Critic slams Twin Cities charter schools over race, discipline

A new analysis of Twin Cities charter schools asks some hard questions about the same big issues facing regular schools. It says even some of the best charters struggle with segregation, discipline and special education.

Supporters, however, say the comparisons don't fit.

Charter schools are publicly-funded schools that operate independent of a traditional school district system. They're meant to be laboratories for new approaches to teaching and learning. They've been embraced by many parents of color frustrated by the achievement of their children in traditional districts.

But Myron Orfield, a former legislator and longtime critic of charter schools, says charters are creating a new form of segregation and that's hurting education. Orfield, who directs the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity at the University of Minnesota Law School, says charters also have a poor record on student discipline and enrolling special needs children.

Those who back and run charter schools in the Twin Cities, however, say Orfield's analysis misses the mark.

The difference is, in all of this, is that parents are voluntarily choosing charters, said Bill Wilson, founder of Higher Ground Academy in St. Paul, a charter school with more than 700 students, nearly all East African immigrants.

The school's been named one of the state's best schools by U.S. News and World Report, one that gets good results with a challenging student population.

"In southern Indiana when I was in school, schools were segregated. There were many public schools set aside for white children, and a very few set aside for black kids. So black children, they would select the schools we could go to. We had no choice," said Wilson.

The right of families to determine the best way to educate their kids — not just a head count — is the real antidote to racial disparity, he added.

Orfield, however, says the separation plays out in other ways. Even the most exemplary schools, he said, exclude special education students and that improves their results. Charters, he added, also dispense disproportionate levels of serious discipline, a subject of renewed debate in Twin Cities schools.

In the the 2013-2014 school year the metro's three largest districts, Minneapolis, St. Paul and Anoka-Hennepin, handed out about one suspension or expulsion for every 10 kids enrolled.

But at charters like Best Academy, Minnesota International and Sojourner Truth in Minneapolis, the rate runs as much as five times higher, according to state data for the same years, although officials at some of the schools say those numbers have come down now.

"There's nothing like the levels of suspensions in the public schools at all," he said. "Charter schools, particularly these Beat the Odds charter schools, have suspension rates that are higher than any public schools. Far higher. And I think if the public schools were suspending kids at that rate, they'd probably be under investigation by the Justice Department."

Charter school backers say Orfield fundamentally misunderstands the nature of their schools.

"What we provide is, number one a very structured environment. And we do have many more rules that you may not find in a public school," said Eric Mahmoud, founder of Best Academy, one of the schools Orfield cites.

Mahmoud says parents have left traditional schools precisely because charters can offer a higher standard.

"There's some students, that eventually after time, they certainly are able to adapt to the program and they're very, very successful," he said. "And there's some students that don't adapt to the program."

The same holds true for special education, said Eugene Piccolo, head of the Minnesota Association of Charter Schools. He said Orfield's contention that charters are cherry-picking students has an alternate explanation.

"He doesn't consider that charter schools provide a different kind of learning environment where kids don't need to be put in special ed," Piccolo said. "He doesn't consider the fact that maybe traditional public schools are putting way too many kids in special ed."

Orfield says even small improvements in racial and socio-economic integration at regular public schools would serve all students in the Twin Cities better.