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To date, the education policy and philanthropy communities have placed a premium on funding charter schools that have high concentrations of poverty and large numbers of minority students. While it makes sense that charter schools have focused on high-needs students, thus far this focus has resulted in prioritizing high-poverty charter schools over other models, which research suggests may not be the most effective way of serving at-risk students. There is a large body of evidence suggesting that socioeconomic and racial integration provide educational benefits for all students, especially at-risk students. Today, some innovative charter schools are pursuing efforts to integrate students from different racial and economic backgrounds in their classrooms. A new report,  Diverse Charter Schools: Can Racial and Socioeconomic Integration Promote Better Outcomes for Students? by Richard D. Kahlenberg and Halley Potter explores this topic.

Nearly six decades after Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that ushered in an era of efforts to integrate public schools, charter school advocates and researchers are shining a light on a number of those independent public schools that are integrated by design. Two new reports-one from the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, another from the Century Foundation and the Poverty & Race Research Action Council-examine charter schools that have racially and socioeconomically diverse enrollments as part of their school missions. Researchers and advocates say that there is increasing demand for such schools, but that national educational priorities and policies are not necessarily stacked in their favor.

It's always good to see issues of school segregation and integration back on the table as part of the education reform discussion; most recently, the discussion of this important reform goal was triggered in New York by Eva Moskowitz's latest demand of the state that her chain of schools should be exempted from following the state charter law which requires that all charters serve high-needs students in proportions comparable to those of local schools. However, Moskowitz's claim that her purpose in seeking this right to play by different rules than other charters is simply to expand school integration is deeply disingenuous.

AMID the  ceaseless and cacophonous debates about how to close the achievement gap, we've turned away from one tool that has been shown to work: school desegregation. That strategy, ushered in by the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, has been unceremoniously ushered out, an artifact in the museum of failed social experiments. The Supreme Court's ruling that racially segregated schools were "inherently unequal" shook up the nation like no other decision of the 20th century. Civil rights advocates, who for years had been patiently laying the constitutional groundwork, cheered to the rafters, while segregationists mourned "Black Monday" and vowed "massive resistance." But as the anniversary was observed this past week on May 17, it was hard not to notice that desegregation is effectively dead. In fact, we have been giving up on desegregation for a long time. In 1974, the Supreme Court rejected a metropolitan integration plan, leaving the increasingly black cities to fend for themselves.

The charter school movement has been a major political success, but it has been a civil rights failure. As the country continues moving steadily toward greater segregation and inequality of education for students of color in schools with lower achievement and graduation rates, the rapid growth of charter schools has been expanding a sector that is even more segregated than the public schools. The Civil Rights Project has been issuing annual reports on the spread of segregation in public schools and its impact on educational opportunity for 14 years. We know that choice programs can either offer quality educational options with racially and economically diverse schooling to children who otherwise have few opportunities, or choice programs can actually increase stratification and inequality depending on how they are designed. The charter effort, which has largely ignored the segregation issue, has been justified by claims about superior educational performance, which simply are not sustained by the research. Though there are some remarkable and diverse charter schools, most are neither. The lessons of what is needed to make choice work have usually been ignored in charter school policy. Magnet schools are the striking example of and offer a great deal of experience in how to create educationally successful and integrated choice options.

The Tapestry Project seeks to unite two powerful ideas in American education: school choice and integration.  We believe that charter schools can be models of both academic excellence and of economic and racial integration.

Whether charter schools will increase segregation in schools and, ultimately, in society is an important and hotly contested question. Charter proponents point to the high enrollments of minority and economically disadvantaged pupils in charter schools, compare them with overall state enrollment percentages, and contend that charter schools are integrative. Opponents explain these enrollment levels by noting the high minority and poverty concentrations in the urban areas where charter schools are centered. They quote other research suggesting that the schools exacerbate existing segregation. Gary Miron, Jessica Urschel, William Mathis, and Elana Tornquist examine this issue using a national data base of schools operated by Education Management Organizations (EMOs), 95% of which are charter schools. The study explores whether these EMO-operated charter schools integrate or segregate students by four key demographic characteristics: ethnic/minority classification, socioeconomic status, disabling condition and English language facility.

"The answer here is very simple, you just have a culture of integrity and you have better security measures in place," said Secretary Arne Duncan in response to the Atlanta cheating scandal. Other testing proponents offered similar suggestions. "A culture of integrity" is not easy because of the corruptive power of test-driven accountability as I have discussed in previous posts and "better security measures" will only incur more costs to tax payers without stop cheating.

The charter school movement has been a major political success, but it has been a civil rights failure. As the country continues moving steadily toward greater segregation and inequality of education for students of color in schools with lower achievement and graduation rates, the rapid growth of charter schools has been expanding a sector that is even more segregated than the public schools. The Civil Rights Project has been issuing annual reports on the spread of segregation in public schools and its impact on educational opportunity for 14 years. We know that choice programs can either offer quality educational options with racially and economically diverse schooling to children who otherwise have few opportunities, or choice programs can actually increase stratification and inequality depending on how they are designed. The charter effort, which has largely ignored the segregation issue, has been justified by claims about superior educational performance, which simply are not sustained by the research. Though there are some remarkable and diverse charter schools, most are neither. The lessons of what is needed to make choice work have usually been ignored in charter school policy. Magnet schools are the striking example of and offer a great deal of experience in how to create educationally successful and integrated choice options.

The public charter school movement has grown rapidly in the 20 years since the first public charter school opened in 1992, with over 5,600 schools now serving more than two million students. One of the most exceptional developments within the first two decades of the movement has been the rise of high performing public charter schools with missions intently focused on educating students from traditionally underserved communities. Given that the demographics of these communities are often homogenous, it is no surprise the demographics of these schools are that way as well. In fact, the student populations at these public charter schools usually mirror the populations in nearby district schools. While much media attention rightly has been given to these schools, the past decade or so also has seen a noteworthy rise in high performing public charter schools with missions intentionally designed to serve racially and economically integrated student populations. These schools are utilizing their autonomy to achieve a diverse student population through location-based strategies, recruitment efforts and enrollment processes. Perhaps most notably, a growing number of cities-and the parents and educators in them-are welcoming both types of public charter school models for their respective (and in some cases unprecedented) contributions to raising student achievement, particularly for students who have previously struggled in school. This brief showcases this development in three of these cities: Denver, Washington, D.C., and San Diego.

Yesterday, national scholars on both sides of the debate over the constitutionality, educational value and cultural importance of the racial and ethnic integration of the schools gave testimony at the state Capitol. Joining them was the architect of Minnesota's last two legal challenges to school segregation, attorney Daniel Shulman, who criticized the state for failing to enforce the law and said he's willing to go back to court to fix that.

"I'm waiting for the national editorials, leading policy makers and major foundations to speak out honestly about the lessons learned from the Atlanta cheating scandal. I'm waiting for them to change course. But, I am not holding my breath. "From Enron to Arthur Anderson to the sub-prime lending debacle we have unambiguous evidence of a lethal combination. Unquestioned hierarchy, the arrogance of power and a singular focus on short-term metrics yield no integrity and subsequent cheating. When fear and financial rewards are combined honesty is lost."

Virtually everyone agrees that teacher evaluation in the United States needs an overhaul. Existing systems rarely help teachers improve or clearly distinguish those who are succeeding from those who are struggling. The tools that are used do not always represent the important features of good teaching. Criteria and methods for evaluating teachers vary substantially across districts and at key career milestones-when teachers complete pre-service teacher education, become initially licensed, are considered for tenure, and receive a professional license.  A comprehensive system should address these purposes in a coherent way and provide support for supervision and professional learning, identify teachers who need additional assistance and-in some cases-a change of career, and recognize expert teachers who can contribute to the learning of their peers. This report outlines an integrated approach that connects these goals to a teaching-career continuum and a professional development system that supports effectiveness for all teachers at every stage of their careers.

For three years of my K-8 schooling, from 7:40 a.m. until 3:05 p.m., I was black and invisible. I was bused across town to integrate a white school in Southeast Portland, Ore. We arrived at school promptly at 7:30 and had 10 full minutes before the white children arrived. We spent that time roaming the halls - happy, free, normal. Once the white children arrived, we became black and invisible. We were separated, so that no more than two of us were in a class at a time. I never saw black people in our textbooks unless they were in shackles or standing with Martin Luther King Jr. Most of us rarely interacted with a black adult outside of the aide who rode the bus with us. I liked school and I loved learning. But I never quite felt right or good. I felt very black and obvious because I knew that my experience was different from that of my peers. But I also felt invisible because this was never acknowledged in any meaningful way. I became visible again at 3:05 when I got back on the bus with the other brown faces to make our journey home.

They say, "It takes a village to raise a child." Family and community engagement is integral to a quality education. Ensuring participation is especially important in communities where poverty, language barriers or discrimination have resulted in disenfranchisement. Apparently, this lesson is lost on our governor, whose SB 24 will strip the neediest communities of any meaningful participation in their public schools with the creation of a "Commissioner's Network" of schools.

Suspicious test scores in roughly 200 school districts resemble those that entangled Atlanta in the biggest cheating scandal in American history, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows. The newspaper analyzed test results for 69,000 public schools and found high concentrations of suspect math or reading scores in school systems from coast to coast. The findings represent an unprecedented examination of the integrity of school testing. The analysis doesn't prove cheating. But it reveals that test scores in hundreds of cities followed a pattern that, in Atlanta, indicated cheating in multiple schools.

As everyone knows, Kevin Carey has a long essay in The New Republic about Diane Ravitch's apostasy of the education reform movement, much of it fair and on point. But I'm friendly with Kevin, and I'm friends with Diane, so I was disappointed that, respectful tone aside, Carey nonetheless pursues a vicious attack on Diane's personal integrity, hinting that her criticism of Joel Klein in particular and school reform in general was sparked by Klein's decision not to hire her long-time partner.

Looking back on 2011, we saw in K-12 education some continuation of the misguided obsession with teachers unions, as Republican governors sought to cripple public employee unions in Wisconsin and Ohio. To add to the drumbeat, authors Terry Moe and Steven Brill published high-profile anti-teacher union books. But if some politicians and pundits got it wrong, there was good news from voters, as Ohio residents in November repealed the wrongheaded attack on teachers and other public employees, and North Carolina voters backed a return to school integration in Wake County public schools, the state's largest district. 

Are charter schools the answer for public education? If what you know about charters comes from last year's ballyhooed film "Waiting for Superman," you probably think so. But the answer is, in fact, much more complex. My late husband, Albert Shanker, was one of the first education leaders to advocate for the concept in 1988, as president of the American Federation of Teachers. Al envisioned charter schools as teacher-led laboratories for reform within public schooling, tasked with developing innovative strategies to "produce more learning for more students." He saw them operating with a high level of autonomy from bureaucracy, yet remaining an integral part of our public education system.

In this paper we consider the challenges involved in evaluating teacher preparation programs when controlling for school contextual bias. Including school fixed effects in the achievement models  used toestimate preparation program effects controls for school environment by relying on differences among student outcomes within the same schools to identify the program effects. However, identification of preparation program effects using school fixed effects requires teachers from different programs to teach in the same school. Even if program effects are identified, the precision of the estimated effects will depend on the degree to which graduates from different programs overlap across schools. In addition, if the connections between preparation programs result from the overlap of atypical graduates or from graduates teaching in atypical school environments, use of school effects could produce bias. Using statewide data from Florida, we show that teachers tend to teach in schools near the programs in which they received their training, but there is still sufficient overlap across schools to identify preparation program effects. We show that the ranking of preparation programs varies significantly depending on whether or not school environment is taken into account via school fixed effects. We find that schools and teachers that are integral to connecting preparation programs are atypical, with disproportionately high percentages of Hispanic teachers and students compared to the state averages. Finally, we  find significant variance inflation in the estimated program effects when controlling for school fixed effects, and that the size of the variance inflation factor depends crucially on the length of the window used to compare graduates teaching in the same schools.