In a last ditch effort to keep the state money tap flowing, the Little Rock School District (LRSD) filed a motion last month claiming that the state is in violation of the 1989 desegregation settlement because it has approved charter schools in Pulaski County.  Here is the Dem Gaz article. LRSD attorney Chris Heller put it this way:

A key complaint is that the state has “unconditionally” approved independently run, open-enrollment charter schools in Pulaski County, draining students away from traditional public schools and hindering efforts to desegregate the three Pulaski County school districts, said Chris Heller, an attorney for the Little Rock School District.

“The combined impact has been to undermine the student assignment aspect of the 1989 settlement agreement,” he said.

Twenty seven years after the initial suit was filed and twenty one after the settlement agreement, the state continues to pay the three Pulaski County districts a sum just shy of $70 million annually. However, these payments may be coming to an end. The LRSD was released form court monitoring in 2007, and the other two districts will likely be declared unitary in the not so distant future. This seems to have left the LRSD leadership grasping for straws to keep the state payments rolling in, and charter schools seem like as good a scape goat as any.

As we have noted before, the claims made by LRSD simply do not appear to be true. Last week the Office for Education Policy provided more evidence on this point with the release of an updated version of their previous report on racial segregation in Pulaski County schools. You can find the updated report here and the Dem Gaz article about the report here.

Here are some excerpts from that article:

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.

*****

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.”

For those who are interested in reading more, here is a more detailed listing of the report’s conclusions taken from the executive summary:

1. What are the general demographic characteristics of charter schools as compared to those of the Little Rock School District?
   • • Charter schools have shown significant growth in enrollment since 2004-05; conversely, the LRSD total enrollment has remained relatively stable in that same time period.
   • • Students enrolled in charter schools are more white than students in the LRSD and Pulaski County TPS (41.8% in charters, 21.8% in LRSD, and 33.0% in Pulaski County TPS). While there are more black students than white students in charter schools, when compared to the LRSD and Pulaski County TPS there are less black students (44.8% in charters, 68.0% in LRSD, and 58.4% in Pulaski County TPS). However, the overall racial composition of charter schools reflects more equal proportions of black and white students than LRSD and Pulaski County schools.
   • • There are fewer economically disadvantaged (as measured by FRL eligibility) students in charter schools (38.0%) than in the comparison Pulaski County TPS (63.3%).
2. Are charter schools in Pulaski County more or less segregated (racially and economically) than traditional public schools in the Little Rock School District?
   • • More black students in charter schools attend school in a hyper-segregated black environment (20.4% in charters and 10.7% in LRSD TPS). Conversely, more minority students in LRSD TPS attend school in a hyper-segregated minority environment (28.8% in charters and 52.4% in LRSD TPS).
   • • 26.4% of LRSD students eligible for FRL attend school in hyper-segregated FRL environments compared to none of the charter students.
   • • Neither charter schools nor LRSD TPS have racial compositions that are similar to that of Pulaski County. Both differ by roughly 20 percentage points in the percentage of minority students. However, LRSD TPS are more similar with regard to the percentage of students in Pulaski County eligible for FRL.
   • • More students in charter schools are enrolled in integrated school environments (40.4%) than their LRSD TPS peers (26.3%).
3. Where do students transferring to charter schools come from, and what are the racial and economic characteristics of these students?
   • • Since 2005-06, 31% of students who transferred to charter schools came from the LRSD. The rest were students from other TPS, private schools, other states, or home-schoolers. There are more black students transferring to charters than white students. But when compared to their LRSD peers, students who transferred to charter schools are more white (28.2% in charters, 21.8% in LRSD) and less black (59.8% in charters, 68.0% in LRSD).
   • • Similarly, 52.3% of students transferring to charters are eligible for FRL, compared to 68.1% of LRSD students.
   • • However, in the past two school years, the percentage of charter transfers eligible for FRL has been 52.2% and 52.3% respectively. This percentage has increased from 16.9% in 2005-06.
4. What impact do transfers to charter schools from the Little Rock School District have on the level of segregation in the Little Rock traditional public schools in which these students were previously enrolled?
   • • Overall, white students transferring from the LRSD to charter schools tend to leave LRSD TPS that have an above-average percentage of white students. As a result, these transfers likely have a positive impact on the racial balance of the exited LRSD TPS.
   • • Similarly, more black students leave schools with above-average percentages of black students; again, it is likely that these transfers overall have a positive impact on the racial balance of the LRSD TPS.
   • • Overall, 44.1% of the charter transfers from 2006-07 to 2009-10 involved black students leaving disproportionately black schools or white students leaving disproportionately white schools; 38.3% of the transfers were from schools that were integrated. Thus, it seems reasonable to conclude that the transfers to charters are having a neutral, or even a positive effect on racial integration in LRSD TPS.
   • • FRL students also primarily leave LRSD TPS with high percentages of FRL students. These transfers likely have a positive impact on the level of economic integration in the LRSD TPS.
5. Are students transferring to charter schools entering into more or less segregated school environments?
   • • White students enter into charter schools that have a higher percentage of white students than their previous schools (37.4% to 40.4% in 2009-10); however, the charter schools they entered had a more equal proportion of white and black students.
   • • Black students transfer into charter schools with a lower percentage of black students than the LRSD TPS in which they were previously enrolled (70.7% to 67.1% in 2009-10).
   • • However, these differences are quite small. Students who transfer to charter schools attend schools that have racial compositions similar to those of the schools they left.
   • • All students, both FRL and non-FRL, are more likely to enter into charter schools with substantially fewer FRL students.