far more governmental and private support than any other form, this book looks at them in three major chapters. Chapter 6, also by Frankenberg and Siegel-Hawley, shows how the lack of meaningful civil rights policies has made charter schools even more segregated than regular public schools, particularly for black students, and how, in spite of many claims to the contrary by the charter school movement and its advocates, there is no convincing evidence of any net educational advantage from charter schools. Though there are some outstanding charter schools that perform better than the average public school, there are more that perform worse, and, on average, there appears to be no significant difference in test scores between charter and public schools. Additionally, charter school research has virtually ignored many of the impacts of more-diverse schools. The study in chapter 7, by Myron Orfield, Baris Gumus-Dawes, and Thomas Luce, addresses the evolution of the charter school movement where it began, in the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Chapter 8, by the same authors, looks at the rapid charterization of schools in the New Orleans area after Hurricane Katrina virtually wiped out the public school system there and conservatives in Washington DC and Baton Rouge took the opportunity to implement a massive experiment, using the leverage of billions of dollars of federal aid to rebuild the city. As president, both George W. Bush and Barack Obama have hailed some of the strongest charter schools in their visits to New Orleans, and the city provides a kind of test of what might happen under all-out charter school development. The results of this study raise challenging questions about the possible fragmentation and stratification of competing school systems within a single impoverished city as private schools that receive vouchers—and hence public funds—offer a variety of school programs while public schools become isolated, residual institutions. The researchers of chapters 7 and 8 find no convincing proof of educational gains but instead clear evidence that the charter schools have helped stratify, not diversify, the schools in the two areas. They also find nothing intrinsically superior about charter schools.
Determined to avoid the limits of publications that are content to merely describe problems, this book turns in its final set of chapters to the question of how we could use choice more effectively. Chapter 9 confronts the dilemma that inequality is rooted in metropolitan stratification but we are trying to deal with it through choices that are at either the neighborhood or the city level. The problems of segregation by race, class, and language and of unequal educational opportunity and achievement are starkly different in various parts of each metropolitan area. Policy discussions have largely ignored the metropolitan dimensions for decades, but there is powerful evidence favoring metropolitan-wide solutions, which produce more stable communities and more access to better schools for poor and minority students. There have been, however, some notable successes in metropolitan choice programs that deserve careful attention. Amy Stuart Wells and her coauthors explore those experiences and suggest ways that choice could be most effective across district lines. The link of housing to school options and the interaction of housing segregation with the fragmentation of metropolitan communities into many very different school districts are fundamental sources of unequal opportunity, and interdistrict policies are one of the only ways to overcome these forces.
Information availability is absolutely central to theories of markets, but research shows that the dispersal of information about choices is unequal in ways that further disadvantage minority and poor families. Any unequal distribution of information undermines the basic fairness of choice systems since it leads to the most-informed people—usually already otherwise advantaged—getting better opportunities. Jack Dougherty and his colleagues report in chapter 9 on a systematic effort in Hartford, Connecticut, to greatly raise the quality and accessibility of information about local schools. The project used the Web to improve information dispersal and worked against unequal internet access with special information and training sessions and access points. This chapter deepens understanding of information divides and the feasibility of interventions.
The current views of people in the Louisville (Jefferson Country, Kentucky) school district illuminate community desires in a metro district whose plan the U.S. Supreme Court struck down in 2007. Both parents and students told interviewers that they strongly favor continuing efforts to maintain diverse schools, in which both groups see important advantages. At the same time there are divisions over the effectiveness of the plan to achieve this and contradictions in some of the views, which express a simultaneous desire for choice, desegregation, and access to neighborhood schools. Chapter 11 explores the context in which district leaders must search for solutions.
The book concludes with a broader view of research on choice and diversity and the conditions for achieving and maximizing the potential benefits of diverse schools. It points to the possible contributions that can be made by federal and state actors, district- and school-level leaders, community and civil rights organizations, and external researchers. A central theme of the book is that the kind of choice offered and the terms under which it is implemented matter greatly in determining its consequences, and unless policy explicitly takes the race of students into account and has a goal of integration, it is likely to make segregation worse and opportunity more unequal. It would be a tragic outcome if a movement justified as an expansion of choices for the families that need them the most were to deepen separation and diminish opportunities. There is disturbing evidence that this is happening today. Yet there is a much richer and more beneficial practice of choice possible, deeply rooted in the experiences of the civil rights era, and there are ways to use its power for much more positive outcomes, for students, families, and our society.
NOTES
1. U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012, table 253.
2. Bartels, Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age.
3. Henig, Rethinking School Choice: The Limits of the Market Metaphor, 231.
4. Schwartz et al., “Goals 2000 and the Standards Movement.”
5. Thernstrom and Thernstrom, No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, 265.
6. Scott, “School Choice as a Civil Right: The Political Construction of a Claim and Implications for School Desegregation.”
7. Dillon and Schemo, “Charter Schools Fall Short in Public Schools Matchup: U.S. Reports Findings of Study in 5 States.”
8. Washington Post, "Obama Delivers Remarks on Education at National Urban League: Speech Transcript.”
9. U.S. Department of Education, “President Obama, Secretary Duncan Announce Race to the Top.”
10. Bush, first State of the Union address.
11. Clinton, eighth State of the Union address.
12. Carnoy et al., The Charter School Dust-Up: Examining the Evidence on Enrollment and Achievement.
13. National Center for Education Statistics, NAEP 2008: Trends in Academic Progress, Reading 1971-2008, Mathematics 1973-2008; Education Week, Diplomas Count, June 2011.
14. Fuller et al., Is the No Child Left Behind Act Working?
15. Prevention Institute for the Center for Health Improvement, “Nutrition Policy Profiles: Supermarket Access in Low-Income Communities.”
16. Eaton, The Other Boston Busing Story, 4-6.
17. Sunderman, Kim, and Orfield, NCLB Meets School Realities: Lessons from the Field.
18. Apart from a very small proportion who are approved for homeschooling.
19. For more on Milton Friedman, see chapter 2. For Alum Rock, see Bridge and Blackman, Family Choice in Schooling.
20. Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
21. Brown v. Board
