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In her May 17 essay in the Bangor Daily News, “Charter schools are increasing segregation” Carol Burris implies that charter schools are bad because they increase racial segregation. I think she appeals to emotion without evidence. Instead, there are facts.
In 1954, (the year of Brown v. the Board of Education) the all-Black Dunbar High School (located close to the Supreme Court) had the highest percentage of students of any school in the District of Columbia go on to college and they did better than the other schools on standardized testing.
Many Black parents have chosen to ignore the patronizing attitude that other people know what is best for students and are sending their children to charter schools where evidence shows they are doing noticeably better.
According to Burris’ thesis, apparently schools like Spellman and Morehouse are doing serious harm to their students. Black students at many colleges, ignoring Burris’ ideas, are requesting their own building where they can associate with other Black classmates.
Why might she try to mislead us? She is the executive director of the Network for Public Education. I think her goal might be to distract us from charter school successes. Better if she provides us evidence of what her schools have accomplished, compared with other schools around the world.
John S. Kaiser
Ellsworth
