Charter schools and the quality of education in California: do they yield the best form of competition

Abstract

As the number of charter schools has increased rapidly in the USA, many studies have continued to examine the effects of charter schools on student achievement. However, there is still conflicting evidence on the effectiveness of charter schools relative to student achievement. Regarding these findings, previous studies have focused on the values of test scores to measure student achievement exclusively by unitary measurement. Thus, this study investigates the results of increases in the number of charter schools in the public school system in California and uses the values of the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) to measure equality focused performance. The results indicate that charter schools increase competition between public and charter schools and lead to better performance, while increased competition aggravates the stratification of student performance, which in turn makes good student better.