A new report suggests the state’s 87 charter schools discriminate, segregating out students who are poorer, less proficient in English and more reliant on special needs education. The Rutgers University Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy and the advocacy group Save Our Schools NJ are recommending the state Department of Education change the application process. Bloustein School Associate Professor and co-author of the report is Julia Sass Rubin and she told NJTV News Anchor Mary Alice Williams that she recommends a weighted lottery to fix some of the charter school issues found in the report.
“I think what the report shows, with data that is public data so it’s completely replicable, is that charter schools all across the state educate a different population of students than the schools from which they draw their students. Those students have lower rates of poverty at the charter schools, they have much lower rates of special needs and they have less expensive special needs categories,” said Sass Rubin.
Sass Rubin said that she does not know why that is and the report does not delve into that issue or cast blame. She said that the report is just designed to provide the data so policy solutions to the issue can be decided on. Her hypotheses as to why include that fewer children are applying or more children are leaving who are special needs children, have very high poverty or don’t speak English.
Carlos Perez of the New Jersey Charter Schools Association says Rubin’s wrong. He says charter schools are required to accept all students who apply from within a district and can’t implement selective enrollment policies. In response, Sass Rubin said that the public data is very clear that the charter schools report to the Department of Education. She said it is less critical to figure out if someone is to blame than to figure out how to solve the problem because what happens is as more children leave traditional school systems who are easier to educate, the more challenging students are concentrated in the traditional schools and it becomes virtually impossible to offer them a high quality education.
Sass Rubin said that the report is recommending a number of ways to solve theses issues, but there are more ideas as well. She said that she just wanted to start the conversation and put some real data out. She said that she is recommending that the state Department of Education or some neutral party run the lottery for all the charter schools. She said that the schools are admitting based on a lottery system but lotteries are not a great way to represent the sending community because lotteries only reflect who applies. She said that can easily result in a very unequal distribution between the charter school and the sending district. She said that she is also recommending a weighted lottery, which means that students who are under represented in the applicant pool be put into the lottery several times so that they have a higher chance of being drawn so that they reflect their proportion in the district.
Sass Rubin said that she is also recommending that any students who leave the charter schools be replaced because some charter schools do not do that. She also said that the replacement should be from a similar demographic group in terms of high poverty students, limited English proficiency students or students with special needs.
“It’s not about casting blame and there are many charter schools that are concerned about this issue and would like to work with us and to work with each other to try to address it. I think we need to move to that phase rather than the defensive phase. That doesn’t really move us forward,” said Sass Rubin.