Falling back to 1970s-style desegregation policies like busing ignores new schooling options that weren’t available decades ago and which offer better educational opportunities for minority students.

Steve Rivkin, a professor of economics at Amherst College, warns that, “transporting students long distances to reduce segregation in schools is costly, time-consuming for students and likely to reduce parental participation in the schools.” Most important, regarding whether desegregation programs improved outcomes for African-Americans, he says, “there is little good evidence to bear on this question.”

Desegregation supporters then and now say that improving access to better quality education for minority children is one of their key goals. If so, then why not focus on newer education models that are producing better results for these students? Take, for example, charter schools, the autonomous deregulated public schools which first appeared in the 1990s.

A 2009 study of New York City’s charter schools by researchers from Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania and the National Bureau of Economic Research found that on average, students who attended charter schools for grades kindergarten through eighth grade could close the achievement gap among white and black students by about “86 percent in math and 66 percent in English.” The study used the most rigorous experimental design, randomized control trial, which compares students who were admitted to charters through a lottery selection process versus those who lost in the lottery and attended regular public schools.

Jay Greene, a professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas, notes that all studies of charter schools using this rigorous methodology have found that charters improve the performance of urban disadvantaged minority.

Parents from low-income minority communities continue to rally for access to charter schools and other new choice options that offer hope and better outcomes for their children. Our energies should focus on meeting their demands.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/05/20/is-segregation-back-in-us-public-schools/focus-on-better-education-instead-of-desegregation