NC charter schools are 'trying to be even more intentional' about diversity. The state will be tracking their efforts

Chairman Alex Quigley made the comment Dec. 10 while reviewing a Charlotte charter school's request to hold a weighted lottery to enroll students before the school opens next fall. Weighted lotteries allow certain students, such as those from low-income households, a better chance of being selected for enrollment in the school.

Movement School Eastland's goal is to select 60% low-income students. The charter school previously set a goal of 50% low-income students but decided to increase it to mirror Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools' student demographics.

"This is kind of another step in the kind of weighted lottery move to have charter schools that are trying to be even more intentional to reflect the diversity of the population in the schools surrounding them, which I think is a good thing," Quigley said. "A lot of the commentary is charter schools are inherently trying to segregate – da da da. So I think this is exciting."

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Charter schools have faced criticism for enrolling wealthier and more white students than their traditional public school counterparts, but charter school leaders say they are working to increase diversity.

Demographic data from the 2017-18 school year show that North Carolina charter schools enrolled 55% white students and 33% low-income students, while traditional schools enrolled 48% white students and 59% low-income students.

Dave Machado, director of North Carolina's Office of Charter Schools, said his office is seeing more schools wanting to do weighted lotteries to increase student diversity.

"We’ve had a lot of internal conversations about weighted lottery now that we’re having more and more schools doing it," he told the Charter Schools Advisory Board. "[We're] trying to give better guidance on the parameters of weighted lottery. At first, we were just so happy they were doing it. As long as it kind of fell into the goal of increasing diversity, we said OK. But we didn’t want to give schools an unfunded mandate where they would have had to hire somebody to do their lotteries."

Machado said he plans to present some possible guidelines in 2020 that charter schools can follow when selecting students using lotteries. His office also plans to start tracking which charter schools are using weighted lotteries, how many students were part of the lottery, how many were accepted and whether the schools were successful in meeting their diversity goals.

"We hope to come up with some stronger guidelines and better clarification to our schools of what they can do and can’t do," Machado said.

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Ashley Baquero, a consultant with the state Office of Charter Schools, said she has noticed more charter schools buying programs or hiring companies to assist them in coming up with better algorithms to do the student lotteries.

"I think [it] is a move in the right direction as opposed to smaller schools that are just getting started trying to figure it out using Excel and that sort of thing," she said.

Baquero pointed to charter schools that have been using weighted lotteries for years, such as Central Park School for Children in Durham, as examples of how the lottery process can be successful. Central Park's "data clearly shows their economically disadvantaged population is increasing," she said. "If you look at the schools that have been doing it for a while, it's showing that it's working."

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"They’re kind of modeling it off of other states that have done similar with lottery policies," she said. "It’s not an exact science. So whether they actually get that 60% and 40% just like any of the weighted lotteries that we see, it remains to be seen."

The additional funding will help expand the state’s Advancing Charter Collaboration and Excellence for Student Success, or ACCESS, program. Under the five-year program, the Department of Public Instruction will award subgrants to high-quality charter schools seeking to serve more educationally disadvantaged students and to provide professional development for charter school leaders.

The funds are intended for new and existing charter schools to better meet the needs of traditionally underserved students – those who are economically disadvantaged, homeless, non-native English speakers, students with disabilities, immigrant students, migrant students or are unaccompanied youth.

Charters, which are publicly funded and privately run schools that do not charge tuition, have been booming in North Carolina with more than 100,000 students enrolled at nearly 200 schools across the state. Twelve charters opened last year, and 10 more are expected this year – putting the state's count at 206 charter schools.

Charter schools were created in North Carolina two decades ago, and their enrollment has increased more than 200 percent in the past 10 years. State funding for charters has grown from about $16.5 million in 1997, when there were 34 schools, to now more than $674 million.