The Diverse Charter Schools Coalition:
Interview with DCSC E.D., Sonia Park
Supporting Diversity in Charter School Enrollment
The Diverse Charter Schools Coalition (DCSC) recently celebrated its 10th birthday. I sat down with DCSC Executive Director, Sonia Park, to discuss their work and its relevance to district authorizers. The national group supports and convenes charter schools that are intentionally designed to be diverse. You can view the whole conversation here.
The DCSC mission is to catalyze and support the creation and expansion of high-quality diverse public charter schools through strategic research, advocacy, membership activities, and outreach. In its first decade, the coalition has grown to include 79 member schools and networks, representing 227 individual schools, serving over 90,000 students.
Across the country, many school districts are actively working to combat racial or socio-economic stratification in their district-operated schools and want to ensure that charter schools in their community advance this effort. These districts have a core value that all their schools serve a diverse student body that reflects their community. Consequently, many are concerned about opening charter schools they fear will end up serving a disproportionately high proportion of the more affluent or privileged students in their community.
The DCSC is made up of schools that share these values. While their commitment to diversity is universal, these schools reflect a wide range of curricular and pedagogical approaches and structures, including one-off charters as well as large charter networks.
You can view the video as Sonia addresses the following questions:
- Who can join the DCSC?
- How do intentionally diverse charter schools differ from magnet schools?
- How can authorizers and school founders increase the likelihood new schools will be diverse?
- How can you support a charter founding group intending to create a diverse charter school?
- What can a district do to increase the chances that the charter applications they receive are from founders hoping to create diverse schools?
- How can people learn more about the DCSC?
- What are your closing words of advice for district authorizers?
To help a charter school attract its target population, Sonia emphasizes the importance of things like enrollment preferences, choosing where schools are located, transportation, and choosing an attractive educational curriculum and communicating about it to the community.
The DCSC has a leaders’ fellowship that provides people interested in creating a diverse charter school with support and strong networks of like-minded peers. Districts with local groups starting to think about creating a diverse charter should get those founders in touch with the Coalition.
In the clips above, Sonia explains that there are things to look for in a charter application that can indicate the founders’ commitment to diversity, and likelihood of their success in attracting and retaining the students they hope to serve. She also describes the resources and support available to charter founders that want to create a diverse school who are looking for help in achieving their vision.