Nathan Jensen is a research associate in the Department of Education Reform, College of Education and Health Professions, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Ark.
We are pleased that the authors of the Civil Rights Project (CRP) report on racial segregation in charter schools have chosen to respond to our reanalysis of the 2007-08 data. This dialogue is important as we attempt to move toward the most appropriate analytic strategies for this question. However, we take issue with three points made (or not made) in the CRP response.
Earlier this year the UCLA-based Civil Rights Project (CRP), jumped on the anti-charter bandwagon when it released “Choice without Equity: Charter School Segregation and the Need for Civil Rights Standards.” This was, in my view, just the latest salvo in a continuing barrage of assaults against charter schools by critics of choice. Sadly, this report received lots of uncritical publicity in major media outlets, despite obviously flawed analyses.