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Charter schools
The Impact of Statewide Virtual Charter Schools on District Segregation
Topics: School ChoiceEnrollment patterns in K-12 online (“virtual”) charter schools have the potential to influence segregation in traditional brick-and-mortar public schools. Yet, research has largely ignored how online schooling options impact racial segregation and poverty concentration within district schools.… more →
Are Rural Republicans Different When It Comes to Public Opinion on Education Policy?
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceConservative education policy in the United States increasingly emphasizes school choice, decentralization, and parental authority. This chapter examines whether these priorities resonate equally across geographic contexts, focusing specifically on rural Republicans. Using data from the 2015–… more →
Indiana Charter School Performance During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic
Ron Zimmer, Stephen M. Ponisciak, Mark Berends, Julie W. Dallavis, Joseph J. Ferrare, Adam Kho, Shelby L. Smith, Joseph Waddington.Topics: School ChoiceTags: Charter schools, Covid-19 recoveryThe COVID-19 pandemic disrupted schooling nationwide and contributed to substantial declines in student achievement. At the same time, enrollment patterns shifted and charter school sectors expanded in several states, raising questions about whether charter schools were better positioned to… more →
The Nation’s Achievement Inequality Report Card: An Assessment of Test Score and Equality Trends in Traditional Public, Charter, Catholic, and Department of Defense Schools
Topics: School ChoiceWe present a descriptive comparison of trends in achievement and inequality in traditional public, public charter, Catholic, and Department of Defense schools in the U.S. Our sample includes 6,155,570 observations for 4th and 8th graders in math and reading between 2005 and 2024. We focus on… more →
Reclaiming Educational Fraud and Waste: A Conceptual Framework to Locate the True Sources of Resource Leakage and Harm in The U.S. K-12 System
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThe recent dismantling of federal educational institutions has been legitimated under the banner of “eliminating fraud and waste.” In this paper, we reclaim these terms to locate the sources of potential fraud and waste in the U.S. K-12 education system through a novel conceptual framework that… more →
From Disruption to Recovery: Charter School Performance During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic
Topics: School ChoiceTags: Charter schools, Covid-19 recoveryIn recent decades, an increasing number of students have pursued alternative educational options, including charter schools, as school choice has continued to expand. This trend was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. While it is well established that students experienced widespread learning… more →
School Choice and Household Participation in School District Politics
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: Charter schools, School districtsWe examine whether policies that enable families to opt out of locally provided public services are associated with reduced political participation. Our study is focused on two types of school choice policy in Michigan: inter-district choice and charter schools. Do parents who send their… more →
The Differential Sorting of Disadvantaged Students in the Competitive K-12 Market
Topics: School ChoiceSchool choice options offer potential educational gains for disadvantaged students, but do they take advantage of such options? I study the sorting patterns of students with prior child welfare reports (12 percent of incoming kindergartners) across traditional public, magnet, charter, and… more →
Does Charter School Autonomy Improve Matching of Teacher Attributes with Student Needs?
Topics: MethodsTags: Charter schoolsWe examine the efficiency of traditional school districts versus charter schools in providing students with teachers who meet their demographic and education needs. Using panel data from the state of Michigan, we estimate the relationship between enrollment of Black, Hispanic, special education… more →
Charter School Expansion, Catholic School Enrollment, & the Equity Implications of School Choice
Topics: School ChoiceTags: Equity, Charter schoolsCatholic schools have seen more than a 30% decline in enrollment over the past 20 years. While some of the decline in enrollment may have been spurred by secular trends or the Church abuse scandal, the increase in schools of choice, principally public charter schools, may explain at least some… more →
Competitive Effects of Charter Schools
Topics: School ChoiceTags: Charter schoolsUsing a rich dataset that merges student-level school records with birth records, and leveraging three alternative identification strategies, we explore how increase in access to charter schools in twelve districts in Florida affects students remaining in traditional public schools (TPS). We… more →
For-profit milk in nonprofit cartons? The case of nonprofit charter schools subcontracting with for-profit education management organizations
Topics: School ChoiceTags: Charter schools, EquityThere is growing concern that some nonprofit public service providers may be nonprofit in name but not in fact. We consider this concern in the context of nonprofit charter schools, which sometimes subcontract their daily operations to for-profit management organizations. We use unique data from… more →
Virtual Charter Students Have Worse Labor Market Outcomes as Young Adults
Virtual charter schools are increasingly popular, yet there is no research on the long-term outcomes of virtual charter students. We link statewide education records from Oregon with earnings information from IRS records housed at the US Census Bureau to provide evidence on how virtual charter… more →
The Causal Impact of Charter Schools on Private Tutoring Prevalence
Topics: School ChoiceGreater school choice leads to lower demand for private tutoring according to various international studies, but this has not been explicitly tested for the U.S. context. To estimate the causal effect of charter school appearances on neighboring private tutoring prevalence, we employ a… more →
A Kindergarten Lottery Evaluation of Core Knowledge Charter Schools: Should Building General Knowledge Have a Central Role in Educational and Social Science Research and Policy?
David Grissmer, Thomas White, Richard Buddin, Mark Berends, Daniel Willingham, Jamie DeCoster, Chelsea Duran, Chris Hulleman, William Murrah, Tanya Evans.Tags: Charter schools, CurriculumThe Core Knowledge curriculum is a K-8 curriculum focused on building students General Knowledge about the world they live in that is hypothesized to increase reading comprehension and Reading/English-LA achievement. This study utilizes an experimental design to evaluate the long term effects of… more →
What can we learn from the research on public school reopening decisions in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic?
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceBackground: After the near-universal school closures in the United States at the start of the pandemic, lawmakers and educational leaders made plans for when and how to reopen schools for the 2020-21 school year. As school reopening plans and data sets aggregating reopening… more →
Choice and Change: The Implications of Charter School Expansion for School and Neighborhood Diversity in NYC
Topics: School ChoiceIn this paper we estimate the effect of charter schools on the diversity of nearby traditional public schools (TPSs) and neighborhoods in New York City. We employ a difference-in-differences approach that exploits the differences in the expansion of the charter sector between grades in the same… more →
How Do Charter Schools Affect System-Level Test Scores and Graduation Rates? A National Analysis
Topics: School ChoiceTags: Charter schoolsWe study the combined effects of charter schools, and their various mechanisms, on a national level and across multiple outcomes. Using difference-in-differences and fixed effects methods, we find that charter entry (above 10 percent market share) increases high school graduation rate in… more →
Why Does Education Increase Voting? Evidence from Boston’s Charter Schools
Topics: School ChoiceTags: Charter schoolsIn the United States, people with more education vote more. But, we know little about why education increases political participation or whether higher-quality education increases civic participation. We study applicants to Boston charter schools, using school lotteries to estimate charter… more →
Charter Schools and the Segregation of Students by Income
Topics: School ChoiceTags: Charter schools, PovertyThe segregation of students by socioeconomic status has been on the rise in American public education between schools during the past several decades. Recent work has demonstrated that segregation is also increasing within schools at the classroom level. In this paper, we contribute to our… more →