- NC system of charter schools has increased the racial isolation of both Black and White students, and has widened the achievement gap.
- Charter school students exhibit annual gains 0.16 standard deviations smaller in math, on average, than the gains those same students made while they were enrolled in traditional public schools.
- The relatively large negative effects of charter schools on the achievement of Black students are linked to the fact that charter schools increased racial isolation.
- Asymmetric preferences of Black and White charter school students (and their families) for schools of different racial compositions help to explain why there are so few racially balanced charter schools.
- Because the racial profile of a charter school is so closely related to other characteristics such as school mission, the quality of the teachers it is able to recruit, the program it offers, or the quality of its facilities, it is not possible to distinguish the causal effects of a school’s racial mix from these other characteristics: whether the schools explicitly targets at-risk students.
- The substantial majority of Black students who made racially segregated moves did not have access to charter schools with racially balanced student profiles, schools that these students might have preferred had they been available.
- White charter school families prefer schools with less than 20 % of the students are Black.
- Charter schools have had larger negative effects on the achievement of Black students and particularly on Black students with less educated parents, than on White students.