The legislature may make significant decisions about K-12 public education this year. Two bills predict a bad trend. Democrat Dafna Michaelson Jenet, representative from Adams County representing Commerce City, and Republican Senator Janice Rich from Delta, are pitching bills to extend timelines for charter applications and to expand charter schools for individualized learning.

While seemingly innocuous, the bills will exacerbate the deleterious effects of the charter movement on public education. First, to the bills. HB23-1025 to extend charter school application timelines will allow charters an additional six months, from 12 to 18, to get their application act together. That’s six more months to market to parents a prospective charter will save children from the depredations of traditional public schools.

At least those are the arguments made by charter schools applying in Commerce City. The Adams 14 school board has resisted bringing charters into the district, although there are some already established. Current pressure comes from Denver charters that want to expand into Commerce City. The Adams 14 district is already in a steaming cooker heated up by the State Board of Education. Time extensions for prospective charters will distract this district and others from their true business of providing quality education. The charters are dangling unrealized promises that minority students will do better under their authority. Facts don’t support the claims.

HB12-1188 to bring individualized learning to students is actually a funding drainage system taking state funds that should support all public school students and diverting the money to home schooled children and their parents. The bill refers to the individualized learning in Vision Charter Academy in Delta and Mesa County Community School. Home schooling parents are “family partners.” These schools claim they engage, but the Vision Charter Academy calendar for February is empty except for winter break and a board meeting. There are no Vision Voice newsletters for January or February 2023. Mesa Community offers two education tracks. In one, students meet twice a week with subject teachers and in the other, students meet once a week. These are the two schools the bill cites as models of innovation.

Now for the bigger picture. PublicSchoolReview.com is a useful website for basic data on Colorado’s schools. It provides math and reading test information, demographic data, free and reduced lunch percents, etc. It also lists every school from first place by testing data to last place. It’s easy to sort by charter schools from first to last as well.

The data are startling. The charter schools in Colorado have essentially re-segregated, not desegregated, student communities. Justice Thurgood Marshall, who made his career in the Brown v. Board of Education decision that separate but equal is not constitutional, would be horrified at how the charter system has re-established school segregation in this state.

Of the 20 “top” charter schools in the state, only two have under 50% white students. Nine have more than 70% white students. In four of these charters, Asians are the second highest demographic. In terms of free lunch, only one has more than 10 percent of students in this category at 11%.

At the lowest end of the test scores, the story is the opposite among the charters. A Strive Prep school has 91% Hispanic students, Ricardo Flores Magon has 94% Hispanic, and Kipp Middle has 71% Hispanic, 18% Black, and 4% White students. Free and reduced lunch are above 50% of students.

Obviously about 15% of Colorado’s parents are okay with this stratification of our social system. But 85% of families, despite declining enrollments due to demography and the economy, are sticking with traditional public schools. Given our laws and the evolution of Colorado into a diverse state in which everyone at some level needs to get along in order to thrive, does it make sense to pour more money into schools that separate students by race, ethnicity and income? And the data are even more damning when assessing how children with disabilities are separated out of the charter system.

Charter supporters claim choice is the main thing. Fifteen percent of our population apparently believes separate and not equal is the right choice outcome. Those who claim charters are doing a better job of educating students, which is dubious when comparing schools of similar student demographics, must admit those high test scores come at a high cost to the social fabric.

Right now, 19 out of the top 20 charter schools by testing have fewer than 10% of students on free lunch. Nine of 20 have 5% or fewer students who qualify for free lunch. That distribution is not how Colorado will ever meet its constitutional requirement, and ideal, to provide a “thorough and uniform” education for its children.

Paula Noonan owns Colorado Capitol Watch, the state’s premier legislature tracking platform.