LITTLE ROCK — Open-enrollment charter schools in Pulaski County are helping rather than hindering racial desegregation efforts in traditional public schools, concludes a new study by researchers at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
But the study drew sharp criticism from an attorney for the Little Rock School District, who said the authors of the study don't understand the federal-court-approved school-desegregation requirements in the county.
The analysis of the impact of charter schools on desegregation was released Monday in advance of a status hearing set for 10 a.m. Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Brian Miller in the 26-year-old Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit.
The issue of state-approved charter schools has been raised in pre-hearing documents sent to the judge and could be discussed at the hearing.
Nathan C. Jensen and Gary W. Ritter of the university's Office for Educational Policy found in their analysis that white students in Pulaski County who transferred to charter schools were more likely to come from schools that had an above-average white enrollment.
Similarly, black and Hispanic students and those of other racial and ethnic groups who transferred to charter schools were likely to come from schools with above-average minority enrollment.
"When this occurs, these transfers actually make the traditional public schools more racially balanced, not less," the researchers said. "It seems that claims suggesting that charter schools impede the ability of [Pulaski County] to become more integrated are simply unfounded."
The study calculates the Little Rock district's racial makeup as 78 percent minority including blacks, Hispanics and other racial and ethnic groups.
In contrast, the three Pulaski County districts typically group white students with other racial groups to compare to blacks.
The researchers also said restrictions on charter school enrollment in Pulaski County would be detrimental to minority students who are more likely to enroll in charter schools than their white peers and who are more likely to come from families without the economic means to attend private schools or those in more affluent settings.
Chris Heller, an attorney for the Little Rock School District - which has objected to state-approved, independently run charter schools in Pulaski County because of their effect on desegregation efforts - said the report "should be an embarrassment to the University of Arkansas."
"The authors obviously have no idea about the desegregation efforts they purport to analyze or any of the requirements for desegregation in Pulaski County,"Heller said.
Miller, who recently became the presiding judge in the long-running case, had asked attorneys for the different school districts and other parties to put into writing whether the Pulaski County Special and North Little Rock school districts should be declared unitary, or desegregated, and released from federal-court monitoring.
The Little Rock district has already been declared unitary but is still cooperating in interdistrict student transfer programs designed to help desegregate all three districts.
Attorneys for the Little Rock district responded with doubts about the Pulaski County Special district's compliance with its desegregation obligations in part because "of the loss of students and funding caused by the proliferation of open-enrollment charter schools."
Heller and Clay Fendley, another attorney for the Little Rock district, wrote to the judge that the charter schools - approved by the state without limits on racial makeup or student transportation requirements - are some of the most racially segregated schools in Pulaski County.
The Dreamland Academy, which has a 91 percent black enrollment, and Academics Plus Charter School in Maumelle, which has a 15 percent black enrollment, were cited as examples.
Ritter and Jensen said there are traditional public schools that are equally, if not more, segregated than the charter schools. Seventeen of the 20 most segregated schools in Pulaski County are traditional schools, they said.
"There is just no basis to allege that charters are causing racial segregation of the Little Rock public schools," Ritter, director of the Office of Education Policy, said in an interview. "It's just plain silly."
But Heller countered: "The difference is that our effort has been to reduce and eliminate segregated schools not create new segregatedschools."
In the study, Ritter and Jensen, a research associate, addressed questions about where the charter school students come from; the race and family income of charter school students; the desegregation impact on the Little Rock schools; and whether the students are coming from schools that are more or less integrated than the charter schools they now attend.
The researchers reported that there were 3,469 total students in eight open-enrollment charter schools in Pulaski County and 51,040 in traditional public schools.
There were 1,468 firstyear charter school students in grades two through nine in the eight charter schools in 2008-09, not counting the Little Rock-based Arkansas Virtual Academy that serves students statewide.
Of those first-year students, the authors of the study said 493 were from the Little Rock district, and 364 were from the Pulaski County Special and North Little Rock districts. The origin of 611 students was unknown because they presumably came from other counties or states, private schools, or home schools, the study said.
"The number of students transferring to charter schools from schools in Pulaski County is insignificant compared to the total number of students in Pulaski County," the study said. "It seems unlikely that this small number [less than 7 percent] would significantly impact racial integration."
There are 10 open-enrollment charter schools in Pulaski County for the 2009-10 school year, which does not include the Virtual Academy. There are 18 statewide.
Ritter and Jensen found that there were 227 students - 95 white and 132 minority - whose transfers to charter schools aided desegregation at their Little Rock district school. There were 94 transfers - 11 white and 83 minority - that reduced the level of desegregation at their former Little Rock schools.
Of the total 493 Little Rock district students who transferred to charters in 2008-09, 36 percent were white, 54 percent were black and 10 percent were "other."
A total of 44 percent were eligible for subsidized school meals because of low family income, Ritter and Jensen said.
That compares with about 65 percent of students in the Little Rock district eligible for subsidized meals, Heller said.
Heller has argued that the charter schools attract students who on average are higher achieving and more affluent. That is due in part to the fact that the charter schools provide almost no free school bus transportation.
The Office for Education Policy study also included a list of most integrated schools in Pulaski County, which includes the Lisa Academy Charter School and the three eStem charter schools, as well as Little Rock's six original magnet schools that were specifically designed as part of a court-approved desegregation plan to attract a 50-50 mix of black-and-white students.
Heller said the list illustrates the district's reliance on magnet schools for desegregation. If the district should discontinue its magnet program, it could lose six of 11 schools that have an equally balanced racial makeup.
Yet the study determined that a desegregated Little Rock school would have a minority enrollment of 68.6 percent to 88.6 percent, he said.
"By this definition ... the magnet schools are not integrated schools," Heller said. "They talk about the types of transfers that would be beneficial to the integration of LRSD. Among those would be white students leaving the magnet schools, according to this report."
The study is available at the Office for Education Policy Web site: http://www.uark.edu/ua/oep.
Front Section, Pages 1, 6 on 09/29/2009