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2005 - The Effect of Charter Schools on School Peer Composition

Attribution: Booker, Kevin, Zimmer, Ron, & Buddin, Richard
Researchers: Kevin BookerRichard BuddinRon Zimmer
University Affiliation: Vanderbilt University
Email: ron.zimmer@vanderbilt.edu
Research Question:
The effect of charter schools have on the distribution of students by race/ethnicity and ability.
Published: 1
Journal Name or Institutional Affiliation: RAND Corporation
Journal Entry: Working Paper
Year: 2005
Findings:
  • Black students in both states are more likely to move to charter schools and tend to move to charter schools with a higher percentage of Black students, and those schools are more racially concentrated than the public schools they leave.
  • Students who move to charter schools are on average lower performing than other students at the public schools they leave and that this performance gap is largest for Black students.
  • It appears that charter schools are targeting some of the more challenging students. However, through Black student choices, may create greater segregation and expose these students to less diversity.
Keywords: Charter SchoolsChoicePeer EffectsMethodologies: QuantitativeResearch Designs: SurveyAnalysis Methods: Logistic Regression Sampling Frame:School districts in California & Texas
Sampling Types: NonrandomAnalysis Units: SchoolStudentData Types: Quantitative-Longitudinal
Data Description:
  • In this study they examine charter and traditional public schools in California and Texas.
  • In Texas they use student level data from 1997-1998 through 2003-2004.
  • In California they use a subset of the districts (Chula Vista, Fresno, Los Angeles, Napa Valley, San Diego, and West Covina) within California from 1997-1998 through 2001-2002.
  • These districts represented more than 1 million students and 74 charter schools in the 2001-2002 school year.
  • Data includes student characteristics, and test score information.
  • Use longitudinal student-level data to track student movements from school to school.
  • Methodology
  • Look at school-to-school movements and isolate how these microlevels transfers are affecting the distribution of students by ability and race/ethnicity.
  • Use of a Herfindahl index for each school campus. This index is defied as the sum of the squared shares of each racial/ethnic group and is scaled from 0 to 1, where 1 indicates total concentration of enrollment in one racial/ethnic group.
  • Logit regression to examine what student-level characteristics are associated with moves to charter schools.
  • DV: Transfer to charter school, math and reading scores
  • IV: Student ethnicity, public school ethnic composition, charter school ethnic composition, prior math/reading scores of movers and their peers, school and school district characteristics (percent economically disadvantaged, percent special needs, average grades, enrollment)
Theoretical Framework:
Relevance:
Archives: K-12 Integration, Desegregation, and Segregation Abstracts
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