Charter Sector Research Articles

Weathering the storm: a descriptive examination of COVID era proficiency changes in charter schools

The COVID-19 pandemic imposed unprecedented disruptions on American education and contributed to profound learning loss. The stakes attached to learning loss are especially high for charter schools, whose survival and potential expansion or replication is heavily tied to test score performance. Using nationwide school-level proficiency data, this study examines achievement patterns in the charter sector between 2018–19 and 2020–21. Overall, it emerges that school proficiency rates in 2018–19 remained strongly predictive of proficiency rates in 2020–21. Still, certain notable patterns emerge from the data. Charters that serve more Black, Hispanic, and economically disadvantaged students lost more ground. Moreover, charters affiliated with education management organizations experienced less learning loss than other types of charter schools.

More Alike or More Different Over Time? Exploring Urban Charter and Public School teachers’ Characteristics and Working Conditions

ABSTRACT Using six waves of the Schools and Staffing Survey and the National Teacher and Principal Survey that span two decades, our study explores the differences between urban charter and traditional public school teachers and how those differences become more or less pronounced over time. During this time frame, the charter sector experienced substantial growth and this growth could have the effect of making charter schools more like traditional public schools. We find that charter school teachers are different from their traditional public school counterparts in both their personal characteristics and working conditions, but grow more similar in their satisfaction/commitment and turnover.

Charter School Autonomy and Centralized Student Transportation: How Contextual Factors Influence Perspectives in Three Cities

ABSTRACT Some school districts have centralized school operations as a means to ensure universal access to schools of choice. Yet, centralization can infringe on charter school autonomy. We explore how district and charter school leaders in three contexts perceive and negotiate the trade-offs between centralized versus school-based autonomy. We find that decision-making and governance of student transportation are inherently place-specific, with conditions of history, geography, infrastructure, and state governance dominating leaders’ preferences. Therefore, despite the recognized benefits, school leaders maintain vastly different perspectives about the feasibility and appeal of centralized transportation within the charter sector.

Collective Bargaining Agreement Restrictiveness in Unionized Charter Schools

Although charter schools are frequently afforded flexibility from many state laws that govern traditional public schools, a growing number of charter school teachers have now unionized and introduced collective bargaining to the charter sector. Using data from a detailed content analysis of teacher CBAs from California, we compare the restrictiveness of CBAs in 75 unionized charter bargaining units to the restrictiveness of CBAs in 31 nearest neighbor traditional public school district bargaining units. We find that independent charter CBAs are much more flexible than the CBAs of traditional public school districts, but charter school CBAs of bargaining units combined with traditional public school districts are comparably restrictive.

The effects of charter schools on neighborhood and school segregation: Evidence from New York City

ABSTRACT This paper estimates 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 variation in the expansion of the charter sector between grades in the same school. This approach allows us to isolate the effect of charter schools from other neighborhood demographic changes. Our results show small positive effects of charter school expansion on TPS diversity as measured by the entropy score. This change is explained by small increases in the number of White students attending nearby TPSs and larger reductions in the number of Black and Hispanic students in these schools. We also find descriptive evidence that while both neighborhoods and TPSs are slightly more diverse following charter school expansion, schools are changing faster than their surrounding neighborhoods.

Student Mobility between Charter and Traditional Public School Sectors: Assessing Enrollment Patterns among Major Charter Management Organizations in Texas

Student enrollment and transfer patterns between the traditional public and charter school sectors help shape the role of charter schools in the broader educational ecosystem, especially as related to the enrollment and segregation of low-income students, English learners, students of color, and students in special education. We examine patterns of student transfer between traditional public schools and charter schools among four of Texas’s largest charter networks, which cumulatively make up over one-third of Texas charter students. We find that these schools serve fewer special education students than traditional public schools, but a greater share of low-income and English learners. Transfers between sectors contribute to enrollment gaps in special education and other classifications, but the findings do not apply uniformly across charter districts, student enrollment classifications, or grade levels. These findings highlight nuanced enrollment patterns between the charter sector and traditional public schools, suggesting that differences in student characteristics between sectors likely stem from a range of sources. Policymakers should acknowledge this nuance, consider alternatives to blanket enrollment regulation policies, and conduct similar analyses of enrollment patterns among charter districts.

Leadership as an Implementation Driver: Identifying Best Practices to Support Organizational Change

This article explores implementation science with a focus on the strategies leaders use to address organizational challenges. Using part of a larger study, we employed a qualitative multiple case study design of 20 charter schools to contribute to an evidence base about how leadership at the charter school and charter management organization levels can influence their school communities regarding commitment to students with disabilities. From our exploratory research, key themes emerged that align with effective leadership strategies for implementation, demonstrating the positive influence of leaders who prioritize students with disabilities by maintaining a clear vision and strong sense of purpose, creating a safe environment where diversity of perspectives is encouraged, and making sure all voices are heard and valued. Public schools across the nation can leverage lessons learned from the charter sector, as leaders work to ensure that their school practices and policies support success for students with disabilities. By ensuring that school leaders are trained and supported to use effective leadership strategies, policymakers, and schools of higher education can influence the adoption and advancement of innovative and effective practices.

Charter Schools’ Effectiveness, Mechanisms, and Competitive Influence

Across the United States, charter schools—publicly funded and regulated, but privately run schools—appear to perform, on average, at about the same level as their district counterparts. The broadest studies of charter school effectiveness use observational methods, which may not fully account for selection of students into charter schools. However, this finding is confirmed by lottery-based evidence from a few broad samples that again presents a varied picture of charter impact and little average difference across sectors. Underlying the similarity in performance across sectors is one of the most consistent findings from both observational and lottery-based evidence of charter schools’ impact on student achievement: Charters located in urban areas boost student test scores, particularly for Black, Latinx, and students from lower-income households. The test score gains appear to be largest in urban charters that employ “No Excuses” practices. Attending some urban charter schools also increases college enrollment and voting and reduces risky behavior. However, evidence on such long-term outcomes is limited to a few samples, and evidence on college graduation and adult earnings is even rarer, making it difficult to draw conclusions beyond test scores about the overall effectiveness of the charter sector. Research on the mechanisms underlying charter successes, when they occur, is growing. No Excuses charter schools—which employ high expectations, strict disciplinary codes, and intense academic focus—generate consistent test score gains, but their controversial disciplinary practices are not necessarily a condition for academic success. Charter school teachers tend to be less qualified and more likely to leave the profession than traditional public school teachers, though the impact of these challenges for the labor market is understudied. Similarly, the influence of charter authorizers and related accountability structures is limited and would benefit from examination using more rigorous methodologies. The competitive impact of charter schools on traditional public schools typically suggests a small, beneficial influence on neighboring schools’ student achievement, though there is variation across contexts. Additionally, while some local analyses suggest charters reduce funding in nearby districts, at least in the short term, a larger scale study finds charter entry generates more revenue per pupil for district schools. There is competing evidence on charters’ contribution to school racial segregation, and little evidence on the impact of newer, intentionally diverse school models. In all, more research, in more contexts, is needed to further understand where, for whom, and why charters are most effective.

Dance Education in New York City Charter Schools

ABSTRACT The aim of this empirical study was to develop a portrait of and investigate dance education programming in the New York City charter sector. Despite operating within an arts-focused, culturally rich metropolis, the state of arts and dance education in NYC charter schools has yet to receive the attention needed to flourish alongside traditional public and private schools. Data was collected quantitatively by administering electronic survey questionnaires to leadership teams of the 337 NYC-based charter schools authorized and operating during the 2018–2019 academic year. The survey questionnaire data suggested the existence of a variety of both curricular and extra-curricular dance offerings led primarily by full-time dance teachers. Trends emerged in leadership teams’ perceptions of the rewards of offering dance, while a lack of physical space and competing curricular programming emerged as the most commonly cited frustrations from schools already offering dance instruction and challenges from schools not offering dance, respectively.

Social returns to private choice? Effects of charter schools on behavioral outcomes, arrests, and civic participation

The vast majority of literature on school choice, and charter schools in particular, focus on attending an elementary or middle school grades and often focus on test scores or other proximal outcomes. Much less is known about the long-term effects of attending a charter school in 9th grade. It is important to fill this information void for a few reasons. First, schools in general affect more than just students’ test scores. Second, secondary schools (including grades 9–12) make up a larger share of the charter sector. Third, school choice depends on freely available information for parents and students to make informed decisions about where to attend, including potential long-term benefits. We add to the empirical research on charter school effects by using a doubly-robust inverse probability weighted approach to evaluate the impacts of secondary charter school attendance on 9th grade behavioral outcomes and individuals propensity to commit crime and participate in elections as young adults in North Carolina, a state with a large and growing charter school sector.

Socioeconomic Segregation and School Choice in American Public Schools

We examine the effect of the expansion of charter schools on socioeconomic segregation in American public education. Using a district-level panel data set from 1998 to 2015, we describe and model changes in within-district segregation of low-income students, proxied by free-lunch eligibility (FLE). We show that the segregation of FLE students from non-FLE students increased by about 15% in large school districts and find that charter school penetration and growth played a role in increasing socioeconomic segregation within districts. We estimate that a one standard deviation increase in charter enrollment rates increases the dissimilarity index in a district by 6% of a standard deviation. Although this impact is modest, we do find that segregation is more pervasive in the charter sector. So, continued growth of charter schools could exacerbate socioeconomic segregation.

Teacher Power and the Politics of Union Organizing in the Charter Sector.

Despite the growing media attention paid to charter-school unions, comparatively little empirical research exists. Drawing on interview data from two cities (Detroit, MI, and New Orleans, LA), our exploratory study examined charter-school teachers' motivations for organizing, the political and power dimensions, and the framing of unions by both teachers and administrations. We found that improving teacher retention, and thus school stability, was a central motivation for teacher organizers, whereas, simultaneously, high teacher turnover stymied union drives. We also found that charter administrators reacted with severity to nascent unionization drives, harnessing school-as-family metaphors and at-will contracts to prevent union formation. As the charter sector continues to grow, understanding why teachers want unions and how those unions differ from traditional public school unions is crucial to analyzing the long-term viability of these schools and the career trajectories of the teachers who work in them.

Recreational Leasing of Alaska Commercial Halibut Quota: The Early Years of the GAF Program in Alaska

The Pacific Halibut Catch Sharing Plan formalized the process for allocating halibut between the Alaska commercial and recreational charter sectors. It included a new program intended to allow for “flexibility” through inter-sectoral trading, permitting charter operators to lease commercial halibut pounds to relax client harvest restrictions. Here we evaluate the first two years of lease market activity and participation. Participation from some commercial quota holders in the lease market suggests that the program provided beneficial flexibility; in fact, the number of transfers to the charter sector was greater than transfers within the commercial sector for some quota types. We also identified a high proportion of self-leasers. However, transfers to the charter sector were on average smaller than within-sector commercial transfers, and total poundage leased by the charter sector was low compared with commercial transfers. Usage of leased quota by the recreational charter sector enables the harvest of larger fish or additional fish, and provides flexibility in catch composition on halibut closure days. Finally, the value-per-pound may be higher in the charter sector, as commercial-to-charter transfer prices approached the commercial ex-vessel price.

The Evolution of Charter School Quality

Studies of the charter sector typically compare charters and traditional public schools at a point in time. These comparisons are potentially misleading, because many charter‐related reforms require time to generate results. We study quality dynamics among charter schools in the State of Texas from 2001 to 2011. School quality in the charter sector was initially highly variable and on average lower than in traditional public schools. However, exits, improvement of existing charter schools, and higher quality of new entrants increased charter effectiveness relative to traditional public schools despite an acceleration in the rate of sector expansion in the latter half of the decade. We present evidence that reduced student mobility and an increased share of charters adhering to No‐Excuses‐style curricula contribute to these improvements. Although selection into charter schools becomes more favourable over time in terms of prior achievement and behaviour, such compositional improvements appear to contribute little to the charter sector gains. Moreover, accounting for composition in terms of prior achievement and behaviour has only a small effect on estimates of the higher average quality of No Excuses schools.

Push, Pull, Tap and Switch: Understanding the Career Decisions of Charter School Leaders

ABSTRACT Most research focuses on principal mobility generally, but little assesses charter leadership specifically. This exploratory study examines how leaders in stand-alone and charter management affiliated schools in New York and New Jersey made their decisions to lead, stay, and transition to different roles. Leaders cited excitement about autonomy and the mission of their schools as reasons for entering the role. In part because of their connection to the mission and students, many former teachers took on a leadership role or transitioned within their organization through a sense of obligation, knowing there were few, if any, potential successors. The toll of working hours, specifically when compounded by repeated interpersonal and internal conflict, was most salient to leaders’ decisions to leave leadership. By contrast, positive relationships were cited as the most important reasons to stay. Finally, leaders discussed consulting, turnaround, central office, or educator training opportunities largely within the charter sector as potentially pulling them out of their current roles.

Teachers of Color and Urban Charter Schools: Race, School Culture, and Teacher Turnover in the Charter Sector

This article explores working conditions in charter schools with varying rates of teacher turnover. Ethnographic data with 28 racially diverse teachers explores teachers’ experiences, their explanations for moving charter schools, and patterns of movement when teachers leave a charter school for another school. A brief conceptual framework was used to understand multiple dimensions of working conditions in charter schools for teachers of color. Findings indicate teachers most often made structural moves between charter types, primarily from charters managed by nonprofit organizations to standalone charter schools. Teachers of color describe tensions with sociocultural conditions that limited culturally inclusive practices. Discussion includes implications for policies that push to replicate charter schools in communities of color, particularly schools with poor working conditions associated with high turnover and weak propensities to retain teachers of color.

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

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.

Evidence on charter school practices related to student enrollment and retention

ABSTRACTOpponents of charter schools argue these schools “cream-skim” the best students from traditional public schools and push out hard-to-educate students. This paper reviews 22 studies of enrollment issues related to student achievement, special education status, English proficiency, and student discipline in US charter schools. Of the 22 studies, nine use student level data to rigorously test for evidence of strategic enrollment. While the charter sector as a whole tends to serve fewer special education students and English language learners, there is much within-sector variation. Over all, there is very little evidence of systematic “cream-skimming” or “push-out” in US charter schools.

Speculative Charter School Growth in the Case of UNO Charter School Network in Chicago

Charter school advocates see the infusion of market competition into the educational sector as a means to achieving greater efficiency, effectiveness, and equity. Within this framework, consumer demand is understood to regulate the charter sector. This article challenges the adequacy of this premise, arguing that the structure of the financing of charter schools plays a decisive, if not determining, role in directing growth. Drawing on an analysis of the financing that enabled the dramatic growth of the UNO Charter School Network (UCSN) in Chicago during the 2000s, the article explores the implications of speculative borrowing and spiraling debt burdens on charter schools and on the functioning of the charter sector more broadly. The analysis reveals that (1) new debt was increasingly used to retire existing debt, (2) the structure of new financing assumed continued growth, and (3) schools within the network were yoked together as revenue from existing—and anticipated—schools was pledged to repay new debt.

Improve governance for charters

With 25 years of experience, the charter sector has had enough time to experience a host of unanticipated and unresolved problems related to the complex ways in which charter school governance relates to school leadership. The time has come for the sector to revisit some fundamental decisions about how charter schools and networks are governed, both to tighten arrangements that are excessively loose and to encourage further innovation. The future of chartering should not be a linear extension of the past. If we left some problems unsolved in 1991 (or had no idea that they would become problems), that is no reason not to take stock of things as they stand today and to set matters right before moving forward. This article is based on the authors’ book, Charter Schools at the Crossroads: Predicaments, Paradoxes, Possibilities (Harvard Education Press, 2016).