Papyrophiles vs Cybernauts: The Future of Scholarly Publication

Papyrophiles vs Cybernauts: The Future of Scholarly Publication Gene V Glass Arizona State University glass@asu.edu (A paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the Mid-Western Educational Research Association; October 13, 1994; Chicago, IL.)             My involvement with technology began early and inauspiciously.             In 1959, I was Bob Stake's computer programmer on a quantitative psych research project. I programmed a Burroughs 205 computer in machine language (the 205 console later served as the console for the Batcomputer on TV's Batman series). The machine had 4096 memory locations for storing data and operations; it used paper tape input and output; it took up an entire floor of Nebraska Hall. I now carry equivalent computing power on my wrist.             In 1962 I went away to graduate school at U Wis-Madison. In that era we all worshiped at the altar of the CDC 1604 mainframe. I learned three different programming languages before I finally threw up my hands and refused ever again to touch a computer. I made good on that promise for 25 years.             When I went to ASU in 1986, I was given an IBM AT PC as part of the "computer infusion" program of the University. I did not welcome it, but I didn't turn it down. I can honestly say that I hated computers at that point. It sat on the corner of my desk for two years before I ventured to turn it on. My first attempts were like yours--fumbling hours of frustration bringing forth little. It wasn't until a student showed me how to send a letter--an actual letter--from one computer to another across the phone line, that I took an interest in the machine. (Interest born of guilt at deserting my students for the summer when I escaped the desert heat for the Colorado Mountains. With email, I could be in touch without being there.) That was in the Spring of 1989. BY the Fall of 1989 I was using email to communicate outside of class hours with my students. In January 1990, I started a BITNET LISTSERV discussion forum on education policy; it will be five years old in a few months--it distributes to a few thousand readers some dozen or so postings a day.             In January 1993, I started a refereed scholarly journal that exists entirely on the INTERNET; as far as I am concerned, it never has to touch paper--whether end-users want to read it on paper is their business. I asked thirty people whose writing on the policy forum had impressed me to serve as an Editorial Board; none declined. I set up the LISTSERV parameters for EDPOLYAR, and christened the whole endeavor the Education Policy Analysis Archives. Within three weeks we had 800 subscribers (who pay nothing) and had published our first article. Later came gopher and the World Wide Web and thirty articles in less then two years.             EPAA has 1500 direct email "subscribers" and 40 gopher hits (at just one of its four locations) on an average day. One of its leading competitors in the education policy analysis publishing business just saw its subscriptions ($100 a year for about 300 pages) fall below 200. It's no mystery what is going on here; it is simple economics and in publishing, as elsewhere, it rules. Other things rule too--like culture and professional norms. They will play their role in shaping the future of research publication as well. (n.b.: at this time, April 1997, I have discontinued distributing the journal via email and gopher and now rely solely on the World Wide Web; the average daily number of persons accessing the journal on weekdays is about 600.)             In February 1991, Ann Okerson, Director of the Office of Scientific and Academic Publishing of the Association of Research Libraries, estimated that there were about thirty networked electronic journals. As of October 1994, I can find over two hundred scholarly electronic journals on the INTERNET, and give you simple directions for accessing all of them (gopher to gopher.cic.net to connect to the Committee on Institutional Cooperation Network). In fact, Okerson herself in a press release dated May 23, 1994 reported that her organization had located 440 refereed electronic journals or scholarly newsletters. I know of a dozen ejournals in professional education, including EPAA, the Journal of Virtual Culture, Education, Research and Perspectives, Journal of Educational Theory, Interpersonal Computing & Technology, Journal of Counseling and Development, Journal of Distance Education & Communication, Journal of Higher Education, Journal of Statistics Education, Journal of Technology Education, New Horizons in Adult Education, Rasch Measurement Transactions, Society for College & Univ. Planning News, TESLEJ: The Teaching of English as a Second Lang., The Chronicle of Higher Education, Distance Education Online Symposium News, EduCom Review, Education and Human Resources Reports (NSF), Educational Uses of Industrial Technology News (EDUCOM), and the Journal of Extension.             Perhaps you will concede that electronic publishing is different--different in its economics, different in its conveniences, but maybe even different in more fundamental ways. Let's explore some of the differences. The Comparative Advantage of the Ejournal             I have edited three journals on paper--going back to 1968 when I took over the Review of Educational Research for AERA and extending forward to 1985 when I finished editing the American Educational Research Journal for the very same AERA--and one ejournal. In my experience, the ejournal has been superior in every respect: cheaper to produce, faster, more accurate, better written. Typically I receive an article submitted to EPAA in the form of an email letter and mail it that day or the next to the entire editorial board, thirty individuals who donate their time to the journal just as referees always have. Those who submit reviews are self-selected on the basis of how busy they are and how appealing the topic of the article is. Within a week to ten days, I receive back from the board an average of about five to ten reviews. This compares with an average of two reviews in four to five months which was average for any paper journal I have edited or submitted to. I make a decision and send it and the reviews to the authors within a day or two of receiving the editorial board opinion. The article is in my office for less than two weeks. And some reason that is not at all clear to me, the reviews I have received from the EPAA board are long and more carefully done than what I received when editing paper journals--perhaps it is because since I can canvas the entire board on every submission, those who send reviews have special interest and expertise on the topic of the article being reviewed. The result is that authors are grateful for the reviews, which surpass any of those in their experiences in scholarly publishing, they work harder on revisions and they produce better final drafts. The first article that we published in EPAA was submitted, reviewed, revised and published in 14 days; and the author is at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia.             The ejournal is not only faster and cheaper than its paper counterpart, but because of improved review by referees, it ought to be better too. Here's another respect in which ejournals are superior. The second issue of EPAA contained an article written by David Berliner, a colleague of mine: "Educational Reform in an Age of Disinformation," is the approximate title. This summer, a reader discovered that two of the tables in David's article contained some substantial errors in average SAT scores broken down by ethnic group. David had relied on an original source that was in error and the error did not become apparent until this reader tracked down the discrepancy in a new source. As soon as the correct figures were verified, we took the file of David's article off the gopher server and rewrote the tables and then archived the corrected version. Now anyone who accesses David's article (and it is transferred by someone about two times a day on average) gets the correct data. Contrast this with the correction of errata in paper journals; the error is corrected in some future issue on a back page and is not even indexed by the major abstracting and indexing services; a reader may, but more likely may not, see the correction, unless they search every page of every future issue of the journal (editors have a way of sticking these corrections into blank space wherever it might occur).             Odlyzko again, who edited a mathematics journal and experienced some of the advantages of telecommunications in connection with scholarly publication: "I am convinced that electronic publishing that is free to readers will take over in science and mathematics. It is impossible to predict accurately the date of transition. The basic technology that makes it possible is here, so it's a matter of guessing how soon the necessary infrastructure of editorial systems can be developed, and how quickly it will be accepted by the community. If nothing is done, I expect that traditional paper journals will become irrelevant to mathematicians' needs within 10 years. They might survive for a while longer, just because of the inertia of the entire academic publishing and library system, but then there might come a sudden transition, as the realization spreads that this system is obsolete."             Ejournals are easier to read, to quote in one's own writing, to share with colleagues and students. Most of these advantages are obvious and do not need explanation. But let me elaborate on one advantage that is not utterly obvious: readability. When I have an article in a word processor in my PC, I have far greater ability to move quickly around that article and find what is important to me than when it is on paper. Moving from the body of the text to the References is as fast as typing the first few letters of the authors name into the Search window of the word processor. And my own bibliographies grow quickly and with fewer errors when I cut and paste electronically the references I want from sources I trust.             The e-revolution will eradicate the costly "reprint" business. Commercial publishers charge profitable rates for reprints of published articles that are then mailed to authors who individually mail copies as they are requested. The entire process is slow, cumbersome and expensive. For years, impoverished academic libraries in eastern Europe were unable to subscribe to journals and authors sensed that the archaic reprint request system was the only means many scholars had of putting their hands on the literature. By contrast, I receive about three requests a week for copies of an EPAA article by a person who can not figure out any of the several means of obtaining a copy. It takes me about 15 seconds to email them a reprint. Scholarly Organizations             Let's consider what the ejournal movement might mean for scholarly organizations. Take AERA as a case in point.             AERA has about 20 thousand members and the average member pays $50 a year in dues, so the Association's income (not counting grants and Annual Meeting revenues and a few assorted items) is about a million dollars a year. Bill Russell tells me that about two-thirds of the budget goes to produce the Association journals (a half dozen of them); that's a bit over $600,000 a year to edit, print and ship scholarly journals. What would these figures look like if AERA chose to publish all of its journals electronically? There would be the time and talents of the editor and the editorial board and technical help for the editor (word processing and the like); this is now donated to the Association by the editor's institution- -and donated gladly since the institution is happy to have its name proudly appearing in front of the face of everyone who opens the journal. Likewise, the disk space to store the e-files for INTERNET access is a trivial item that no one would charge for (about one floppy disk per yearly volume). In short, I can easily imagine AERA publishing all of its journals electronically across the INTERNET at no cost to the membership--no cost. This is not a pipe dream; I have done it myself for two years and it can be done.             What would this do to the Association? How would it adapt? What role would it then play in the whole scholarly publication scene? These are tough questions that are currently occupying the thoughts of the AERA Ad Hoc Committee on Telecommunications, which Jane Stallings formed this past summer and asked me to chair. There are no easy answers, but I think it is quite possible for AERA to give up its paper journals and continue to perform a central role in the future of educational research. Indeed, organizations like AERA may very well play an enhanced role in the scholarly e-world. When anyone can launch a scholarly journal on a shoe-string, then precisely who does so is a matter of heightened urgency. AERA has always played a gate-keeper function in education research. When the gates swing open wide, the keeper's role will become more critical. As information explodes and dozens or hundreds of electronic resources vie for your attention, whose archive will you take the time to visit: Joe Schmo's or the one sanctioned by the Association? Libraries             The role of traditional university libraries in the e-revolution is very difficult to divine. By and large, they are sitting back, studying the situation but not acting. By history and by culture, librarians are trained to archive and retrieve text-- paper text. They are not much trained in computers and far less so on how to navigate the INTERNET. It is clear that they should be aggressively tracking, collecting and archiving the burgeoning field of electronic publication, but almost none of them are. But it will come; as soon as the first major library (a Berkeley or an Urbana or an Ann Arbor) commits itself to archiving ejournals, there will be a stampede of librarians to learn the INTERNET and follow suit. Presently, librarians seem to preoccupied with all the wrong issues that e-text presents: plagiarism (not different in any important respect from the questions that Xerox machines raised when they appeared on the scene), ephemerality of ejournals (forgetting that most paper journals have half lives equal to the morning dew), access costs (there will be none).             Libraries will be forced into the e-world by the economics of publication. Scholarly publication has increased exponentially for the last two centuries (Price, 19 , estimates that the doubling time of the scholarly literature is 10 to 15 years). The costs of printing have risen at rates faster than the general inflation rate. John Franks estimates that the cost of scholarly journals has risen at a rate of 13.5% per annum for the last decade--that means a doubling in cost every five-and-a-half years. Consequently, libraries are acquiring smaller and smaller fractions of the materials that their patrons wish to access. Their solution to this crisis is to put more into interlibrary loan; fill out a form and wait up to three weeks for a paper copy of a journal that your library can't afford to own. Concurrently, the costs of electronic storage of information have declined precipitously. I hardly need to recite the statistics for you; they are mind boggling. Andrew Odlyzko estimated that all the published mathematical work in history could be stored (formulas and all) in 50 gigabytes--a gigabyte of disk space (about 5 times the size of your typical PC hard drive capacity) now sells for about $500. Volume 1 and half of Volume 2 of my journal, EPAA, fit on one high density 1.44 floppy. No shelf storage; no dusting; no loaning and retrieving--just information at your fingertips or on your hard drive for pennies.             Currently, to obtain a copy of an article in a scholarly journal, I have to drive to campus, walk to the library, navigate the catalogue system, find the volume in the stacks, find a Xerox machine and copy pages at $.10 per copy if I am lucky and someone has not cut the article out of the book. To obtain an article from an ejournal, all I have to do is log on to the INTERNET, go to my gopher bookmark for the journal, locate the article and download it into my PC--it takes about 10 minutes and costs nothing.             A serious problem is that all this contemporary growth in scholarly communications is taking place, not within the purview of traditional academic librarians, but under the direction of "information technology" professionals. Now the latter are a flashy bunch with a strong sense of service--often more closely aligned with the values of the business world than the academy. But they lack the librarians sense of permanence, of keeping the historical record of the disciplines, of holding on to resources--librarians even call their books and journals "holdings." Ejournals now, outside the academic library system, occupy a precarious position. My journal, EPAA, essentially is archived in about five locations, four of which I could erase in a matter of about thirty minutes if I so chose. Similarly, they could be quickly and inexpensively moved and archived elsewhere if the need arose. But this type of tenuous hold on posterity is the sort of thing that gives librarians nightmares, and rightly it should. But as simple as it would be for me to erase my journal and send it to oblivion, it would be nearly as simple for many libraries to archive their own electronic copy of it and protect it indefinitely. That which makes ejournals fragile also makes them resistant to extinction. In a future of electronic archives, we can not even imagine an inferno like that which consumed the Library at Alexandria and wiped out the written wisdom of the day. Commercial Publishers             What will e-publication mean for commercial publishers of scholarly journals? It will mean that they will have to get out of the business. Some of them are frantically attempting to devise schemes of charging users for each and every access to an etext archive-- even attempting to block any file transfer or "downloading." It is clear to even a computer rookie that anything you can see on your screen, you can capture electronically. The commercial publishers can not control the wide sharing of etext, so they can't make money off of it. Some of them imagine that a commercial editorial office can add enough value to an article through graphic art and the like that readers will be willing to pay. This seems like wishful thinking, when nearly every university department office has the expertise to produce good graphics and transmit them across the INTERNET in an instant. Indeed, the commercial publishers now lag far behind the academic community in mastering the means for information storage and retrieval. In spite of the ubiquity of electronic word processing, most paper publishers are still not capable of working from electronic text and must rekey all the original text (I was amazed four years ago when I offered my publisher an e-copy of a revision of a textbook I had written and they declined, saying that they have to rekey everything anyway).             Again, universities have the incentive to "own" ejournals. They want their name in front of the public. And individual faculty in universities will happily devote their efforts to reviewing, editing and distributing the ejournals across the NET. It is not even relevant, it seems to me, to cost out the contribution of the editor's time in comparing paper publication to e-publication, since 1) the editor is not taking time away from more important activities to edit the ejournal and 2) even if we did cost out the ejournal editor vs the paper editor the ejournal editor would win (no time spent hassling with printers, correcting galleys, imploring authors to send back galleys they have sat on for a month, and the like).             Patricia Battin, formerly University Librarian and Vice President for Information Systems at Columbia University, had it right, in my opinion: "The advent of electronic capabilities provides the university with the potential for becoming the primary publisher in the scholarly communication process. At the present time, we are in the untenable position of generating knowledge, giving it away to the commercial publisher, and then buying it back for our scholars at increasingly prohibitive prices. The electronic revolution provides the potential for developing university controlled publishing enterprises through scholarly networks supported by individual institutions or consortia."             Okerson...sees more commercial scholarly epublishing with money made by access fees. This is very unlikely. It is unclear precisely what value a commercial publisher can contribute to the business of scholarly publishing. At one time, they brokered the array of services required to put manuscripts into type, print and distribute. Now these tools are owned by many--indeed, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that they are owned by all. Commercial interests are likely to dominate book publication--as opposed to journal publication--for some time. But there is no inherent reason that books should not be published across the NET as readily as articles and monographs. Recently, a physicist in Florida announced on the INTERNET that anyone requesting a copy of his latest book (a set of reflections on the recent history of physics) would receive a free copy by return email; I got one; it was about 15,000 lines (300 pages) long; I sampled it and erased it.             Harnad (1993) disagrees with those, like Okerson who imagine a viable commercial interest in scholarly publishing on the INTERNET: "I think not. Not only do I think that the true cost of purely electronic publishing would be more like the reciprocal of the paper publishers' estimates (which are based largely on how much electronic processing saves in PAPER publication), i.e., SAVINGS of 70-80%, but I also think this will put us over the threshold for an entirely different model of how to recover those costs and create a viable purely electronic scholarly publication system. That would be a scholarly subsidy model, whereby universities (especially their presses and libraries) and scholars' own learned societies support electronic publications, in place of a trade revenue model. Such a system would reflect more accurately the true motivational structure of scholarly publishing, in which, unlike in trade publishing, authors are willing to PAY to reach their colleagues' eye-balls, rather than the reverse: In physics and mathematics, page charges to the author's institution to offset part of the cost of publication are already a common practice in PAPER publication today. In electronic publication, where these charges would already be so much lower, they seem to be the most natural way to offset ALL of the true expenses of publication that remain. That, however, is not the subject of my paper, so I mention it only in passing. One thing of which I feel confident, however, is that, in line with the real motivation of scholarly publishing, scholars and scientists will NOT accept to have anonymous ftp access blocked by paper publishers invoking copyright. Either a collaborative solution will be reached, with paper publishers retooling themselves to perform those of their services that will still be required in purely electronic publishing, or scholars will simply bolt, and create their own purely electronic publishing systems." The Medium and Modes of Scholarship             What I have done to date is nothing but the porting of the concept of the scholarly journal from paper over to the INTERNET. It has been fun, and I sometimes allow myself to think that it might even be important, but it falls short of the capabilities of the INTERNET to improve scholarly communications. With the ease and near zero costs of electronically mediated communication, scholars should be experimenting with new ways of developing and sharing ideas and information.             Stevan Harnad of Princeton University has been a leader in exploring new modes of scholarly communication--"scholarly skywriting, as he calls it. Harnad has developed an ejournal with the name Psycoloquy and a subscription list (all free, of course) of over 20,000 persons. Harnad's model involves publication and open published peer commentary. A focus article may prompt a half dozen published reactions from peers--a model that Harnad first developed at much greater expense in the paper journal known as The Brain and Behavioral Sciences.             Harnad (1993): "The scholarly communicative potential of electronic networks is revolutionary. There is only one sector in which the Net will have to be traditional, and that is in the validation of scholarly ideas and findings by peer review. Refereeing can be implemented much more rapidly, equitably and efficiently on the Net, but it cannot be dispensed with, as many naive enthusiasts (who equate it with "censorship") seem to think. "IMPOSING ORDER THROUGH PEER REVIEW "I will now describe how peer review is implemented by PSYCOLOQUY, an international, interdisciplinary electronic journal of open peer commentary in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences, supported on an experimental basis by the American Psychological Association. PSYCOLOQUY is attempting to provide a model for electronic scholarly periodicals. All contributions are refereed; the journal has an editorial board and draws upon experts in the pertinent subspecialties (psychology, neuroscience, behavioral biology, cognitive science, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science) the world over (Harnad 1990; Garfield 1991; Katz 1991). "In addition to refereed "target articles," PSYCOLOQUY publishes refereed peer commentary on those articles, as well as authors' responses to those commentaries. This form of interactive publication ("scholarly skywriting") represents the revolutionary dimension of the Net in scholarly communication (Harnad 1992), but it too must be implemented under the constraint of peer review. "The objective of those of us who have glimpsed this medium's true potential is to establish on the Net an electronic counterpart of the "prestige" hierarchy among learned paper journals in each discipline. Only then will serious scholars and scientists be ready to entrust their work to them, academic institutions ready to accord that work due credit, and readers able to find their way to it amidst the anarchic background noise."             EPAA has a companion discussion forum, so to speak, although the forum preceded the journal by about three years. It is common for an article published in EPAA to be discussed by several persons on EDPOLYAN, a LISTSERV that deals with the analysis of education policy at all levels of the educational system. My original conception of EPAA was far different from what I have been able to bring about. My many years of editing journals--and acting as a reviewer--have made me fairly cynical about the value of the peer review. They are slow, often unconscionably so, too variable to permit drawing any kind of conclusion from a mere three or four of them, and too often sloppily done and, under the cover of anonymity, impolite. More than a few times as an editor have I edited out of referees' comments snide, cutting remarks that would bring their source a punch in the mouth were it not for anonymity. This is a human problem, as likely to emerge in the print mode as the electronic mode. (I once suggested to an editor on whose board I served that reviews would be quicker, fairer, more carefully prepared and more polite if not done anonymously. He suggested that I be the guinea pig. After an unpleasant two-hour phone call from the author of the first paper with which we tried this "nonymous" refereeing, the Editor and I gladly abandoned the reform.)             My original idea for EPAA was that it be an ejournal that would publish nearly everything sent to it after a quick screening to see that it was relevant to education policy and reasonably well formatted. The published work would enter an archive to be retrieved by interested readers, after announcement of its publication and release to a wide mailing list of its abstract. In the archives, each retrieval of an article would be counted and recorded--this is a technical problem of no consequence and it is routinely done today (in fact, I can tell you how many times each EPAA article has been retrieved from the ASU gopher in the past two years). A running tally of retrievals is kept and interested readers can check the statistics at any moment to see what is popular. Furthermore, anyone who wishes can post an addendum to any published article and explain what they like about it or what they don't like. I imagined that this system would commit far fewer errors of rejection than the current system of scholarly publication, that it would help busy readers find important work quickly without stumbling through mountains of trivia, and that it would contribute to making scholarly communication dialogic instead of monologic--which is, I believe, one of its greatest shortcomings. And nothing in the system I have described is "other worldly"; if you know the technological side of things, you know that each of the elements I have described has been standard equipment on the INTERNET for a couple years now.             Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful selling any of my colleagues on this conception of the journal. Their reactions were uniform. Neither they nor anyone they knew would want to be seen in the company of inferior work.             Harnad (1993): "INTERACTIVE PUBLICATION: "SCHOLARLY SKYWRITING" "The critical factor will be a spin-off of that very anarchy that I said had given the new medium such a bad image in the eyes of serious scholars, what had made it look as if it were just a global graffiti board for trivial pursuit: For once it is safely constrained by peer review, this anarchy will turn into a radically new form of INTERACTIVE PUBLICATION that I have dubbed "Scholarly Skywriting," and this is what I predict will prove to be the invaluable new communicative possibility the Net offers to scholars, the one that paper could never hope to implement. "I think I may be peculiarly well placed to make this prognostication. For over fifteen years I have edited a paper journal specializing in "Open Peer Commentary": BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (BBS, published by Cambridge University Press) accepts only articles that report especially significant and controversial work. Once refereed and accepted, these "target" articles are circulated (formerly only as paper preprints, but these days in electronic form as well) to as many as 100 potential commentators across specialties and around the world, who are invited to submit critical commentary, to which the author will respond Harnad 1979, 1984b). Among the criteria referees are asked to use in reviewing manuscripts submitted to BBS is whether open peer discussion and response on that paper would be useful to the scholars in the fields involved (and it must impinge on at least three specialties). Each target article is then copublished with the 20 - 30 (accepted) peer commentaries it elicits, plus the author's Response to the commentaries. These BBS "treatments" have apparently been found useful by the biobehavioral and cognitive science community, because already in its 6th year BBS had the 3rd highest "impact" factor (citation ratio; adjusted: see Drake 1986; Harnad 1984a) among the 1200 journals indexed in the Social Science Citation Index. BBS's pages are in such demand by readers and authors alike that it has (based on an informal survey of authors) one of the highest reprint request rates among scholarly periodicals and, of course, the characteristically high rejection rate for submissions -- attesting as much to the fact that there is more demand for Open Peer Commentary than BBS can fill as to the fact that BBS's quality control standards are high." Papyrophiles and Cybernauts: Who will prevail?             On the basis solely of economics, the cybernauts should prevail and paper journals--as Odlyzko predicts--should slip quickly into oblivion. But people are not solely creatures of costs and benefits. Many of my friends--who happen to be superannuated academics like myself--after hearing me rhapsodize on the advantages of e- publication, are moved to sermonize fondly on the pleasures of caressing paper, or of feeling the heft of a weighty volume of good writing in one's hands, or of even the smell of an issue of their favorite journal when they break the shrink wrap and the aroma of fresh paper wafts to their nostrils. I have memories of print as fond as any of my colleagues; my father was a printer and my grandfather was foreman of the pressroom at the newspaper. The smell of ink and newsprint are in my very fibers. But I now get as big a thrill from seeing my name blinking at me on the monitor as I did when I first held an actual journal that contained my name in print. I don't expect the differences between people who prefer paper text and people who use etext to disappear soon. Odlyzko's prediction about the disappearance of paper math journals in ten years may look foolish from the vantage point of 2004, but I am uncertain how much money I would wager against his prediction. Paper text and etext will probably co-exist in our discipline for many years. I suspect my colleagues will be more favorably inclined toward the ejournal when they find the INTERNET a more convenient terrain to navigate. Much progress is being made there. REFERENCES International Conference on Refereed Electronic Journals: Towards a Consortium for Networked Publications. Implementing Peer Review on the Net: Scientific Quality Control in Scholarly Electronic Journals. University of Manitoba, Winnipeg 1-2 October 1993 (in press) Harnad, S. (1993). Implementing peer review on the net: Scientific quality control in scholarly electronic journals. Laboratoire Cognition et Mouvement, Universite d'Aix Marseille II 13388 Marseille cedex 13, France .

Review of Fertilizers, Pills, and Magnetic Strips: The Fate of Public Education in America

Review of Fertilizers, Pills, and Magnetic Strips: The Fate of Public Education in America Fertilizers, Pills, and Magnetic Strips: The Fate of Public Education in America               by Gene V Glass. Published by Information Age Publishing (2008) Reviewed by E. Scott Fletcher Dean of the Graduate School of Education and Counseling Lewis & Clark College. Like Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Gene Glass’s new book, whose title consciously plays on this popular text, is a work of broad intellectual inquiry, drawing on the insights of a researcher’s long experience in the field. It is also similar in its attempt to bring a variety of complex disciplinary perspectives to bear on a pressing social question for a general audience willing to engage the text, connecting the dots to create a picture that ends up being bigger and more illuminating than anyone might have imagined at the start. Fertilizers, Pills, and Magnetic Strips: The Fate of Public Education in America lives up to this description, in large measure, even when some of the underlying conceptual supports for the analysis get a little blurry. Still, Glass brings the welcome clarity of his unalloyed empiricism to questions that many others, perhaps better on the underlying social and political theories, have left opaque to thus unmoved readers. It might be best to begin with the central claim of the text, which is captured a number of times in bluntly worded passages of the following sort: The major education reform proposals debated today in the halls of legislatures, in the media, and in academic discourse arise from the circumstances of an aging, White middle class wishing to reduce the costs they bear for public education and secure some quasi-private school setting for their children and their children’s children. (p. 199) This is the touchstone of the text and the thesis that drives the analysis of demographic trends associated with urbanization (fertilizer), changes in the composition of society (pills), and patterns of consumption (magnetic strips). The explanation that Glass offers is richly textured with data that is generally accessible (as he points out, “it is scarcely heavier than that of USA Today,” p. xiv) in a text that is well paced for a general audience. There is enough argument to support the position being developed, with few of the customary academic epicycles of qualification, unnecessary methodological detail, or overzealous engagement with past critics. Glass describes the emergence of a set of circumstances in which a single powerful group (the White middle and upper classes), threatened with a lower standard of living (through overconsumption and downward swings in the economy), exert influence over public policy (voucher programs, tuition tax credits, etc.) to reduce their transfer payments to others (often people of color), while maintaining access to services that sustain their social dominance (schooling). The power of the analysis lies in the careful working through of each of these elements. The text is effectively put together for the general reader, even sporting an image of the Fordson Model F Tractor and a portrait of the chemist Fritz Haber among the many charts and graphs. The writing is occasionally personal (cameos by Glass’s in-laws, father, and surgeon), proudly well-footnoted, and always grounded in empirical measurements of birth rates, racial demographics, census data, and the like. It has both the currency of a piece of policy research and the reflective quality of a senior scholar surveying the field (or several fields, in this case). Despite the beauty of the book’s balance, there are some pieces of this complex empirical puzzle that would benefit from deeper grounding in the social and political theories on which the analysis depends. Glass doesn’t always pursue these connections and sometimes his writing suggests an ambivalence toward possible interpretations. These are the issues that I’ll address in the remainder of this review. Ideology and Educational Policy Curiously, Glass makes no use of the concept of ideology in a text that otherwise seems preoccupied with its function. Beginning in the Preface, Glass describes his coming to write this book as part of his recognition that the language of educational reform obscures the real struggle for social control and privilege. Eventually, I came to believe that debates in education are not about achievement or test scores or preparing tomorrow’s workforce at all. They are about gaining the political power to control money and secure special privileges. Behind the rhetoric lies material self-interest, a drive for comfort, and a need for security. (p. xii) Glass then goes on, in Chapters two, eight, and nine particularly, to offer an analysis of how putative reformers manipulate “choice,” “accountability,” and our ever-present educational “crisis” to promote policies that defend the power of white middle-class families and insulate them from responsibility for poorer and “browner” students who are often the children of immigrants. He demonstrates how the privilege of white middle-class families is consistently sustained, and often expanded, by voucher programs, tuition tax credit plans, and other educational policies justified by what are ostensibly efforts to improve social efficiency or expand individual freedoms. Of course, the policies described do neither, but they do produce the kinds of cost reduction and quasi-private educational benefits that Glass describes above. It’s not simply on academic grounds that I think some conception of ideology would be helpful here. I think such an explanation is necessary to move ahead with Glass’s central tasks — to explain why we seem unable to let reason guide our educational policy making and why demands for “freedom” in the marketplace almost always bring the opposite effect. Glass cites approvingly the work of Michael Apple in a footnote on p. 8, but he misses the most important connection to Apple’s analysis. Rather than explaining “how conservative education reformers are contributing to ethnicity, race, and class division,” the genius of both Apple and Glass is their capacity to explain why well-meaning people go along with such proposals — or even more startling, why people who are actually harmed by these policies often serve as their advocates (recall Thomas Frank’s, What’s the Matter with Kansas?). Both Glass and Apple seek to expose the underlying ideology of market rationales for educational policies that ostensibly appeal to values such as equality of opportunity and parental choice as actually rooted in the race and class solidarity of privileged groups. This is the reason that Glass would do well to call upon ideology, or something similar, as a tool in his analysis. But this isn’t the only reason. It would also help Glass better explain the relationship between class membership (the demographic data) and the motives of individual social actors (their support for particular educational policies). Class Interests and Individual Actions One reason that ideology doesn’t play an explicit role in Glass’s analysis may be related to the ambivalence I see in his characterization of social groups in the text and how best to understand their “motives.” Early in the book, Glass identifies himself as a cultural materialist (like Marvin Harris), especially insofar as the approach gives appropriate weight to the forces of production (Marx) and to the implications of population dynamics (Malthus). At times, this appears to lead Glass to see the problem he’s describing as having a certain kind of historical and demographic inevitability — the fate of public education. For most of the rest of the book, however, it seems clear that Glass considers the choices white middle class people make to support particular educational policies as evidence of their conscious efforts to defend (or extend) their economic interests and privilege of position. He appeals directly to individual motives to explain such actions. Policies widely advocated in democratic institutions ranging from local school boards to the U. S. Congress have been put forward as solutions to a crisis in educational attainment that threatens national prosperity and security (indeed, national preeminence itself), when in fact these policies have likely arisen from different, less honorable motives, namely, the desire of White voters to preserve wealth, consume material goods, and provide a “quasi-private” education for their children at public expense. (p. 16) What drives the advocates? What is the source of their partisan energies? It is clearly not a case of having discovered, say, a miraculous cure for a virulent disease and wanting the world to benefit from it. One must look for the motives that drive the reformers. They are not hard to find: Reduce costs; make schooling private at public expense for my children. (p. 147, emphasis in text) The ambiguity here lies in the uneasy relationship between individual motives and class interests. Glass is no doubt right to argue that “people’s actions are scarcely comprehensible without thinking about what drives them and what personal interest is served by their acting thus” (p. 12). But an account of the belief system that integrates perceptions of self-interest with class membership (and thus what actions count as serving class interests in the first place) is exactly what’s needed here. Demographics, as powerful as they are, are insufficient to explain this relationship. Indeed, Glass demonstrates all too clearly that the effort to promote educational policies that benefit white middle-class families requires the deployment of sophisticated rhetorical structures (accountability, choice, educational crisis) to garner the political support necessary for their adoption. The irony here, as well as the conceptual difficulty, is that these rhetorical structures depend on individuals and their actions at the same time that they shape individuals’ motives and understanding. I think Glass would do well to say something more on this issue, as it also has important implications for where the analysis would take a sympathetic reader interested in raising the flag. How Full is Your Glass? In the end, it’s hard to answer Glass’s own question about whether he’s a pessimist (I agree with his self-assessment as a cynic — of the best kind). On the one hand, he seems to have a hard time resisting the determination of demographic data: It would be better to speak of possibilities or likely scenarios for public education rather than its fate in these pages were it not that the forces being discussed have a sense of inevitability about them. Thus we speak of demographic imperatives (p. 235). But it would take a true cynic indeed to put so much erudition into a book of this kind, only to conclude that nothing can be done. I’m grateful that Glass cannot resist the careful reader’s conclusion that the insights conveyed here can help us change our current. course, to seek justice in the provision of public education, and unmask false attempts at reform that benefit few at the expense of many. Will understanding—like that hopefully conveyed here—lead to some degree of introspection, some reflection by the very generations on whom the future of public education depends? If indeed the motives driving school reform are as selfish as is here claimed, can good consciences be awakened? There are no likely solutions to problems possible without knowledge of causes, even if it is partial knowledge. (p. 249) Maybe that’s as optimistic as a hard-boiled empiricist who looks at the figures and finds what Glass does in this book can be. I think it’s more than enough motivation to tempt fate and pursue these arguments in the court of public opinion. This book holds out the possibility of reaching a larger audience far beyond the walls of the academy. I hope that it does; I’ll certainly be recommending it. Reference Fletcher, S. (2008). Review of Fertilizers, Pills, and Magnetic Strips. Encounter, 21(4), 45-48.

U. S. Charter Schools and Ethnic Segregation. Cobb & Glass

U. S. Charter Schools and Ethnic Segregation: Inspecting the Evidence Casey D. Cobb University of Connecticut Gene V Glass Arizona State University Among the major concerns surrounding school choice programs is their potential to stratify students along the dimensions of race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic class (Corwin & Flaherty, 1995; Elmore, 1988; Henig, 1995; Moore & Davenport, 1990; O'Neil, 1996; Thrupp, 1999; Wells, 1993a; Wells & Crain, 1992; Willms, 1986). Related concerns are that they will "cream" academically talented students off of the public schools (see e.g., Buechler, 1996; Fitzgerald, Harris, Huidekoper & Mani, 1998; Lee & Croninger, 1994; Moore & Davenport, 1990; and Wells, 1993b. Charter schools, as schools of choice, have been targets of these same allegations. Reports appear mixed as to whether charter schools disproportionately serve white students or whether they have contributed to increased segregation among publicly funded schools. Studies conducted by charter advocacy groups have found no evidence of ethnic or racial separation. Other, more prominent national evaluations have concluded that charter schools do not stratify students nor predominantly serve white children (e.g., Buechler, 1996; U.S. Department of Education, 1997). Finally, a number of investigations report evidence that contradict these national evaluations (e.g., Cobb & Glass, 1999; Crockett, 1999; Horn & Miron, 1999; Wells, 1999; Wells, Holme, Lopez, & Cooper, 2000). We turn next to these national evaluations. Their findings tend to be cited often, so they deserve close inspection. National Charter School Evaluations The first national evaluation of charter schools reported that in most states charter schools had "a racial composition similar to statewide averages or [had] a higher proportion of students of color" than traditional public schools (U.S. Department of Education, 1997, p. 24). As we shall argue, such statements may serve to misrepresent charter schools and their potential to ethnically and racially stratify students. In the first place, there is an overreliance on aggregate data to answer the question of whether ethnic separation occurs among schools; such aggregate data are incapable of achieving that purpose. Second, such statements overgeneralize the circumstances of charter schools, which operate under varying conditions, often as a result of differing state laws and regulations. The Fourth-Year Report: A Closer Look The latest among four U.S. Department of Education national evaluations of charter schools again reports no evidence that charter schools are predominantly white or that they segregate students (U.S. Department of Education, 2000). Such conclusions remain in question, however, for several reasons. First, since not all charter schools are "schools of choice" to the same degree, generalizations can be misleading if not inappropriate. Indeed, the degree of choice offered by charter schools depends largely on the laws under which they operate. Given the variation in charter legislation among the 27 states with operating charters, generalizations should be restricted to at most the state in which the charter schools reside. For instance, some state charter laws do not require that schools maintain particular ethnic/racial balances (e.g., Arizona), while others require ethnic/racial compositions to reflect that of the sponsoring district (e.g., California), while still others must reflect the ethnic/racial diversity of the surrounding area (e.g., Minnesota) (U.S. Department of Education & RPP, 1999). Even within-state assessments can be problematic when one considers the various types of charter schools. There are urban charter schools, at-risk charter schools, grassroots charter schools, and public and private conversion charter schools. Other characterizations include teacher-led, parent-led, and entrepreneur- initiated charter schools (Wells, 1999). Moreover, methodological inadequacies have made the detection of stratification impossible in cases where it might very well exist. The Fourth-Year Report analyses rely too heavily on aggregate state and national data, which are incapable of showing between-school ethnic/racial separation. These reports have not found evidence of stratification because they fail to consider the circumstances under which it is most likely to occur, namely, among schools within a district, town, or community. The U.S. Department of Education (2000) investigated enrollment compositions at the national, state, and local levels. Percentages of white/nonwhite students were aggregated and comparisons were made between charter and traditional public schools. From these data, the report makes this case: Critics and advocates alike have feared that charter schools would primarily serve white students. This has not turned out to be the case. Overall, charter schools enrolled a larger percentage of students of color than all public schools in the states with open charter schools. (p. 30) And further, charter schools in approximately three-fifths of the charter states enrolled a higher percentage of nonwhite students than all public schools in those states. (p. 32) (These statements are not removed from a broader context--they are among the main conclusions from the report.) Taken in the literal sense, these statements are not incorrect. However, such comparisons between charters and "all public schools" are inappropriate if the intent of these findings is to provide evidence that charter schools do not stratify students. Including all public schools in the comparison group compares what might be going on in a particular neighborhood with what might be going on in an entire state. For instance, why would one include in this comparison group average hundreds of public schools located several hundreds of miles away from any charter school? Such aggregated data could not speak to between-school segregation, if it existed. If one is interested in seriously investigating the possibility of ethnic/racial separation, a more appropriate comparison group would include those public schools that are in proximity to charter schools. To its credit, the report makes an attempt to examine the ethnic/racial variability between schools (the "local level" analysis), but the manner in which this was done again places the conclusions in question. After comparing the percentage of nonwhite students among charter schools to surrounding districts' percentage nonwhite students, the report concluded: Sixty-nine percent of charter schools were within 20 percent of their surrounding district's percentage of nonwhite students, while almost 18 percent had a distinctly higher percentage of students of color than their surrounding district. Approximately 14 percent of schools had a lower percentage of students of color than their surrounding districts. (p. 30) It is problematic that these figures are tallied across states, without regard to size of school, size of district, ethnic/racial heterogeneity, or presence of charter schools in any one state. Moreover, one might question the generous leeway given charters when a 20% ethnic/racial imbalance in 69% of the charter schools is dismissed as not evidencing segregation. (One wonders if the Washington DC administration's benevolent attitude toward charter schools--borne of a wish to stave off the even more radical reform of vouchers, we believe--was intruding at this point in its analysis. We have seen in the past at the federal level how the same research on class size, for example, can be interpreted in radically different ways by different political parties.) "Surrounding district" represents a better comparison group than all public schools, but still falls short of the mark. Some states, such as Arizona, permit-- even encourage--nondistrict sponsors. In fact, only a handful of Arizona charter schools are sponsored by public school districts, making within-district comparisons less meaningful in that state. Further, most of these district-sponsored schools were located well outside the boundary of the sponsoring district. Yet the Department of Education's "local level" analysis relied on district comparisons for all charter schools in their national sample. Even in those instances where charters do belong to districts, comparisons to district averages may not be the most sensitive technique for detecting ethnic/racial segregation. Segregation can easily be hidden in district level analyses. District schools, after all, can exhibit extreme variability in their ethnic/racial compositions, for they are often highly segregated. Averaging the percentage of white students among several district schools masks this variability. Furthermore, in urban, secondary districts, which can span wide geographic areas, stratification could be occurring in one corner of that district (e.g., between two high schools and one charter school), but the averaged figures obscure any evidence. Intra-district comparisons may make more sense for smaller, rural districts that tend to have only one or two high schools. Lastly, the Department of Education's local level analysis relied predominantly on charter schools reporting data about the districts in which they reside (see footnote 2 on page 31 in full report). Sound research requires that the quality of such data be ensured by use of independent auditing of reports. Evidence from Three States Next, we present evidence of ethnic/racial stratification among charter schools in Arizona, California, and Michigan. These three states currently enroll over half (52%) of all charter school students in the United States and contain nearly half of the nation's charter schools (U.S. Department of Education, 2000). The conclusions drawn here rest primarily upon findings from three statewide studies. Arizona Arizona has arguably the most lenient charter legislation in the nation, which is borne out by the sheer numbers of charters in that state. Arizona contains nearly one quarter of the nation's charter schools. Charters are sponsored by one of three boards. Two of these boards may approve up to 25 charter schools per year; the third may grant an unlimited number. Virtually any individual or organization inside or outside the state is eligible to receive a charter, and very few applicants are turned down. Successful charter applicants include entrepreneurs, former public school educators, school districts, for-profit companies, nonprofit organizations, and private citizens. Teachers in charter schools are not required to be certified. Despite recent legislative attempts to amend the law to prevent abuses (the Senate passed a bill that introduced familiar state regulations such as increased financial accountability, more auditing of books, bringing charters under state procurement laws, and the like), 11th-hour amendments were slapped on by the Arizona House Majority Leader that stripped out nearly all of the proposed new regulations. The governor and superintendent of schools (the latter an ardent supporter of charter schools) expressed shock and dismay at this almost inexplicable political maneuvering. Data reported at the state level suggest that Arizona charter schools serve an ethnically and racially diverse group of students, though they underrepresent Hispanic students. For instance, in 1996, traditional public schools in Arizona collectively served 56.8% white students while all charter schools enrolled 55.2% white students (Cobb & Glass, 1999). Put this way, there appears to be little difference in the ethnic compositions between charter and traditional public schools. But, as we have argued, averaged figures do not speak to the possibility of between-school ethnic/racial separation. Cobb and Glass (1999) compared the 1996 ethnic/racial compositions of over 100 Arizona charter schools with those of nearby traditional public schools. Geographic maps were used to analyze the ethnic/racial makeup of each urban charter school (n = 55) in relation to nearby traditional public schools of the same grade level. The maps provided rich, contextual information. Various geographical characteristics such as major streets and highways, reservation lands, mountainous regions, canals, military bases, census tracts, and district boundaries comprised these digital maps. Descriptive data relevant to the census tracts, district boundaries, and--most important-- nearby schools, were also available. Results indicated that the charter schools were typically more white (on the order of 15 to 20% higher in the percentage of white students enrolled) than the nearest traditional public schools. Moreover, the charter high schools appeared to fall naturally into either college preparatory schools that were largely white, or at-risk, vocational schools that were predominantly minority. Intra-district analyses of 57 rural charter schools (which often entailed comparing one charter school to one or two traditional public schools due the smallness of rural school districts) showed similar levels of ethnic/racial separation. These results confirmed, at least in the case of Arizona charter schools, the often-mentioned claim that schools of choice have the propensity to sort students along ethnic and racial lines (e.g., Whitty, 1997; Willms, 1986, 1996). A more recent study analyzed 1998 enrollment data in much the same manner as the original investigation to determine if the degree of ethnic separation had lessened, remained the same, or worsened two years later (Cobb, 2000). Numerous charter schools opened while others closed in the two years following the previous analysis, resulting in significant changes in enrollment patterns. For example, there has been a steady decline in the African American population of charter school students in Arizona as predominantly African American charter schools have encountered various problems with nearly nonexistent state regulations, as remarkable as that might seem. As in the previous analysis, this study (Cobb, 2000) also benefited from the urban analysis. We present one of those here. Figure 1 depicts a scenario that provides evidence of ethnic/racial separation. The charter school at the center of the map is an elementary-middle level Montessori school. Of the 336 students it enrolled, 86% were white. This stands in contrast to the percentages of white students served by surrounding traditional public schools of the same grade level (43, 28, 27, 18, and 34%). The traditional public school located in the northwest corner of the map is largely white (74%), but this school resides far away from the cluster of other schools and is separated by a major interstate. There is little reason to believe the charter school is drawing from that area. No other schools are located to the immediate north due to a large mountainous region. The ethnic composition of the charter school located in the southwest corner of the map reflects that of nearby traditional public schools, and thus does not contribute to ethnic separation. To remain consistent with the previous study, each of the 98 urban charter schools was directly compared to the nearest traditional public school of comparable grade level. Admittedly, this method lacks the capacity for detecting ethnic/racial separation that the more inclusive mapping technique offers; however, it summarily portrays charter/traditional public school differences in ethnic/racial composition in a simple, straightforward manner. Figure 2 displays the differences in the proportion of white students between each charter and the closest traditional public school of the same grade level. Overall, two thirds of the charter schools were more white than their traditional public school neighbor. Of those that contributed to ethnic/racial separation--that is, those that demonstrated at least a 15% difference in percentage of white students--the majority (about a 3 to 1 ratio) did so in the direction of serving more white students than their nearest traditional public school (see the right side of the figure). This is perhaps suggestive of "white flight." The overall results of this latest study indicated that nearly a third of Arizona's charter schools contributed to ethnic/racial separation during 1998–99. The encouraging news is that this percentage is considerably down from two years prior when 46% of the charter schools were found to contribute to this sort of stratification. However, when the number of charter schools that are suspect of contributing are added, the difference across years narrows significantly from 53% in 1996 to 47% in 1998 (see Cobb & Glass, 1999, or Cobb, 1999, for a complete explanation of what constitutes the "suspect of contributing" classification). Furthermore, although the proportion of charter schools that appear to have contributed to ethnic/racial separation has lessened over the past two years, the numbers of students and schools that have been affected has clearly increased. More Arizona students attended ethnically and racially stratified charter schools in 1998 than they did two years prior (76 schools in 1998 versus 45 schools in 1996). This level of segregation is disturbing and deserves the attention of policymakers in that state. Charter schools offer more than just choice of a school for students and parents, they offer schools (or those that sponsor new schools) opportunities to select students and parents. Indeed, charter schools can be selective primarily due to their start-up nature. Consider that those that start up can (1) limit size and thus enrollment, (2) narrow their curricular scope to attract or target certain types of students (e.g., Ben Franklin schools in Arizona), and (3) choose geographic location. This notion of selectivity is not limited to charter startups. Even conversion schools--especially private conversion schools--already have missions, students, and enrollment numbers in place. One charter school in Arizona, founded by the wife of a Libertarian economics professor at the University of Arizona, advertised for an academically elite clientele and told parents who inquired about admittance for their learning disabled child that the charter school would "not be a good fit" (personal communication). Another charter school in Arizona that was predominantly white in an ethnically diverse area prominently advertised its Mormon mission. It promised young Mormons a school tailored to them with its "10 Reasons LDS Parents Should Choose Life School" (Arizona Republic, 1998). To be sure, these are two extreme examples; however, they are testimony to the notion that charter schools, at least those operating under few regulations, may well result in worse levels of stratification than other "pure choice" models, such as vouchers, because of their start-up nature. We encourage the use of improved methodologies to study the potential stratifying effects of charter schools. For instance, student address data would strengthen the mapping techniques employed by Cobb and Glass (1999). But gaining access to these data can be difficult. We also urge researchers and policymakers to make reasonable and appropriate comparisons when looking at the enrollment compositions of charter and traditional public schools. As we have demonstrated, it makes little sense to look at highly ethnically and racially homogeneous areas to find evidence of segregation. Charter schools do locate in predominantly white districts, and probably should not be included in overall averaged figures. Lastly, we suggest that investigations be done by research teams with representatives from pro-charter and anti-charter positions. Michigan In the aggregate, Michigan's charter schools--called "public school academies"-- serve proportionally more students of color than regular public schools (Horn & Miron, 1999). But again, such averaged figures can mask underlying disparities at regional and local levels. It would be inappropriate to conclude that Michigan charter schools do not ethnically/racially segregate. A more in-depth analysis would be required to answer that question. In its 1999 study, the Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University reported that, on average, charter schools in Michigan (at least the 62 schools in their study) enrolled relatively more students of color than noncharter public schools (51 to 33% respectively). The evaluators were quick to point out, however, that these numbers do not necessarily support the conclusion that charter schools are attracting more students of color than traditional public schools, or that they have not contributed to ethnic/racial segregation in their vicinity. Most charter schools in Michigan are located in urban areas, which are predominantly minority. In fact, the data indicate that the charter schools are actually serving disproportionately fewer minorities in diverse areas. Sponsoring districts were 41% white on average while charter schools in those districts were nearly 60% white on average. Horn and Miron, while recognizing the limitations of charter-to-district comparisons (in this instance, some students attend charters from outside districts in which they are located), suggested that this provides evidence of ethnic segregation. They reported: "in fact, in relation to the host districts, the [charter schools] as a whole have fewer minorities. Thus, there is support for those who argue that the charter schools are skimming and increasing segregation" (Horn & Miron, 1999, p. v). They also state that, "while some schools . . . strive[d] to increase racial and social diversity of the students, others [had] few, if any minorities or students with special needs" (p. iv). In the appendices of their report, Horn and Miron (1999) present comparisons of the ethnic compositions among 61 charter schools and their host districts. We calculated that 26 of 61 charter schools, or 43%, demonstrated at least a 15% difference in percentage of white students. Of these 26, 14 were in the direction of enrolling more minority students while 12 were in the direction of serving more white students. However, after removing charter schools located in host districts that were ethnically and racially homogeneous (that is, over 95% white, on average), the proportion of charter schools that presented with at least a 15% difference increased to well over half (24 of 45). Further, the percentage of charter schools that were significantly more white than their host district increased to 27%. Perhaps more troubling is the declining trend in enrollment among minority students over a four-year period (see Figure 3). The evaluators attributed this decline to newly formed charter schools, which were enrolling greater numbers of white students. To the extent that new charters are locating in ethnically/racially heterogeneous areas, this could be indicative of white flight. Given that districts sponsoring charter schools are 41% white (compared to the overall state average of 80% white), it does appear that charters are locating in more ethnically and racially diverse communities. We learned from the Horn and Miron study that state-averaged data may not accurately portray a complete picture. Once again, we return to the comparisons drawn in the U.S. Department of Education's Fourth-Year Report: In order to examine the racial/ethnic variability across schools, we also calculated the average of the schools' racial/ethnic percentages. On average, charter schools enrolled a significantly lower percentage of white students (50 percent versus 63 percent) and a much larger percentage of black students (27 percent versus 17 percent) than all public schools in the 27 charter states. (2000, p. 30) We want to point out that this "50%" figure is an average across schools, and that there are many data points on either side of this mean. It could be the case that those schools that comprise the upper part of this range (say, 70% and higher white) were mostly located in non-white areas, as Horn and Miron had found in Michigan. Cast in this light, the data tell a different story. California A number of studies have reported that charter schools in California overrepresent white students. For instance, the national First-Year Report revealed that 37% of California charter schools, compared to 17% of traditional public schools, had enrollments of 80% or more white students (U.S. Department of Education, 1997). A separate study, one commissioned by the California Legislative Analyst's Office, concluded that, On the whole, charter schools served a population that was demographically similar to the student population statewide. Within-district comparisons, however, showed that in about 40% of charter schools students were more likely to be White, and in about 60% of charter schools students were less likely to be low income than other students in their sponsoring districts. (SRI, 1997, p. II-1) The UCLA Charter School Study found that in 10 of the 17 charter schools it investigated, at least one ethnic or racial group was over- or underrepresented by 15% or more in comparison to the districts' composition (Wells, 1999). Crockett (1999) found similar evidence of ethnic/racial segregation in her comprehensive study of well over 100 California charter schools. We explore this study in more detail below. Crockett (1999) conducted a statewide analysis of all 123 California charter schools that operated during the 1997–1998 school year. The analysis was an attempt to discern, to the extent it existed, the ethnic/racial distinctness between charter schools and their sponsoring districts. California charter law requires charter schools to reflect the ethnic/racial balance of the district in which they reside. (Wells [1999] previously reported that this rule was not being enforced, at least among the 10 California districts in her study.) If discrepancies in ethnic/racial student compositions were evident, Crockett sought to explain those differences by way of school and district characteristics (e.g., urbanness, grade level, geographic location and size, charter mission, and the like). Racial distinctness was defined by a 25% charter-district difference in ethnicity/ race for at least one of the seven ethnic/racial categories. (California maintains seven classifications of ethnicity/race: American Indian, Asian, Pacific Island, Filipino, Hispanic, Black, and White.) Results indicated that nearly one third (n = 38) of the charter schools were ethnically/racially distinct from their sponsoring district (see Table 1). Further inspection demonstrated that urban charter schools were far more likely to exhibit distinctness than suburban and rural schools. A closer examination of the 38 charter schools that were 25% and greater distinct in ethnic/racial composition from their sponsoring districts revealed that 20 (or 52%) of these exhibited a white–Hispanic inverse relationship; that is, charter schools typically served more white students than the district, on average, and conversely, the district schools served more Hispanic students, on average. These percentages virtually offset one another. Of the 20 charter schools, 19 were in the direction of more white. This is strongly suggestive of ethnic/racial separation. Crockett was particularly interested in those charter schools that were whiter than their district. Overall, 78 of the 123 charter schools (63%) were whiter than their sponsoring districts. One in five charter schools (n = 26) exhibited at least a 20-point difference in the percentage of white students enrolled (all in the direction of the charter being more white). The average difference in percentage white among these charter schools was 32%. These schools tended to be located in urban areas, span the elementary and middle school grades, espouse an academic (versus vocational) mission, and be start-up (versus conversion) schools. In most instances, the difference in percentage white (i.e., charter minus district average) was matched by a corresponding deficit in the percentage of Hispanic students (see Table 2). Crockett noted the methodological weakness of using district averages (of percentage ethnic/racial enrollments), as it ignores within-district ethnic/racial heterogeneity. She further cautioned that "some charter schools may reflect their locations in a way that puts them out of balance with their sponsoring districts . . . particularly if the district is large." That said, Crockett affirmed that "the findings of ethnic separation . . . are not limited to one or two districts, but are in effect statewide" (p. 74). A map analysis of California charter schools is currently under way, which we believe presents a more powerful manner to investigate the possibility of ethnic/racial separation. Nevertheless, the findings reported by Crockett are strongly indicative of ethnic/racial stratification. Finally, we think it is important to note that many charters in California have experimented with mandatory parental involvement contracts, which can serve to be exclusionary (Becker, Nakagawa, & Corwin, 1996). In a study of 10 California school districts Wells (1999) also reported that charter schools exercise considerable control over the types of students they serve. Conclusions The evidence presented here runs counter to some of the claims intimated by highly regarded national evaluations of charter schools; namely, that charter schools have not resulted in the ethnic/racial separation of students. More careful inspection demonstrates that ethnic and racial stratification can and does exist on the part of some charter schools. Comparisons among proximal charter and traditional public schools in Arizona, Michigan, and California suggest that a significant number of charter schools are disproportionately more white by about 15 to 20% on average. These three states account for over half of the nation's charter schools. Although we do not generalize our findings to all charter schools, we do believe that substantial evidence exists that charter schools in ethnically and racially diverse neighborhoods are contributing to ethnic and racial segregation in the public schools of our nation. Moreover, certain among state charter policies appear to permit such sorting. These incidences of ethnic/racial separation are not isolated nor insignificant. Note. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (New Orleans, April 2000). References Arizona Republic. (1998, May 14). Charter school ad targets Mormons. p. A1. Becker, H. J., Nakagawa, K., & Corwin, R. G. (1996). Parent involvement contracts in California's charter schools: Strategy for educational improvement or method of exclusion. Teachers College Record, 98(3), 511–536. Buechler, M. (1996). 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