Today the Wall Street Journal has a fascinating article about “Black Flight” from the public, inner city schools in Minneapolis.
Minnesota has long had an open enrollment policy that allows student choice of schools, even district boundaries from city to suburb.
While about 1,620 low-income Minneapolis students attend suburban public schools, most of the fleeing minority and low-income students choose charter schools. Five years ago, 1,750 Minneapolis students attended charters; today 5,600 do. In 2000-01, 788 charter students were black; today 3,632 are. Charters are opening in the city at a record pace: up from 23 last year to 28, with 12 or so more in the pipeline.
According to the Center for School Change at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute, Minneapolis charter school enrollment is 91% minority and 84% low-income, while district enrollment is 72% minority and 67% low-income.
Students in most other places are not fortunate enough to have the choices provided in Minneapolis. In part that’s because too few people and organizations who favor “choice” in some sensitive areas do not favor extending meaningful choice to inner city students and their parents.
