Sometimes I think those that claim to be looking out for poor and minority students cause the greatest damage. This San Francisco Chronicle story is a great example.

De facto segregation is alive and well in public schools in virtually every state, but is more common in charter schools - an educational option increasingly endorsed in state and national reform efforts, according to a national study released Thursday.

The trend is particularly severe for African American students, the UCLA researchers found.

Nearly 3 out of 4 black students who attend charters are in "intensely segregated" schools with student populations that are at least 90 percent minority, according to the study by the UCLA Civil Rights Project. That's twice the rate of regular public schools.

Almost a third of those black students are in what the researchers called "apartheid schools," where 0 to 1 percent of their classmates are white. Charter schools in the Bay Area and California have similar rates of racial isolation.

These are "the very kind of schools that decades of civil rights struggles fought to abolish in the South," researchers said.

Unlike forced segregation in the South before the civil rights movement, de facto segregation is often a product of the demographics of the community in which the school exists. Charter schools, however, are not considered neighborhood schools and are open to all students regardless of where they live.

The study looked at traditional and charter school data from 40 states and the District of Columbia, focusing on metropolitan areas with large numbers of charter schools.

Charter schools were "havens for white re-segregation" in some cases, but predominantly white student bodies occur more often in traditional public schools, the researchers found.

The researchers seem to be suggesting that charter schools are the dumping ground for minority students just like the segregated schools of days past. Unfortunately, they're once again seeing an effect rather than a cause.

Look at it from a minority parent's point of view. Their children have languished in the neighborhood public schools. Their children have failing test scores and are stuck in a long line of remedial classes. A friend or relative tells them about the charter school where their children go. The school is focused on raising achievement for poor and minority students. It has had a positive impact on other minority children's academic achievement. So the parent enrolls their student in the charter school.

This isn't a case of the local school district segregating minority students in a specific school. No one forced this parent to send their children to this special school for minorities. This about a parent who feels their neighborhood schools haven't served their children well and so they try an alternative.

The bold sentence above tells the story. The "segregation" they've found is more dependent upon the demographics of the community than any efforts by the school district. If they find more segregation in charter schools, it is because minority parents are self-selecting those schools.

On the other hand, the white parents are more content with the education provided by these neighborhood schools. which in general do a better job with their white students, so they are less likely to move their students to charter schools.

My fear is that these civil rights do-gooders will now use this data to try to reduce the number of charter schools or force parents to send their children to the very same neighborhood school that failed their students previously in order to return the ethnic balance. This is crazy!

Charter schools aren't perfect, but some are doing a great job at raising student achievement for poor and minority students. Forcing the students from those schools to return to traditional public schools simply to desegregate the schools would be a great disservice to the students who need our help the most. Perhaps the researchers should focus more on strategies that are effective in raising achievement for poor and minority students and less time on worrying about whether there are too few white students in some schools.