The only valid point I could find in the UCLA study is that charter schools may not be enrolling as many English Language Learners as they should/could. In part, this may be because charters are serving more African Americans than Latinos, but still… In light of this, I was pleased to see this article in the Boston Globe about how Boston charter schools are making a big push to enroll more ELL students:

More than 150 teachers, parents, and advocates are launching an aggressive drive today in Boston to recruit immigrant families to their charter schools in an attempt to reverse woefully low enrollment of students who are not fluent in English.

They will be canvassing neighborhoods with large immigrant populations, handing out fliers printed in Spanish, Chinese, Haitian Creole, and Portuguese, as well as distributing applications.

They will also take to the airwaves, advertising on radio and television in a variety of languages, in addition to placing ads in ethnic newspapers.

The recruitment drive represents the first coordinated effort among the city's 14 charter schools to attract more English language learners, a group that has among the lowest achievement rates across the state and that some charter school leaders acknowledge they have not done a good enough job trying to recruit.

"We take the hit too often that we don't serve these children,'' said Kevin Andrews, headmaster of Neighborhood House Charter Public School in Dorchester and president of the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association. "We are going to make sure these kids get a great education. Charter schools will step up to the plate and show we can do it.''

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