Giving Compass' Take:

• Halley Potter argues that states need to adopt specific integration-friendly policies in order to ensure that charter schools live up to their potential for diversity. 

• How can funders work support integration in charter schools, and in all public schools? 

• Here's how local governments reinforce racial segregation in America. 

The truth is that charter schools hold tremendous, untapped potential to serve as engines of diversity and inclusion. The flexibility of the charter school model, and the fact that charters are typically built from scratch, arguably makes charters better suited to fostering integration than traditional district schools, which have constraints on whom they can enroll.

So how do we ensure that charters support integration rather than exacerbate segregation, as they often do now? It starts with shifting our focus away from individual schools and school leaders, and toward what really shapes charter school enrollment in the first place: state policies.

Some policies, such as funding transportation for charter school students and requiring charters to provide free- or reduced-price meals, promote racial and socioeconomic diversity in charter classrooms. Other policies, such as prohibiting charters from considering diversity in their lottery systems or limiting their ability to enroll students across school district lines, set charters up to replicate or even exacerbate segregation in their communities.

There is no shortage of policies that states could adopt to encourage diversity in their charter schools. Unfortunately, states across the board are failing to do so. In a new study for The Century Foundation, we analyze charter school laws and regulations in every state where they currently exist (43 states, plus D.C.).

Read the full article about charter school diversity by Halley Potter at The Hechinger Report.