[lg policy] New York Charter Schools Lag in Enrolling Hispanics

Tue Jun 15 14:11:46 UTC 2010

June 14, 2010
New York Charter Schools Lag in Enrolling Hispanics

By JENNIFER MEDINA and ROBERT GEBELOFF

When charter schools began opening in New York a decade ago, they were
hailed as a better opportunity for children in poor neighborhoods,
where failing schools had been the norm. But while charter schools are
open to all, they have catered to one demographic group far less than
another. Although Hispanics are the largest ethnic group in New York
City’s public schools, there are almost twice as many blacks among the
30,000 charter school students, an analysis by The New York Times
shows.  The issue is a sticky one among charter school advocates, who
say the most important aspect of any school is that it educates the
students who attend. But officials at the city’s Education Department
acknowledge that charter schools should better reflect the city and
say that they are working to attract to the schools more immigrants,
including those from Latin America. This year, for the first time, the
city produced a directory of charter schools, translating it into
eight languages.

“We’re talking about a group of schools that in the grand scheme of
things are relatively new and are seeking to connect with students who
are going to require extra efforts to reach,” said Michael Duffy, the
head of the charter school office of the Education Department. The
makeup of the schools has also attracted attention from state
legislators. A law enacted last month to increase the number of
charter schools in the state required that the schools enroll more
students who are still learning English, as well as more special
education students, although it is unclear how those provisions will
be monitored or enforced.

In many ways, the demographics reflect the history of charter school
growth in the city. The schools, which are privately run but publicly
financed, almost immediately gained major backing from powerful black
politicians and clergy leaders. The first ones were concentrated in
and around Harlem, not only because of its large concentration of
struggling schools, but also because its proximity to the Upper East
Side and the Upper West Side would make it easier to attract teachers,
attention and affluent donors.  Latino leaders, meanwhile, embraced
the schools more slowly, and few community organizations that catered
to Hispanics rushed to create charter schools. Today, blacks make up
30 percent of the enrollment in the school system, but 60 percent of
the enrollment of charter schools. Hispanics, who account for 40
percent of the enrollment of public schools, represent only a third of
the charter school population.

There are now nearly 100 charter schools in the five boroughs,
including a number in predominantly Latino neighborhoods like
Washington Heights, East Harlem and Sunset Park. But even in those
neighborhoods, the schools do not reflect the surrounding communities,
the analysis by The Times shows. Charter schools have proportionately
fewer Hispanic students — as well as fewer students learning English,
regardless of their ethnicity — than nearby schools, including schools
that share the same building. If charter schools matched the
demographics of their neighboring district schools, there would be
roughly 5,000 additional Hispanic students enrolled in them, according
to the analysis, which used demographic data from the Education
Department.

The principal of the Carl C. Icahn Charter Schools, Jeffrey Litt, said
he and colleagues made efforts to recruit a student body that reflects
the schools’ Bronx neighborhoods. But at Icahn Charter School 4 in the
South Bronx, for example, slightly more than a third of the students
are Hispanic, while a traditional public elementary school two blocks
away is three-quarters Hispanic. At Harlem Day Charter School on East
123rd Street, one-quarter of the students are Hispanic, compared with
nearly three-quarters at Public School 96 three blocks south. At
Harlem Success Academy 4 on Lexington Avenue and 120th Street, one in
five students is Hispanic, compared with two-thirds of the students in
the traditional public school, Public School 7, that it shares a
building with. The Times’s school-to-school comparison covered only
elementary and middle schools, which make up the vast majority of
charter schools in the city. Most high schools in the city are not
zoned and draw students from far beyond their neighborhoods.
(Excluding high schools, blacks make up 62 percent of the charter
schools’ enrollment.)

Lillian Rodríguez López, the president of the Hispanic Federation, a
network of social service organizations, has been supportive of Mayor
Michael R. Bloomberg’s changes in school governance, but she said the
low enrollment of Latino students was a worrisome sign, particularly
because the mayor and Chancellor Joel I. Klein praise the charter
schools as beacons of success. “When you create a system that isn’t
going to absorb the same students for whatever reason, you are
marginalizing them even further,” Ms. Rodríguez López said. “If you
are saying that these schools present and offer these ideal learning
environments, then you need to make sure that these students have the
opportunity to access and go to them.”  Charter schools in the city
have been criticized for not offering enough services for students
still learning English, a shortcoming the new law aims to address.
Only 5 percent of charter students are classified as English learners,
compared with 15 percent of public school students over all.

Several charter school operators said these numbers were low because
the schools tried to make their students fluent quickly, and when they
succeeded, those students were no longer classified as still learning
English. But officials at the Education Department said they were
concerned that not enough Hispanic parents felt comfortable applying
to the schools or with the services the charter schools offer.  The
Rev. Raymond Rivera, who helped create the Family Life Academy Charter
School in the Bronx, which stands out among charter schools in that
more than a third of its students are still learning English, said the
schools “have to be able to prove to parents that they are going to
teach their child English and at the same time not just force them
into a classroom where they won’t understand anything.”

The vast majority of charter schools admit students based on a
lottery, which can give preferences to students who live near the
school and to groups of students the state identifies as “at risk.”
Only this spring, the state agreed to classify students still learning
English as at risk.  During a meeting with board members of charter
schools this spring, Mr. Duffy, of the Education Department,
encouraged them to reach out to local immigrant and Hispanic leaders
and consider them for positions on their boards. “There’s been a lot
of work done to connect with African-American churches and community
groups,” he said. “There is a whole cadre of leaders who have really
embraced charters — not all of them but many have — and I don’t see an
analogous connection with the Hispanic community.”

In many charter schools, he added, the board has a far higher
proportion of whites than the student body does, which could compound
the problem of missing a particular slice of students. Some speculate
that Hispanic parents, particularly in middle-class families, are more
likely to choose Roman Catholic schools as an alternative to
traditional public schools. And many parents interviewed said they
were skittish about sending their children to a school where they
would be among only a few Latino students. Each charter school has the
responsibility to recruit students, and methods vary widely. But all
the schools rely heavily on networks in playgrounds and churches. If
parents are thrilled with a school, they are likely to tell their
friends.

Of more than a dozen parents interviewed at a South Bronx public
library one recent afternoon, only one had heard of the Icahn 4
charter school, just two blocks away. “I don’t understand what charter
schools are,” Celestina Barela said as her 6-year-old son, Yonatan,
sat reading a book on astronomy. “I just went to the closest school to
me. He seems happy — I ask him if he likes school and he tells me yes,
so I like the school, too.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/education/15charters.html?adxnnl=1&ref=nyregion&adxnnlx=1276610427-1dEzbkBXsnTkeNpjWb9h+A

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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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