attention on converting traditional public schools into charters as a solution in its “turnaround” policy for the nation’s most troubled title i schools. it committed billions of dollars through the title i school improvement Grants to transform the five thousand lowest-performing schools using one of four reform strategies; the “restart” strategy allowed schools to be converted from public to charter. since there is no research-based consensus that charters are educationally superior, this forceful policy appears to reflect an ideological position. Undoubtedly, the newest fiscal 6 A segregating Choice? An Overview of Charter School Policy, Enrollment Trends, and Segregation Erica Frankenberg and Genevieve siegel-Hawley 130 Frankenberg and Siegel-Hawley incentives for states to increase the number of charter schools will only fuel their expansion in the years to come. supporters of charter schools cite a number of arguments that have helped the movement gain traction among education stakeholders. like proponents of other forms of choice, charter school advocates argue that forcing all schools to compete for students will lead to more experimentation and ultimately better outcomes. in an era of skepticism about government, charter schools’ autonomy from local school districts may also attract supporters. some—though certainly not all—civil rights and minority groups support charter schools, arguing that black and latino students in urban areas with underperforming schools deserve the same opportunity to choose that wealthy and white families exercise when they move to suburban communities with better schools. The discourse about charter schools’ success has largely focused on narrow measures of individual student outcomes. Most of the research on charter schools has examined whether they foster higher student achievement than traditional schools.3 less examined has been the extent to which students in charter schools persist to graduation; studies in different cities and states report mixed findings.4 We also do not fully know about rates of attrition from charter schools or how those trends may impact comparisons to public schools, which must serve all students. One recent study put attrition from charter schools in Chicago in one year at 11%.5 And there are, of course, many goals of schooling that should be examined in any publicly funded school. What is common across the justifications for charter schools and the discussion of their “success” is a focus on how they may improve individual outcomes without consideration of larger concerns about how these schools or family choices affect the education of all students. Charter schools draw money and people from public school districts, increasingly segmenting these resources into smaller units, which may become more homogeneous over time.6 This means not only that resources leave the district instead of benefitting a larger portion of the population than is served by a single charter school but also, because of increased homogeneity, that students are not exposed to others from different backgrounds than their own. Further, it stands to reason that families who choose charter schools will be less invested in the success of the public school district.7 We see the ultimate realization of this trend in several cities. As more charter schools have opened in Detroit (it had more than seventy in 2008–9), half of its public schools have closed and class size has increased. likewise, in spring 2012 the Philadelphia school district, facing massive budget cuts and an increasing charter school presence, announced it would disband by 2017. Charters are the most...

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