scholarly journals Incentives and the Supply of Effective Charter Schools

2019 ◽  
Vol 109 (7) ◽  
pp. 2568-2612 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Singleton
Keyword(s):  
Charter Schools ◽  
Charter School ◽  
Equilibrium Model ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
School Funding ◽  
Disadvantaged Students ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Funding Formula ◽  
Funding Policies

Charter school funding is typically set by formulas that provide the same amount for students regardless of advantage or need. I present evidence that this policy skews the distribution of students served by charters toward low-cost populations by influencing where charter schools open and whether they survive. To do this, I develop and estimate an equilibrium model of charter school supply and competition to evaluate the effects of funding policies that aim to correct these incentives. The results indicate that a cost-adjusted funding formula would increase the share of disadvantaged students in charter schools with little reduction in aggregate effectiveness. (JEL H75, I21, I22, I28)

Triumph Charter School Service Provider

2014 ◽  
pp. 278-287
Author(s):  
Verneshia (Necia) Boone
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
Secondary Students ◽  
Charter School ◽  
The United States ◽  
Community Schools ◽  
Disadvantaged Students ◽  
Policy Makers

Charter schools are perhaps known to many people as community schools that are publicly funded. Educators and policy makers of the United States consider public schools in which tuition for primary and secondary students is free. A few community leaders and public officials have disclosed that selected charter school providers have too much flexibility in how they operate the schools. Perhaps their beliefs are such because most of the charter or community schools are operated under a contract in partnership with a sponsoring entity (Center for Education, 2008). According to educators and political leaders located in the Midwest region of the United States, charter schools were designed to address the current state of educational programs and to introduce an alternative model to traditional public education for economically disadvantaged students. For the last decade, research has shown that the goals and objectives of charter schools and charter school providers and leaders have been a contentious subject matter for United States educators and policy makers (Center for Education, 2008). The reason is perhaps linked to personal beliefs that charter school providers or leaders drain funding from local public school districts and do not offer disadvantaged students a better education. The case study provides an overview about Duke and Duchess Technology Centers as well as Triumph Management Company and their, products and services, competition, management structure, leadership styles, and recent challenges. Questions appear at the end of the case study for students to discuss and debate.

The Sorting Effect of Charter Schools on Student Composition in Traditional Public Schools

2010 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yongmei Ni
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
Charter School ◽  
Linear Models ◽  
Disadvantaged Students ◽  
High Concentration ◽  
Traditional Public Schools ◽  
Charter School Policy ◽  
Student Sorting

This article investigates how Michigan’s charter school policy influences the composition of students by race and socioeconomic status in urban traditional public schools. Using 2 years of student-level data in Michigan’s urban elementary and middle schools, the dynamic student transfers between charter schools and TPSs are analyzed through a series of hierarchical generalized linear models. The two-way transfer analysis shows that the student sorting under the charter school program tends to intensify the isolation of disadvantaged students in less effective urban schools serving a high concentration of similarly disadvantaged students. The findings imply that a challenge for the state policy makers is to help disadvantaged students who are left behind in the most disadvantaged schools, without significantly reducing the benefits to students who take advantage of school choice.

scholarly journals Charter School Funding Issues

2002 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 34 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Sugarman
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
Charter School ◽  
School Funding ◽  
The Core ◽  
Core Identity ◽  
Carry Over ◽  
The U.S

Although a great deal has been written about charter schools, rather little attention has been given to their funding. The first part of this article raises four current issues in the funding of regular public schools across the U.S. and shows how these issues carry over to the funding of charter schools. The second part explores four additional issues that have arisen in the funding of charter schools that go to the core identity of charter schools and the nature of the students they enroll. In both parts, extra attention is paid to developments in California, one of the most active charter school states.

To Charter or Not to Charter: What Questions Should We Ask, and What Will the Answers Tell Us?

2014 ◽  
Vol 84 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry Brighouse ◽  
Gina Schouten
Keyword(s):  
Charter Schools ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
School Board ◽  
Decision Maker ◽  
Charter School ◽  
School Performance ◽  
Board Member ◽  
New School ◽  
School Board Member

In this essay, Harry Brighouse and Gina Schouten outline four standards for judging whether to support the chartering of a new school within a given jurisdiction. The authors pose the following questions to a hypothetical school board member: Will the school increase equality of opportunity? Will it benefit the least-advantaged students in the jurisdiction? Will it improve the preparation of democratically competent citizens? Will it improve the quality of the daily, lived experience of the students? Brighouse and Schouten suggest that most of the evidence concerning charter school performance focuses on just the students within the schools, without addressing a charter school's effect on students who do not attend. They argue that a full evaluation requires both kinds of evidence and that these questions are the four standards that should guide both the decision maker and researchers gathering evidence on the effects of charter schools.

scholarly journals High Expense: Disability Severity and Charter School Attendance in Arizona

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony M. Garcy
Keyword(s):  
Special Education ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
Charter School ◽  
Linear Models ◽  
School Attendance ◽  
Special Education Students ◽  
Education Students ◽  
School Year ◽  
Education Agency ◽  
Student Disabilities

Much of the literature related to the skimming or cropping of students by charter schools has ignored special education students. This article examines the relationship between the severity of student disabilities and their likelihood of having attended an Arizona charter school in the 2002-2003 school year. After adjusting for student traits, local education agency characteristics, and the mix of available special education services, a multilevel logistic regression analysis suggests that students who had more severe and thus more expensive disabilities were less likely to attend an Arizona charter school. Findings from an ancillary set of hierarchical linear models suggested that special education students enrolled in charter schools were less expensive on average than similar traditional public-school special education students.

Online Stratifcation: How Academic Performance Indicators Relate to Choices between Cyber Charter Schools

2019 ◽  
Vol 121 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Bryan A. Mann ◽  
Stephen Kotok
Keyword(s):  
Academic Performance ◽  
School Improvement ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
Charter School ◽  
Performance Indicators ◽  
School Policy ◽  
Enrollment Patterns ◽  
Choice Sets ◽  
Charter School Policy ◽  
Cyber Charter School

Background/Context A primary argument that supports charter school policy assumes students favor schools with high academic performance ratings, leading to systemic school improvement. Previous research challenges this assumption but has limited generalizability because geographic and enrollment constraints limit student choice sets. Purpose/Objective This study examines student enrollment patterns within cyber charter schools in Pennsylvania, a state where elected policymakers tend to view choice as a means for school improvement. Cyber charter schools are advantageous to study in this context because they have fewer enrollment barriers, helping researchers account for constraints found in previous studies. Research Design Using consecutive years of student-level enrollment data, we use descriptive statistics and multinomial logistic regression analyses to answer the following questions: Is a particular cyber charter school more popular if it displays relatively higher performance on academic indicators? To what extent do enrollments in the highest performing cyber charter school relate to the demographics of students and school environments that they left? Findings/Results The findings suggest that despite the more accessible choice sets inherent in the cyber charter school sector, academic performance indicators still are not linked to popularity within the sector. Enrollment clustering persists along student demographics and feeder district traits. Conclusions/Recommendations These findings suggest that even in the cyber charter school sector where key enrollment restrictions are removed, inequitable enrollment patterns persist. These findings continue to challenge basic assumptions used in school choice policy framing. Policymakers should consider this evidence when and if they design and implement charter school policy, creating policy that accounts for inequitable enrollments that occur under current policy logic.

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.

Following the Leader: The Evolving Network of Charter School Giving

2019 ◽  
Vol 121 (10) ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
David Diehl ◽  
Robert A. Marx
Keyword(s):  
Charter Schools ◽  
Charter School ◽  
Exponential Random Graph Models ◽  
Graph Models ◽  
Random Graph Models ◽  
Exponential Random Graph ◽  
Disproportionate Number ◽  
Charter Management Organizations ◽  
Foundation Type ◽  
Over Time

Background/Context Research on the patterns of philanthropic funding of charter schools has largely focused on the behavior of major foundations. This work has documented how the once diffuse giving by these major foundations has become increasingly concentrated on a small number of jurisdictional challengers in the form of charter schools, charter management organizations, and intermediary organizations. Purpose The current study examines whether this convergence in giving has spread to the entire network of foundations giving to charter-school-related organizations. We do so by extending current work and focus on the broader institutional field that includes the interactions between major foundations, smaller foundations, and grantees over time. Moreover, we look to see, if such a field-wide convergence is present, whether there is evidence consistent with the institutional process of isomorphism in which low-status foundations match the giving strategy of higher status ones. Research Design We test for these dynamics using exponential random graph models (ERGMs), a hypothesis-testing framework for network analysis. More specifically, we analyze the funding ties among 809 foundations that gave grants to California charter schools and charter-school-related organizations between 2003 and 2014, as available through the Foundation Directory Online. We constructed multiyear windows to examine funding ties between foundations and recipients, using organizational characteristics, such as foundation type, foundation year, professionalization, foundation size, organizational type, and location, and endogenous features of the network as independent variables. Findings Results indicate centralization of giving over time, as larger and newer foundations began practicing more targeted giving and the most connected recipients were involved in a disproportionate number of funding ties. We also found evidence consistent with institutionalization, as foundations with professional staffs played a larger role in giving, and smaller foundations increasingly engaged in behavior similar to their larger peers over time. Finally, we found evidence for the consistent effect of propinquity: We observe co-funding and co-receiving ties between foundations and grantees in geographical proximity to each other. Conclusions This work examines the network dynamics of charter school philanthropic giving and provides evidence for the centralization and institutionalization of the field. In turn, this may create inequity in funding for charter schools because it may be more difficult for smaller or less ideologically popular organizations to penetrate the field. Policy makers should be aware of these forces and should take them into account when making budgetary and funding decisions.

Expanding Equity and Access in State-Authorized Charter Schools

2021 ◽  
pp. 42-61
Author(s):  
Ryan Marks ◽  
Clare Vickland
Keyword(s):  
Charter Schools ◽  
Charter School ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Diverse Populations ◽  
Equity And Access ◽  
Access And Equity ◽  
Partnership Approach ◽  
Equity And Inclusion ◽  
Improve Access

Charter schools are founded on principles of autonomy, accountability, and parent and family choice. Charter school authorizers occupy a unique space at the nexus of these ideas, which allows them to take an active role to drive change to improve access and equity in schools. This chapter describes how one charter school authorizer planned for and implemented a successful diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative. The case study specifically outlines the approach of the Colorado Charter School Institute (CSI) in implementing equity audits to leverage data to build relationships and supports. Though the concept of analyzing equity data is not novel, the partnership approach employed by CSI to support, rather than evaluate, schools is uncommon. This approach has led to improvements in student outcomes and an increase in equity across the portfolio and can be applied by practitioners across many contexts, including district schools, nonprofits, and corporations seeking to improve both access and equity for diverse populations.

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