Horizontal Differentiation and the Policy Effect of Charter Schools

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 239-276
Author(s):  
Michael Gilraine ◽  
Uros Petronijevic ◽  
John D. Singleton
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Public Education ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
Education Quality ◽  
Horizontal Differentiation ◽  
Learning Gains ◽  
Policy Effect ◽  
School Expansion ◽  
Aggregate Effect

While school choice may enhance competition, incentives for public schools to raise productivity may be muted if public education is imperfectly substitutable with alternatives. This paper estimates the aggregate effect of charter school expansion on education quality while accounting for the horizontal differentiation of charter programs. Our research design leverages variation following the removal of North Carolina’s statewide cap to compare test score changes for students who lived near entering charters to those farther away. We find learning gains that are driven by public schools responding to increased competition from non-horizontally differentiated charter schools, even before those charters actually open. (JEL H75, I21, I28)

A Look Back: Taking stock of public school choice in Kappan

2021 ◽  
Vol 103 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-7
Author(s):  
Teresa Preston
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Public School ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
Alternative Schools ◽  
Private School ◽  
Magnet Schools ◽  
Public School Choice ◽  
Look Back

In this monthly column, Kappan managing editor Teresa Preston explores how the magazine has covered the questions and controversies about school choice. Although many authors across the decades objected to the use of vouchers to pay private school tuition, those same authors lent support to the idea of choice among public schools. Advocates of public school choice have endorsed various models for providing choices, from alternative schools, to magnet schools, to charter schools.

Washington View

2018 ◽  
Vol 99 (7) ◽  
pp. 74-75
Author(s):  
Maria Ferguson
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
New Era ◽  
Voucher Program

Maria Ferguson looks at how public schools in Puerto Rico are faring since Hurricane Maria and considers what their future may look like as families have fled to the mainland. One option is to follow the lead of New Orleans after Katrina and launch charter schools and a voucher program, which would bring about a new era in public education for the island, but not necessarily a better one.

Creaming Versus Cropping: Charter School Enrollment Practices in Response to Market Incentives

2002 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Lacireno-Paquet ◽  
Thomas T. Holyoke ◽  
Michele Moser ◽  
Jeffrey R. Henig
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
School Enrollment ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Public School Systems ◽  
Special Education Needs ◽  
Cream Skimming ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Student Composition

Proponents of school choice present market-based competition as a means of leveling disparities between race, class and performance in public school systems. Opponents see school choice as threatening to exacerbate this problem because competition for students will pressure individual schools into targeting students with the highest performance and the least encumbered with personal and social disadvantages. We suggest that some charter schools, by background and affiliation, are likely to be more market-oriented in their behavior than others, and test the proposition that market-oriented charter schools engage in cream-skimming while others disproportionately serve highly disadvantaged students. Comparing student composition in market-oriented charter schools, nonmarket-oriented charter schools, and traditional public schools in Washington, DC, we find little evidence that market-oriented charters are focusing on an elite clientele, but they are less likely than the other two types of schools to serve some high need populations. Rather than skimming the cream off the top of the potential student population, market-oriented charter schools may be “cropping off” service to students whose language or special education needs make them more costly to educate.

Washington View: Charter schools: What a long, strange trip it’s been

2020 ◽  
Vol 101 (8) ◽  
pp. 62-63
Author(s):  
Maria Ferguson
Keyword(s):  
Public Education ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
Charter School ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
Perfect Storm

The recent pushback against charter schools, which has taken many by surprise, stems from what Maria Ferguson describes as a perfect storm of circumstances. Because states approach charter school authorization and oversight in so many different ways, the landscape has become confusing. Betsy DeVos’s championing of charters as part of her school choice agenda has led to suspicion of the movement. And some presidential candidates have portrayed charters as an enemy of public education. All of these circumstances could turn into an opportunity to address the issues that matter to both supporters and critics of charter schools.

The Next Frontier in Public Education

2011 ◽  
pp. 255-269
Author(s):  
Belinda M. Cambre
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
Traditional Schools ◽  
Controversial Issues ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Accountability Measures ◽  
Traditional Public Schools ◽  
Brick And Mortar ◽  
K 12

Publicly funded alternatives to traditional public schools have taken place in the form of charter schools and, most recently, cyber charter schools. Cyber charter schools are fully online K-12 public schools and they “look” like traditional schools since students learn traditional subjects and are still subject to the same public accountability measures as their traditional brick and mortar counterparts. This chapter examines cyber charter schools in practice and summarizes the most controversial issues surrounding this form of school choice. Issues such as the legality of cyber charters under state charter laws; the allocation of per pupil funding; the use of for-profit companies in school management; ensuring access to cyber charters; and fulfilling state mandates top the list of salient issues with respect to cyber charter schools.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert N. Gross
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Public Education ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
The Public ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Catholic Schooling

The introduction sets up the problem public officials faced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. How should they, and the public schools they administered, respond to rapidly increasing attendance in private, Catholic schools? How, in a nation seemingly committed to mass public education, did private, Catholic schooling expand? In the broader economic language popular both at the time and today, how did educational competition and markets emerge in the twentieth century given the strong support for a public school monopoly a century earlier? The book’s central argument is that the structures that enable school choice to flourish today owe their origins—over a century ago—as much to public policy as to private initiative.

scholarly journals Sorting Schools: A Computational Analysis of Charter School Identities and Stratification

2020 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-64
Author(s):  
Jaren R. Haber
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
Charter School ◽  
Parenting Styles ◽  
Text Analysis ◽  
Linear Regression Models ◽  
Educational Values ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Methodological Problems

Research shows charter schools are more segregated by race and class than are traditional public schools. I investigate an underexamined mechanism for this segregation: Charter schools project identities corresponding to parents’ race- and class-specific parenting styles and educational values. I use computational text analysis to detect the emphasis on inquiry-based learning in the websites of all charter schools operating in 2015–16. I then estimate mixed linear regression models to test the relationships between ideological emphasis and school- and district-level poverty and ethnicity. I thereby transcend methodological problems in scholarship on charter school identities by collecting contemporary, populationwide data and by blending text analysis with hypothesis testing. Findings suggest charter school identities are both race and class specific, outlining a new mechanism by which school choice may consolidate parents by race and class—and paving the way for behavioral and longitudinal studies. This project contributes to literatures on school choice and educational stratification.

To Switch or Not to Switch? The Influence of School Choice and Labor Market Segmentation on Teachers’ Job Searches

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-399
Author(s):  
Huriya Jabbar ◽  
Andrene Castro ◽  
Emily Germain
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
San Antonio ◽  
Institutional Barriers ◽  
Labor Market Segmentation ◽  
Beliefs And Values ◽  
Traditional Public Schools ◽  
Job Searches ◽  
Different Types

Informal and institutional barriers may limit teacher movement between charter schools and traditional public schools (TPSs). However, we know little about how teachers choose schools in areas with a robust charter school sector. This study uses qualitative data from 123 teachers to examine teachers’ job decisions in three cities with varying charter densities: San Antonio, Detroit, and New Orleans. Our findings illuminate different types of segmentation and factors that facilitate and limit mobility between sectors. We find that structural policies within each sector can create barriers to mobility across charter schools and TPSs and that teachers’ ideological beliefs and values serve as informal, personal barriers that reinforce divides between sectors. This study offers implications for policy in districts with school choice.

scholarly journals Public School Priorities in a Political Year: Findings from the 52nd annual PDK poll

2020 ◽  
Vol 102 (1) ◽  
pp. NP1-NP16
Keyword(s):  
Substance Abuse ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Public School ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
Reading Instruction ◽  
Political Party ◽  
The Public

The 2020 PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitude Toward the Public Schools finds that more than half of adults consider public education highly important in their choice for president. And regardless of political party, most Americans agree that the administration in Washington should focus on attracting and retaining good teachers to the profession and making college more affordable. Respondents were more divided in their views of the Trump administration’s performance. The poll also explores Americans’ views on diversity, charter schools, vouchers, testing, substance abuse, and approaches to reading instruction.

What's in Your Portfolio? How Parents Rank Traditional Public, Private, and Charter Schools in Post-Katrina New Orleans’ Citywide System of School Choice

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane A. Lincove ◽  
Joshua M. Cowen ◽  
Jason P. Imbrogno
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
School Performance ◽  
Private Schools ◽  
Academic Outcomes ◽  
School Characteristics ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Unique Data

We examine the characteristics of schools preferred by parents in New Orleans, Louisiana, where a “portfolio” of school choices is available. This tests the conditions under which school choice induces healthy competition between public and private schools through the threat of student exit. Using unique data from parent applications to as many as eight different schools (including traditional public, charter, and private schools), we find that many parents include a mix of public and private schools among their preferences, often ranking public schools alongside or even above private schools on a unified application. Parents who list both public and private schools show a preference for the private sector, all else equal, and are willing to accept lower school performance scores for private schools than otherwise equivalent public options. These parents reveal a stronger preference for academic outcomes than other parents and place less value on other school characteristics such as sports, arts, or extended hours. Public schools are more likely to be ranked with private schools and to be ranked higher as their academic performance scores increase.

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