I'm not completely opposed to charter schools and the idea of school choice, although I am dubious of the notion that just opening up more and more charter schools (and thus taking more and more money from public schools, including the good ones) is somehow a magic solution to problems in education, and there is data out there suggesting that charter schools education and standardized test scores are generally no better than that at many public high schools.
This Forbes article - and Forbes is not exactly a liberal bastion - examines several NC Charter Schools using demographic data and concludes that they are, to some extent, reestablishing segregation in some parts of the state, with many charters being either overwhelmingly white or overwhelmingly black, with not much in-between. To wit:
"Initially, North Carolina’s charters served a disproportionately large share of black students. Since the initial period, charter enrollment patterns have shifted such that charters currently enroll a disproportionately large share of white students. Overall, the state’s charters have become bimodally racially imbalanced. In 2014, more than 70% of the state’s charters were either
predominantly white (enrolling more than 80% white students) or predominantly students of color (enrolling more than 80% students of color)."
North Carolina received a $26.6 million dollar grant from the federal Charter Schools Program in 2018. 42 charter schools received a piece of that grant. Only 30 of those have reported demographic information, according to NPE executive director Carol Burris, and of those 30, 11 have a “significant overrepresentation of White students or a significant underrepresentation of Black students compared with the population of the public school district in which they are located.”
"One example is Hopgood Academy, located in Halifax County. The county ranks 90th out of 100 counties in per capita income, but more than 28% of its residents live below the poverty line. In March of 1969, the U.S. Justice Department rejected the Halifax County district’s desegregation plan. A small mostly-white sliver of the county tried to set themselves up as a separate district, but lost a suit against the Justice Department in that same year. But in 1969, Hobgood Academy was established, a mostly white private school near a mostly Black public school. (This timeline comes courtesy of Rodney Pierce, a Halifax County social studies teacher and 2019 North Carolina Social Studies Teacher of the Year.) But in Halifax County, another wrinkle has been added. Soon after the CSP grant was awarded to the state, a movement appeared to convert the private school to a charter school. Opponents pointed out that the school was simply looking for financial relief for woes caused by declining enrollment, and that fans of free market ed reform should then be happy to see the school fold, but the charter was granted. That charter school retains its heavily white student body. And it received a half-million-dollar grant from CSP."
The Forbes article has several links to detailed, data-specific reports about the impact of charter schools in the state.
Link:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2021/06/29/are-us-taxpayers-funding-modern-segregation-academies-in-north-carolina/?sh=28889a8d71cd