Diversity by Design

Twenty-first century schools must reflect the modern world and workplace, with a diverse student and faculty population, opportunities to engage with the outside world, and skills that enable them to communicate and collaborate with diverse groups of people. Our school intentionally mirrors the make-up of the city of Charlotte. 40% of our lottery seats are allocated to socioeconomically diverse students. Our students become Global Citizens who work effectively with people from all different types of backgrounds. 

An integrated school environment enriches the learning experience for ALL children and better prepares students for a global future.

• Diverse schools promote equity by ensuring that students from different backgrounds have the same high-quality educational opportunities.
• Learning in a diverse school better prepares children to be successful in the global workplace.

Diverse representation is important. Children need to learn from both those who look like them as well as those who have different backgrounds.

• Achieving diversity often requires deliberate efforts through recruitment, enrollment policies, and school design. Lab’s enrollment lottery is structured such that our student body reflects the makeup of the city of Charlotte.
• Diverse schools provide greater opportunities for students to learn from one another.
• Diversity is an effective method of boosting achievement of all students.
• Diverse schools promote the celebration and understanding of other cultures and viewpoints.
• Diverse schools invigorate and strengthen urban neighborhoods by bringing community members together.
• Charter schools can and should contribute to solving the historical challenge of creating integrated, equitable and inclusive school communities.

Charlotte Lab School strives to demonstrate that diverse, equitable and inclusive public schools work for all children.