New report on charter schools: Yesterday, PRRAC joined The Century Foundation in publishing a white paper by Richard Kahlenberg and Halley Potter titled “Diverse Charter Schools: Can Racial and Socioeconomic Integration Promote Better Outcomes for Students?” The paper examines the causes of the current trend of charter school funders and government program guidelines to develop racially isolated high poverty schools in urban locations (as well as segregated white schools in some other locations) and suggests a series of policy changes and incentives that could increase racial and economic diversity in charters. The report also profiles a number of intentionally integrated charters that have successfully used strategic school siting, interdistrict enrollment, targeted recruitment, weighted lotteries, and other methods to achieve successfully integrated learning environments.
Overdue regulations department: The first term “window” may soon be closing for some of the housing reform regulations many of us have been waiting for since 2009. We recently joined other national housing advocacy groups in another letter to HUD stressing the urgency of these regulatory reforms, and joined several civil rights groups in a meeting at OMB on slow moving fair housing rules. We also submitted coalition comments to HUD on important proposed changes to the HUD voucher portability rules, which would make it easier for low income families to move across jurisdictional boundaries with their Section 8 vouchers, andcomments to the Treasury Department on the urgent need for fair housing regulations and guidance in the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program.
Other News and Resources
The Applied Research Center (ARC) has just released “Millennials, Activism, and Race,” a report on the motivations of young activists, based on a series of small focus groups conducted by ARC across the country. Some fascinating quotes, and a reminder that racial justice activism is alive and well!
“The Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion”: we’ve been following this interesting blog for a while – it describes itself as “blog about ‘weapons’ used by architects, planners, policy-makers, developers, real estate brokers, community activists and other urban actors to wage the ongoing war between integration and segregation” Visit the arsenal of exclusion here.
