Desegregation not imperiled, UA study says

LITTLE ROCK — The impact of charter schools on the Little Rock School District is “quite insignificant” because so few Little Rock students transfer to Pulaski County-area charter schools, a new analysis from the University of Arkansas’ Office for Education Policy concludes.

“But if there is any impact at all, it would be one that is actually beneficial for the LRSD,” says the study, which was written by Nathan C. Jensen and Gary Ritter and is a follow-up to a similar study done last year. Ritter is director of the Office for Education Policy, and Jensen is a research associate.

Relatively few Little Rock students leave the district each year for the independently run, taxpayer-supported charter schools, the authors wrote.

The new report drew sharp criticism last week from a representative of the school district, which is challenging Pulaski County charter schools in federal court.

This year, 266 students from the Little Rock district transferred to charter schools, which was 1.2 percent of the district’s enrollment in the first through 12th grades. In 2008-09, there were 586 transfers from Little Rock, 2.6 percent. In 2007-08there were 102 transfers, or 0.7 percent.

“We found that a majority of these transfers are enhancing the levels of racial integration for the traditional public schools from which they transferred,” Jensen and Ritter said.

“This is because the majority of transfers involved black students leaving predominately black schools, white students leaving predominately white schools, or [low-income] students leaving predominately high-poverty schools. In all of these cases, the student transfers help the exiting schools because the LRSD TPS [traditional public school] is left less segregated as a result of these student transfers.”

Jensen said in an interview that the conclusions in the new study with its expanded database generally mirror the results from theinitial analysis.

“We have more kids, but our answers really don’t change, which makes us feel pretty confident with what we have found,” he said.

The study, “Updated Analysis of Charter Schools and Racial Segregation in Pulaski County Schools,” contradicts many of the arguments made in the Little Rock district’s May 19 challenge in federal court to charter schools.

The district, which has about 25,700 students in prekindergarten through 12th grade, is contesting the state’s practice of giving unconditional approval to charter schools without regard to the effect the schools have on desegregation in traditional public schools.

There are 10 existing openenrollment charter schools in Pulaski County and one planned to open in July. That’s 11 of the 17 charter schools in the state. That 11 does not include the Arkansas Virtual Academy, a charter school that is based in Little Rock but serves students statewide.

Representatives of the Little Rock district criticized the Office for Education Policy study last year for failing to take into account the federal court requirements for the parties in the 27-year-old school-desegregation lawsuit. Those criticisms were repeated last week.

“LRSD’s current desegregation efforts are designed to remedy interdistrict constitutional violations by the state, North Little Rock School District and the Pulaski County Special School District,” Clay Fendley, an attorney for the Little Rock district, said Friday. “All four parties’ desegregation efforts are governed by a federal court order to which all the parties agreed.

“The authors’ complete failure to consider the requirements of that federal court order/agreement render the report useless in assessing the impact of charter schools on the parties’ desegregation efforts,” Fendley said, adding that the study “should be an embarrassment to the university.”

The researchers found that students enrolled in charter schools “are more white and less black” compared with the student body in the Little Rock district.

The Little Rock district was 68 percent black in the school year that is drawing to an end.

The charter schools in Pulaski County had a total enrollment of 3,179 this year, of which 44 percent of the students were black.

The percentage of Little Rock district black students who are taking advantage of the charter schools is growing, the researchers found. Black students made up 68.4 percent of the transfers to charter schools this year, up from 51.7 percent in 2006-07.

Additionally, the researchers said, the percentage of students transferring to charter schools who qualify for subsidized meals is growing. A total of 52.3 percent of transfer students to charters this year qualified for the subsidized meals compared with the 17 percent that qualified as recently as 2005-06.

Still, the overall charter-school enrollment has a smaller percentage of students who are eligible for free and reduced-price school lunches because of low family income than that in the Little Rock district. About 70 percent of students in the Little Rock district could receive free- and reduced-priced lunches this school year.

Jensen and Ritter found that white students who transfer to charter schools typically move into charter schools with greater percentages of white students than were in their previous Little Rock schools. This year, white transfer students moved from Little Rock district schools that were on average 37 percent white to Pulaski County charters that were about 40 percent white on average.

The white Little Rock students typically came from traditional public schools that were “above-average” in their white enrollments when compared with the white enrollment overall in the Little Rock district, Jensen and Ritter said.

The researchers defined an above-average white enrollment to be in excess of 31.7 percent white in a district where this year students were 21 percent white, 68 percent black and 11 percent Hispanic, Asian or of other races and ethnicities.

White students who transferred from schools that were more than 31.7 percent white moved their former schools closer to the districtwide proportions and helped desegregation, the study said.

The schools with greater than 31.7 percent white enrollments include the Little Rock district’s six original or stipulation magnet schools. Those schools were designed as part of the long-running desegregation lawsuit to have a 50 percent black enrollment. The other half are supposed to be white students or students of other races and ethnicities.

Those schools - Booker, Carver, Gibbs and Williams elementaries, Mann Magnet Middle School and Parkview Magnet High - accept students from throughout Pulaski County. The schools offer special programs to attract both black and white students.

Little Rock district officials have argued that one way the charter schools hinder desegregation is that they drain the district of students - particularly white students - who might otherwise apply to attend magnet schools. As a result, the district has long lists of black students waiting to be assigned to magnet schools who can’t be assigned because there are so few white applicants from a countywide pool of students to create the required 50-50 racial balance.

Jensen discounted the district’s argument.

He also questioned the validity of the 50-50 black and nonblack requirement for magnet schools in a district that doesn’t have a 50-50 overall racial makeup.

“We did look specifically at where the charter-schoolstudents are coming from and there is not a clear pattern,” Jensen continued. “They are not leaving magnet schools at a higher rate; they are leaving all schools at a similar rate.”

Jensen and Ritter also found in the analysis that in 2009, 20.6 percent of students who transferred to charter schools came from the Little Rock district. About one-third of the transfer students to charters came from private schools, home schools or from schools outside Pulaski County and outside Arkansas.