David R. Garcia

The Impact of School Choice on Racial Segregation in Charter Schools

This study captures the impact of school choice decisions by comparing the racial composition of the district schools students exited to the charter schools they entered. Charter school catchment areas are operationalized using a statewide student-level database to track school attendance patterns of individual students over 4 years. Charter elementary school choosers enter charter schools that are more racially segregated than the district schools they exited, although on entrance into high school, choosers enter charter schools that are as racially segregated or more integrated than the district schools they exited. In addition, racial segregation patterns are the result of White flight and Black and Native American students self-segregating into charter schools that are more racially isolated than the district schools they exit.

Academic and Racial Segregation in Charter Schools: Do Parents Sort Students Into Specialized Charter Schools?

This article focuses on how parental school choices affect the degree of racial and academic segregation in charter schools. The research design allows for a direct comparison of the racial and academic conditions of the district schools students exited to the charter schools they entered. Parents choose to leave more racially integrated district schools to attend more racially segregated charter schools. Simultaneously, parents enroll their students into charter schools with at least the same degree of academic integration as the district schools that students exited. The academic and racial segregation results are then used to test the extent to which students congregate into specialized charter schools according to hypothesized patterns. The findings call into question the assertion of charter school advocates that segregated conditions in charter schools are the result of students self-selecting into specialized charter schools.

Language Policy, Politics, and Diversity in Education.

R of Research in Education: Vol. 38, Language Policy, Politics, and Diversity in Education explores the role of educational language policies in promoting education as a human right. There are an estimated nearly 7,000 living languages in the world. Yet, despite the extent of language diversity, only a small number of the world’s languages are used as mediums of instruction. Even in English-dominant countries, such as the United States, it is important to understand the role of educational language policies (ELPs) in promoting educational access through the dominant language, and its impact on educational equity, achievement, and students’ sense of identity. The United Nations Declaration on Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic Minorities, Article 4 (1991) affirms, “States should take appropriate measures so that, whenever possible, persons belonging to National or Ethnic minorities may have adequate opportunities to learn their mother tongue or to have instruction in their mother tongue” (cited in Spring, 2000, p. 31). Presently and historically, a growing minority of children in the United States and a majority in many countries around the world attend schools where there is a difference between the language or variety of language spoken at home and the language of instruction in school. As a result, to learn in school, language minorities must learn the language of schooling, which requires some type of accommodation (Wiley, 2013).

The Achilles' heel of school choice policies: The obstacles to reporting school accountability results to parents

This study examines the conflict facing state education officials in reporting the adequate yearly progress results required by No Child Left Behind and how those challenges obfuscated the transmission of school choice information to parents. To comply with school accountability mandates, state education officials transformed test scores into school performance labels using complicated accountability systems. Then, to meet school choice requirements, state education officials were required to explain the results in a way that parents can understand. The conflict reveals a critical shortcoming of future education policies that link school accountability and choice.

Rethinking School Choice: Educational Options, Control, and Sovereignty in Indian Country.

ABSTRACT Despite the plethora of schooling options in Indigenous communities, the public policy debate, research, and discourse on school choice is almost entirely absent a specific engagement with how school choice intersects issues relevant to American Indian youth and tribal nations. This article suggests that Indian Country is an important and unique context for understanding the meaning and processes of school choice because of the government-to-government relationship between tribal nations and the federal government, the sovereign status of tribal nations, the nation-building goals of tribes, and the muddled history of schooling options within Native communities. We offer an alternative way of conceptualizing “school choice” that is more applicable to Indigenous communities and that has yet to be articulated in the literature. First, while schooling options have existed in Indian Country for much longer than has been the case in other communities, the presence of schooling options has not historically been centered upon offering youth and families choices. Instead, it has been about control—control of the schooling offered to Indigenous youth, and therefore, control of youth and communities themselves. Second, while school choice policies focus on autonomy as an important governance principle to prompt change in traditional public school systems, sovereignty has and remains the most salient governance issue within Indigenous communities.

School expenditures and academic achievement differences between high-ELL-performing and low-ELL-performing high schools

ABSTRACT English Language Learners (ELLs) are one of the fastest-growing K–12 populations across the nation. Educating secondary ELLs poses a unique challenge to U.S. schools. For instance, ELLs tend to experience high rates of poverty and attend segregated, underfunded, and unsafe schools. With the League of United Latin American Citizens vs. Texas case that focuses on the appropriateness and effectiveness of secondary ELL programs as a backdrop, this study explores differences in academic achievement and expenditures between Texas secondary schools with the highest levels of ELL academic achievement and schools with the lowest ELL levels of academic achievement. More specifically, this study examines the following primary questions: (a) What are the achievement results and demographic characteristics of Texas’s top- and bottom-performing schools categorized by the academic performance of ELL students? (b) To what extent do Texas’s top- and bottom-performing schools differ with respect to per-pupil school expenditure by funding category? The study finds that schools with the highest ELL achievement expend much more than schools with the lowest ELL achievement, particularly in regular base programs that are directed toward the basic education/instruction services for all students, not just ELLs.