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.

A Descriptive Analysis of Cream Skimming and Pushout in Choice versus Traditional Public Schools

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-65
Author(s):  
Adam Kho ◽  
Ron Zimmer ◽  
Andrew McEachin
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
Probability Models ◽  
High Performing ◽  
Traditional Public Schools ◽  
Selective Admissions ◽  
Cream Skimming ◽  
Linear Probability

One of the controversies surrounding charter schools is whether these schools may either “cream skim” high-performing students from traditional public schools or “pushout” low-achieving students or students with discipline histories, leaving traditional public schools to educate the most challenging students. In this study, we use longitudinal statewide data from Tennessee and North Carolina and linear probability models to examine whether there is evidence consistent with these selective enrollment practices. Because school choice programs managed by districts (magnet and open enrollment programs) have a similar ability to cream skim and pushout students, we also examine these outcomes for these programs. Across the various school choice programs, magnet schools have the most evidence of cream skimming, but this might be expected as they often have selective admissions. For charter schools, we do not find patterns in the data consistent with cream skimming, but we do find evidence consistent with pushout behaviors based on discipline records. Finally, some have raised concerns that students may be pushed out near accountability test dates, but our results suggest no evidence consistent with this claim.

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.

The Squandered Brilliance of Our Disposable Youth

2021 ◽  
pp. 35-109
Author(s):  
Jim Freeman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Public School ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
The United States ◽  
Corporate America ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Public School Systems ◽  
Communities Of Color ◽  
The Impact

This chapter addresses the education inequities in the United States, and distinguishes between “public schools” and “charter schools.” Though the chapter recognizes that this is itself controversial, and charter schools have taken to referring themselves as public schools, for the sake of clarity it is important to be able to distinguish between the two. While the charter schools' efforts have been primarily directed at Black and Brown communities thus far, the chapter unveils the school privatizers' ultimate targets, which are set much more broadly than that. It examines the impact of school privatization on public school systems and the harms caused by school privatization in communities of color. The chapter then takes a look at Corporate America and Wall Street, and analyses how they can always profit from new markets and expandable markets. Ultimately, it reveals how the ultra-wealthy maintain education inequities to ensure that there will be millions of poorly educated, low-skill individuals who are essentially forced to accept the low wages to survive.

Desert Bloom?: Lessons from Two Decades of Arizona Charter Schooling

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-184
Author(s):  
Robert Maranto ◽  
Alexandra Vasile
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Public School ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Student Learning ◽  
State Level ◽  
School Enrollment ◽  
Parent Empowerment ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Modest Improvement ◽  
Traditional Public Schools

For decades, scholars and politicians have debated the likely impacts of school choice. Yet few have studied the nation's largest state-level charter school market, Arizona, whose 20-year-old charter sector accounts for about 17% of Arizona public school enrollment. This article summarizes the extant literature on this market, some 23 studies, supplemented with original fieldwork to derive tentative lessons for social scientists and policymakers. While the charter sector seems to have promoted innovation, teacher and parent empowerment, and modest improvement in traditional public schools, findings regarding student learning and segregation are less clear.

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.

Public vs. Private

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert N. Gross
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Public Policies ◽  
The United States ◽  
School Systems ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Public School Systems ◽  
Modern School

Americans today choose from a dizzying array of schools, loosely lumped into categories of “public” and “private.” How did these distinctions emerge in the first place, and what do they tell us about the more general relationship in the United States between public authority and private enterprise? Public vs. Private describes how nineteenth-century public policies fostered the rise of modern school choice. In the late nineteenth century, American Catholics began constructing rival, urban parochial school systems, an enormous and dramatic undertaking that challenged public school systems’ near-monopoly of education. In a nation deeply committed to public education, mass attendance in Catholic private schools produced immense conflict. States quickly sought ways to regulate this burgeoning private sector and the competition it produced, even attempting to abolish private education altogether in the 1920s. Ultimately, however, Public vs. Private shows how the public policies that resulted produced a stable educational marketplace, where school choice flourished. The creation of systematic alternatives to public schools was as much a product of public power as of private initiative. As ever more policies today seek to unleash market forces in education, Public vs. Private concludes that Americans would do well to learn from the historical relationship between government, markets, and schools.

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)

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 Entrepreneurial orientation in public schools: The view from new jersey

2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven E. Phelan ◽  
Ane T. Johnson ◽  
Thorsten Semrau
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
New Jersey ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
School Performance ◽  
Entrepreneurial Orientation ◽  
Traditional Schools ◽  
Entrepreneurship Research ◽  
Relevant Variables ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Relationship

We utilize a sample of New Jersey schools to explore the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and school performance. The results indicate a significant relationship between several dimensions of EO and performance after controlling for a number of relevant variables. Charter schools were found to have higher EO than traditional schools. The implications of these findings for education and entrepreneurship research are discussed.

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