Racial Divide Grows with Charter Schools Across the Country

The Los Angeles Unified School District has more charters schools than any other school district in the country. Charter schools in L.A tend to serve underrepresented communities which are often either Black, Latino or Asian. This results in schools whose enrollments are largely monoracial.

You can find similar scenarios across the country, for example, in Texas, the typical Black charter-school student attends a campus where nearly 3 in 4 students also are Black.

A new report from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, "Choice Without Equity: Charter School Segregation and the Need for Civil Rights Standards," found that charter schools stratify students by race, class, and possibly language, and are more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the country.

The LA Times notes there are nuances that underlie the data used in the report:

Locally based ICEF Public Schools grew out of an after-school and summer program in a predominantly black neighborhood. Its early families included...

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