- For the majority of segregated charter schools, student racial composition relates to resources, teacher quality, and ultimately school performance.
- Findings imply that being a charter alone is insufficient mechanism for closing the racial achievement gap.
- Conclude that policymakers could better attend to the persistent educational inequality that has shaped US schooling if when designing school choice plans they took account of student racial composition even in a postdesegregation environment.
- Many charter schools have self-selected populations, exercise control over student admissions, and are designed to specialize in particular curricular foci or organizational structures, making each school distinct. Aggregating charter schools together by sector, and then drawing conclusions about their average performance is as unfair as evaluating traditional public schools together.
- Racially segregated, well-resourced, and high-performing schools tend to be the exception rather than the rule, however, and are examples of how school context relates to achievement given their selective admissions, charismatic leaders, and significant financial and political support. For the majority of segregated charter schools, student racial composition relates to resources, teacher quality, and ultimately mechanism for closing the racial achievement gap.