The fast growing charter school movement may be impeded if charter schools are perceived as a vehicle for stratifying, segregating, and balkanizing an already ethnically, socio-economically divided population. This article defines ethnocentric schools and describes three Native Hawai'ian charter schools. While they are very different in curricula and in emphasis on the Hawai'ian language and other features, they all have strong community support and a high degree of parental involvement and have access to funds available only for Native Hawai'ian programs. It may be easy to support the expenditure of public funds for ethnocentric charter schools in areas like Hawai'i where ethnic minorities have traditionally been underserved. The issues raised in this study may have broader implications for the evolution of American public education. The question is not what criteria to apply to distinguish schools of "good" choice from schools of "bad" choice. In final analysis we must ask, are schools of choice truly schools of choice, or not?

A growing number of ethnocentric or culturally oriented niche charter schools have opened around the country. These ethnic or culture-oriented models raise legal and policy concerns about church/state entanglement as well as concerns about diversity. Indeed, there has already been litigation focused on racial and ethnic aspects of charter schools as well as religious influences. Despite the litigation in these areas, the constitutional tensions to which ethnocentric charter schools give rise have not been fully explored in the literature. Using legal research methods, this article examines the existing litigation involving culture-oriented charter schools and discusses the policy and legal tensions involved.

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