Charter School Effects on School Segregation

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In the first nationally comprehensive examination of charter school effects on school system segregation, this study demonstrates that growth in charter school enrollment increases the segregation of black, Hispanic, and white students.

The effects, however, are modest because charter schools make up a small share of total enrollment and have different effects across different kinds of districts. The analysis indicates that eliminating charter schools would reduce segregation by 5 percent in the average district.

Measuring segregation

To measure charter school effects on segregation, we looked at enrollment data from 1998 to 2015. Rather than looking solely at each school’s demographics, the authors used a measure that considers the context in which schools are located, acknowledging that in a district that is 95 percent Hispanic, for example, one wouldn’t expect a school to be equal parts black, white, and Hispanic.

The authors also zoom in on local effects by looking at how segregation changed across grades within a system with different levels of charter school enrollment. For example, if DC had a large increase in ninth-grade charter school enrollment relative to other grades in a given year, the authors would look at whether ninth-graders in DC became more segregated than students in other grades in DC in that year.

Key findings

• The finding that increasing charter school enrollment leads to small increases in segregation holds for cities and counties as well as school districts. The averages, however, mask considerable variation across districts, cities, and states.
• The segregative effects of charter schools are greater in urban districts with high shares of black and Hispanic students and in suburban districts with low black and Hispanic representation.
• Charter schools have no discernible impact on the segregation of metropolitan areas. This is because the increase in segregation within districts in metropolitan areas is offset by greater integration between districts within the same metropolitan area. Essentially, districts within a metropolitan area become more diverse, but the schools within those districts don’t become more integrated.