Yesterday, the Arkansas Times blog reported on the latest installment of LRSD attorney Chris Heller’s attempt to claim that public charter schools are harming the district’s efforts at integration. We have previously pointed out the errors in Heller’s arguments here and here.

While it is annoying to continue correcting Heller’s false claims, it is nevertheless important to point out the truth when these claims are made. And, while some time could be spent trying to figure out why Heller’s arguments increasingly seem to focus on integration in terms of achievement levels and poverty status, I am going to simply focus on the real issue at hand. That is, racial integration.

The Arkansas Times blog links to this table supplied by Heller, which purportedly shows that some of the district’s charter schools are less integrated than traditional public schools in Pulaski County because some of them have lower percentages of minorities than the traditional public schools in LRSD, NLRSD, and PCSSD.

The problem with Heller’s use of the data, however, is that in his analysis the percentage of minorities in those districts are aggregated at the district level. The percentages he shows for the charter schools are given at the school level. What this means is that the amount of segregation within the schools in LRSD, NLRSD, and PCSSD is ignored by Heller. It is impossible to know the level of segregation within the traditional public schools simply by looking at district averages.

As we have mentioned previously, a study by the U of A’s Office for Education Policy used a more rigorous approach–an approach commonly used by academics who study school integration. The OEP study looks at the average levels of minority students in Pulaski County as a whole, and then looks at individual schools to see how close they are to the county-wide average. Here is a table from the OEP report, which shows the 20 schools which are furthest from the county average.

Pulaski County’s Twenty Most Segregated Schools

As can be seen, when the traditional public schools in Pulaski County are disaggregated, they make up the bulk of the list. And what about the district’s most integrated schools? Again, the OEP report provides a list of the top-twenty.

Pulaski County’s Twenty Most Integrated Schools

Here we see that two of the schools singled out by Heller, E-Stem and Lisa Academy, are actually among the most integrated schools of the county.

Still, these rankings only supply part of the picture. Another important question is whether or not students who attend charter schools are worsening the integration levels of the schools they are leaving and the schools they are moving to. In other words, if white students are leaving traditional public schools where the percentage of white students is below-average and going to a public charter school where the percentage of white students is above-average, or if minority students are leaving traditional public schools where the percentage of minority students is below-average and going to public charter schools where the percentage of minority students is above-average.  As it turns out, this is not the case. The OEP report found that:

…the majority of student transfers from LRSD traditional public schools to charter schools are actually resulting in students entering into more racially integrated learning environments. Over half of the white students that left above-average white schools enrolled in a charter school that was more integrated (with almost all white students that left integrated schools enrolling in similarly integrated schools). Further, minority students that leave above-average minority schools or well-integrated schools are enrolling in charter schools that are equally or more integrated than their previous school.

In other words, transfers to public charter schools have the net effect of both leaving traditional public schools more integrated as a result of the transfer, as well as increasing the level of integration at the schools they transfer to.

For the record, I don’t really believe Heller and his team are this bad at math. Rather, it is becoming increasingly apparent that they are purposefully manipulating the data to reach a conclusion that supports their agenda. Additionally, his attempts to shift the debate into terms of economic and academic integration seem to signal that he knows his position against public charter schools can’t be won on racial terms alone.