Charter School Expansion and Within-District Equity: Confluence or Conflict?

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 423-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce D. Baker ◽  
Ken Libby ◽  
Kathryn Wiley
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
Charter School ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Educational Equality ◽  
School Site ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Income Status ◽  
School Expansion ◽  
Funding Formulas

This article explores whether two popular policy initiatives are compatible or conflicting strategies for enhancing educational equality in diverse large urban centers. These two initiatives are (1) charter school expansion and (2) improvement of resource equity across urban public school systems through policies often referred to as weighted student funding formulas. In this article, we focus on New York and Houston, two cities where districts have adopted initiatives to improve equity of the distribution of school site funding and have concurrently experienced significant expansion of charter schooling. We find that charter schools have the tendency to amplify student population differences across schools by disability, language, and low income status, and that charter schools’ access to financial resources varies widely. Nevertheless, we find that in very large urban districts like New York City, where charter market share remains small, the overall effects of charters on system-wide inequity remain small.

A Spatial Analysis on Charter School Access in the New York Metropolitan Area

2021 ◽  
Vol 123 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Jin Lee ◽  
Christopher A. Lubienski
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
Charter School ◽  
Metropolitan Area ◽  
Spatial Accessibility ◽  
Equal Opportunities ◽  
Spatial Access ◽  
Spatial Lag ◽  
School Access ◽  
Location Strategies

Background Extant literature has consistently indicated that access to charter school markets is shaped by social geography. Given interest in location shown by charter schools and parents, estimating potential spatial access to charter schools has become instrumental in understanding equal opportunities for charter school enrollment in metropolitan areas with preexisting residential segregation. Purpose By considering the increasing significance of sociogeography, this article asks whether students have equal opportunities for potential spatial access to charter schools across communities and how disparities in charter school access are related to housing patterns. Setting This study focuses on 122 charter schools in the New York metropolitan region, a highly segregated metropolitan area in the United States where charter schools are a primary component of education reform. Research Design The first part of this study illustrates patterns of spatial accessibility of the area's charter schools, within a 20-minute commuting time, to students aged 5–13 years by employing the enhanced two-step floating catchment area method using a Gaussian function. The next part of the study tests the hypothesis that students are able to access charter schools equitably and irrespective of their place of residence. The spatial lag regression model is used to compare distributions of potential spatial accessibility with 15 demographic and socioeconomic variables. Findings Even after controlling for disproportionate population sizes by census tract, the potential need for charter schools is matched inequitably with the supply of educational service providers. The spatial lag regression results indicate that children in areas less accessible to charter schools within a convenient travel period tend to be exposed to communities with more populations of color, higher unemployed groups, and less expensive housing. Conclusions The findings offer empirical evidence that access to charter school differs depending on demographic and socioeconomic attributes, in significant combination with geography, illuminating charter school location strategies in real-world contexts. Though charter schools have been promoted as a vehicle to offer significant equity advantages across politically designed and strictly operated school attendance boundaries, charter schools in metropolitan New York exercise a distinct and profound form of pseudo-zoning by use of location strategies to exclude certain children who may be considered less desirable.

Fiscal Impacts of Charter Schools: Lessons from New York

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Bifulco ◽  
Randall Reback
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
School Districts ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
Charter School ◽  
Financing Policies ◽  
Traditional Public Schools ◽  
Excess Costs ◽  
Fiscal Impacts ◽  
School Financing

This brief argues that charter school programs can have direct fiscal impacts on school districts for two reasons. First, operating two systems of public schools under separate governance arrangements can create excess costs. Second, charter school financing policies can distribute resources to or away from districts. Using the city school districts of Albany and Buffalo in New York, we demonstrate how fiscal impacts on local school districts can be estimated. We find that charter schools have had fiscal impacts on these two school districts. Finally, we argue that charter schools policies should seek to minimize any avoidable excess costs created by charter schools and ensure that the burden of any unavoidable excess costs is equitably distributed across traditional public schools, charter schools, and the state. We offer concrete policy recommendations that may help to achieve these objectives.

In Pursuit of the Common Good: The Spillover Effects of Charter Schools on Public School Students in New York City

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 484-512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah A. Cordes
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Public School ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
Teacher Perceptions ◽  
Student Performance ◽  
Charter School ◽  
York City ◽  
Spillover Effects ◽  
School Level

A particularly controversial topic in current education policy is the expansion of the charter school sector. This paper analyzes the spillover effects of charter schools on traditional public school (TPS) students in New York City. I exploit variation in both the timing of charter school entry and distance to the nearest charter school to obtain credibly causal estimates of the impacts of charter schools on TPS student performance, and I am among the first to estimate the impacts of charter school co-location. I further add to the literature by exploring potential mechanisms for these findings with school-level data on per pupil expenditures (PPE), and parent and teacher perceptions of schools. Briefly, I find charter schools significantly increase TPS student performance in both English Language Arts and math, and decrease the probability of grade retention. Effects increase with charter school proximity and are largest in TPSs co-located with charter schools. Potential explanations for improved performance include increased PPE, academic expectations, student engagement, and a more respectful and safe school environment after charter entry. The findings suggest that more charter schools in New York City may be beneficial at the margin, and co-location may be mutually beneficial for charter and traditional public schools.

Brilliant, Bored, or Badly Behaved? Media Coverage of the Charter School Debate in the United States

2015 ◽  
Vol 117 (8) ◽  
pp. 1-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daisy Rooks ◽  
Carolina Bank MuÑOz
Keyword(s):  
Charter Schools ◽  
Charter School ◽  
Alternative Schools ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Students Of Color ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Print Media ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Low Income Students

Background In recent years, charter schools have received a great deal of media attention, appearing in documentary films, newspaper articles, magazine profiles, television news programs, and even sitcoms and feature films. The media is not alone in its interest in charter schools; researchers in the public and for-profit arenas have also focused their attention on charter schools in recent years. Questions This paper employs qualitative content analysis to answer the following questions: What information have journalists contributed to the charter school debate in the United States? And how might this information have shaped or influenced the debate? Research Design To answer these questions, we conducted a qualitative content analysis of print media coverage of the early years of the charter school debate. We analyzed 145 articles about public charter schools and public alternative schools that appeared in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times between 1994 and 2006. We developed two types of coding categories: descriptive and interpretive. The descriptive coding categories captured the following information about each article in our dataset: the publisher, the type of school described and the student population. The interpretive coding categories captured reporters’ descriptions of the students, teachers, resources, and institutional cultures of charter and alternative schools. Findings Our analysis uncovered several interesting themes. First, we found that print media depictions of charter and alternative school teachers tended to be more positive than media depictions of teachers in traditional public schools. This was especially true of print media coverage of charter schools that serve low-income students and/or students of color. Our analysis also cast doubt on a core assumption of the charter school debate; that charter schools’ approach to educating their students differs significantly from that of traditional public schools and public alternative schools. In their articles about charter schools that serve middle-income students, reporters described institutional cultures and pedagogical strategies identical to those found in alternative schools with similar student populations. When reporting on alternative schools that serve low-income students and/or students of color, reporters described pedagogical strategies that mirrored those found in charter schools with similar student populations. Recommendations Further research is needed to determine whether charter and alternative schools are educating their low- and middle-income students differently. If future research confirms this, we warn that charter and alternative schools could be preparing their low-income students and/or students of color inadequately for higher education and work in professional environments.

‘We don’t care who you are’: Race, space, and dispossession in New York’s charter school co-location reform

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (5) ◽  
pp. 662-680 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Benson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Charter School ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
The United States ◽  
Free Markets ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
School Space

In the United States, charter school proliferation remains a top priority for neoliberal education reformers and their private sector allies. Such schools are owned and run by private operators yet receive public funding, resulting in large transfers of public assets into private hands. Co-location facilitates this process by providing charters rent-free space within existing public school buildings. The author argues that New York’s 2014 co-location reform, which guarantees co-location or rental assistance for the city’s charter schools, produces school space in ways that create new circuits for the accumulation of capital by the private sector, while at the same time putting into circulation hegemonic imaginations of the relationship of race to school space. Co-location reform enlists school space within neoliberalism’s color-blind and meritocratic racial ideology: reformers like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo “don’t care who you are” because achievement is seen as the result of hard work and good choices made in free markets, and co-location will extend educational markets to families of color who have heretofore been excluded. Using the co-location of Success Academy Charter Schools as a case, the author argues that co-location reform, animated by a “white spatial imaginary,” both obscures and exploits the racialized process of organized abandonment that underwrites neoliberal capitalism.

Burnout factories

2017 ◽  
Vol 98 (8) ◽  
pp. 26-30
Author(s):  
Mark Fusco
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
Toxic Effect ◽  
Work Environment ◽  
Charter School ◽  
York City ◽  
Teacher Burnout ◽  
School Dropout ◽  
High Standards

In its well-intentioned effort to create alternatives to public school dropout factories, the charter school sector has created teacher burnout factories. But it does not have to be this way. Charter schools can continue to maintain high standards while creating a more sustainable work environment for teachers. This article examines the teacher burnout issue as a larger national trend, discusses its particularly toxic effect on the author’s school, Hyde Leadership Charter School in New York City, and describes an effort to improve retention among that school’s faculty.

Do For-Profit Managers Spend Less on Schools and Instruction? A National Analysis of Charter School Staffing Expenditures

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (6) ◽  
pp. 855-902 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Weber ◽  
Bruce Baker
Keyword(s):  
Charter Schools ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
State Level ◽  
Fund Raising ◽  
School Site ◽  
Data Set ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Income Status ◽  
National Analysis ◽  
Revenue Enhancement

This article takes advantage of a recently released national data set on school site expenditures to evaluate spending variations between traditional district operated schools and charter schools operated by for-profit versus nonprofit management firms. Prior research has revealed the revenue-enhancement, private fund-raising capacity of major nonprofit providers. For-profit providers may face greater pressure to reduce operating expenses. As such, we hypothesize that regardless of average differences in staffing expenses between district and charter schools, school site staffing expenditures are likely to be lower in for-profit than in nonprofit managed charter schools. Furthermore, school site instructional staffing expenditures may be lower yet. Applying national, then state-level models to compare spending for schools of similar size, serving similar grade ranges and students with similar attributes (income status, special education, and language proficiency status), we find these assumptions largely to be true. Specifically, on average across all settings (global model) we find that charters spend less per pupil on instructional salaries compared with districts; furthermore, for-profit charters spend less than nonprofits. Furthermore, for-profit charters spend statistically significantly less ( p < .05) on instructional salaries, compared with district schools in many states.

Urban Charter Schools

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manya Whitaker
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
Standardized Testing ◽  
Charter School ◽  
Low Income ◽  
College Enrollment ◽  
The United States ◽  
School Students ◽  
Urban Charter Schools

Urban charter schools are public schools located in major metropolitan areas with high population densities. The majority of urban charter school students identify as Black or Latinx and often live in under-resourced communities. Urban charter schools are touted as high-quality educational options in the school choice market, yet debates about the merits of charter schools versus traditional public schools yield mixed results that substantiate arguments on both sides of the political aisle. However, even high-performing urban charter schools have a bad reputation as mechanisms of school segregation and cogs in the school-to-prison pipeline. Higher than average test scores and graduation and college enrollment rates do little to mollify those who complain about severe discipline, racial segregation, unqualified teachers, teacher attrition, rigid scheduling, and a narrow curriculum. Urban charter schools’ emphasis on standardized testing and college preparation may overlook the culturally relevant educational experiences that low-income, racially diverse students need to compete with their wealthier, White peers. As such, education reformers have offered a myriad of suggestions to improve urban charter schools. Most prominently is the need to racially and economically desegregate urban charter schools to enhance the social and material resources that supplement students’ learning. This includes increasing teacher diversity, which research demonstrates minimizes the frequency of suspensions and expulsions of racial minority students. Urban charter school teachers should also be knowledgeable about the sociocultural landscape of the community in which their school exists so that they understand how students’ out of school lives affect their learning processes. Finally, curricular revisions are necessary to support students’ post-high school goals beyond college enrollment. Enacting such reforms would facilitate equitable, rather than equal, learning opportunities that may help narrow racial and economic achievement gaps in the United States.

PAR Method

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Billies
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Critical Consciousness ◽  
Design Method ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Context Analysis ◽  
Gender Nonconforming ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Gender

The work of the Welfare Warriors Research Collaborative (WWRC), a participatory action research (PAR) project that looks at how low income lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming (LG-BTGNC) people survive and resist violence and discrimination in New York City, raises the question of what it means to make conscientization, or critical consciousness, a core feature of PAR. Guishard's (2009) reconceptualization of conscientization as “moments of consciousness” provides a new way of looking at what seemed to be missing from WWRC's process and analysis. According to Guishard, rather than a singular awakening, critical consciousness emerges continually through interactions with others and the social context. Analysis of the WWRC's process demonstrates that PAR researchers doing “PAR deep” (Fine, 2008)—research in which community members share in all aspects of design, method, analysis and product development—should have an agenda for developing critical consciousness, just as they would have agendas for participation, for action, and for research.

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