Racial Gap Widening

Feb 8: The Arizona Republic reports that the racial gap is widening with the rise of charter schools in states like Arizona because of lack of regulation and enforcement of civil-rights legislation.

New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina provided the nation with a laboratory example of what happens with the semi-privatization of education through charter schools in the absence of a vigorous regulatory framework.

Charter schools will select among eligible students to pick the most academically accomplished. Struggling kids and kids with disabilities will not be admitted. This pattern has been well documented in New Orleans' post-hurricane experimentation with charter schools.

Although charter schools offer innovation, they also can become propaganda devices for religious fanatics who instrumentalize education for the purpose of religious indoctrination.

Charter schools must be more carefully monitored and regulated or the U.S. public education system will become much more segregrated and ideological than it already is.