BOSTON (AP) - Massachusetts charter schools are serving a higher percentage of minority students than their traditional public school counterparts, a new study found. And the state's relatively small interdistrict choice program is increasing racial diversity in some of the host districts.
The study commissioned by the Pioneer Institute also found that school districts can pay a heavy price when a charter school opens nearby. Six Bay State school districts, Somerville, Hull, Nauset, Williamsburg, Up-Island Regional and Tisbury, have lost more than 5 percent of their students to charter schools.
The report by the conservative think-tank was blasted as "junk research" by the state's largest teachers union. And a review of the study, commissioned by the Pioneer Institute itself, by two University of California-Berkeley researchers questioned the "flawed methodology."
The study, released today, picked up where a previous Pioneer Institute examination left off in 1996.
Both looked at charter schools, which began in 1993, and the interdistrict choice program, which began in 1991 to let students attend a neighboring community's schools. The number of participating host districts has grown from 32 in 1991 to 109 last year. Nearly 250 districts send students to those neighboring hosts.
Susan Aud, a Ph.D. candidate at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., looked at the race and poverty characteristics of 7,100 students who participated in interdistrict choice and the 9,930 students who attended charter schools last year.
Overall, a disproportionately high number of minority students participated in both programs, she said.
But interdistrict students tend to be predominantly white, 88 percent, and more affluent, compared to the statewide population, the study said. And some white students are leaving predominantly-minority districts for schools that are already mostly white. On the other hand, Aud said, many minority interdistrict students help make their new schools more racially diverse.
The minority population in Avon schools, for example, increased from 6.9 percent to 14.1 percent, the result of Brockton students transferring.
Overall, she said, charter schools are about 48 percent minority, compared to the 25 percent figure for the state as a whole.
The study also said that districts that had lost large numbers of students to the choice program made changes to woo them back.
The same appears to be happening with districts that have lost large numbers of pupils to charter schools, said Jim Peyser, the Pioneer Institute's head and chairman of the state Board of Education.
Bob Snow, assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction in Somerville, said his district must now vie for students.
"The entrepreneurial capitalistic competition for the marketplace is very much a reality in public education," he said.
When a child leaves a public school for a charter school, the state funding follows him there. But the funds dwindle over four years for that pupil, and then stop altogether, leaving districts with a financial loss.
Bob Duffy, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Teachers Association, said the study by the Pioneer Institute, long a booster of the charter and choice school models, is "more about rhetoric than research."
The MTA said its analyses have shown that charter schools often have lower percentages of minority students than the communities surrounding them, and frequently have lower percentages of bilingual and special needs children, who are cost more to educate.
The interdistrict choice program, Duffy said, has been a Robin Hood in reverse, taking students and money from poorer districts and giving them to richer ones.