School Choice, Segregation, and Equity: California's Charter Schools' Missions, Markets, And Voices of Charter School Leaders of Color

The phenomenal growth of charter schools in urban under-resourced communities with high concentrations of minority students impacts access to effective education. The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the trends toward segregation in charter schools as systemic and correlated with the unintended adverse consequences of the lack of racial awareness in a market-based public educational system. This study employed the self-reported perceptions of charter school leaders of color to analyze the systemic processes and practices within the charter school movement that produce under-resourced segregated schools in urban areas with high levels of poverty.;This study is a qualitative study presented to provide an understanding of charter school racial segregation. The responses given by charter school leaders of color were analyzed through a critical race framework along with Howard's (2010) research of practices of effective schools. The statements from the charter school leaders of color were reviewed through causal-comparative observation to find common themes and suggestive hypotheses.;For students of color, the academic quality provided by public education has consistently been unsustainable in America. Three years after the Brown decision, Sputnik launched and the public education system in American was shamed for the second time in 1957. In 2011 Chubb and Moe declared, "If Americans want effective schools, it appears they must first create new institutions that [hinge] on the choices of individuals" (p. 21). Charter schools represent a different structure focused on student outcomes.;School choice reform provides a critical opportunity to empower the disenfranchised. Carter (1980) wrote "The African American urban poor is permanently trapped on the bottom rung of our society, with no hope of upward mobility unless the means can be found to raise the educational standards in the schools of African American concentration" ( p. 27).;Brown's promise to deliver educational equity over the next 50 years is dependent upon its promise to forge connections between disempowered families of color and the American dream through a diverse and robust public education system. Race, as complex as it is, plays a very significant and multifaceted role in the establishment of charter schools in California.