By Rachel Scott, The Finance Project

I grew up attending public magnet schools in Indianapolis in the 1980’s, and it never occurred to me that the student body of other schools was any different from mine: about half black and half white with smaller numbers of Latino and Asian students. What I didn’t know at that time was that the magnet schools I attended, in addition to providing innovative programming not offered by my neighborhood schools, were part of an intentional national policy effort to ensure students were learning in diverse environments that reflected the richness of their communities.

Thirty years later, charter schools around the country now find themselves at the center of the “school choice” movement and there are fewer magnet schools. Charter schools most certainly are serving a broad array of children in all types of settings. In the aggregate, we can say “charter schools are diverse” and “families in all kinds of neighborhoods now have ‘school choice.’” However, a number of studies show that, intentionally or unintentionally, many families are choosing to send their children to schools where the majority of the students are just like them—resulting in what some call a “resegregation” of public schools. In fact, a high school friend of mine who is a school librarian in a major city recently told me, “We have two kinds of charter schools here: the white ones and the black ones.”

Is “resegregation” really a problem?

Among other researchers, The Urban Institute and The Century Foundation have highlighted the fact that school choice tends to lead to racial and socioeconomic segregation. Adverse effects of this segregation are felt by students in both high-income and low-income schools. Schools with a majority of low-income students tend to have fewer resources to expend on the students and more difficulty attracting the most qualified teachers. Schools with a majority of higher-income students tend to produce students who have more difficulty working with and communicating with people who are different from them.

Particular to charter schools, Miron, et al found in a study of demographic patterns in 968 largely Education Management Organization (EMO)-run schools that only a quarter had enrollment demographics similar to those of the sending district, with concentrations of either majority or minority students dominating enrollment at most schools. Not only that, Miron and his team found that these EMO-run schools enrolled smaller percentages of both special education and ELL students, and that:

Most charter schools were divided into either very segregative high-income schools or very segregative low-income schools. Between 70% and 73% of the schools were in the extreme categories of the scale, depending on the comparison.

Of course, a high concentration of minority students in a charter school can be precisely what some charter school leaders have in mind. A two-part series of articles in the Orlando Sentinel last year includes discussion by some charter school proponents who say that achieving higher scores for minority students is their purpose entirely. While this goal is laudable, any achievement for a group of students in an artificially isolated environment that even unintentionally "shields" them from the real climate of their community is a hollow one—a sentiment echoed by groups like AAUW who oppose single-sex education environments.

Leaders of independent charter schools are in a good position to learn from these troubling trends seen with many larger charter organizations, and are more likely to have the flexibility to change policies or practices that may be resulting in a lack of diversity in their schools.

“Not Discriminating” is Not Enough

In some ways, it would be easy for charter schools to solve the problem of over-concentrations of some student populations in schools if the problem were caused by simple discrimination. However, more likely, at the roots of ‘school choice’ (that we have seen more often results in segregation) are a number of very complex, deep-seated, and interrelated factors like culture, family attitudes and expectations, and what “feels comfortable” to any of us.

Socialization is a powerful and often invisible force, and knowing how difficult it can be to make people revisit their attitudes may make some charter school leaders wonder if it’s worth the effort. Is it the job of charter schools, in addition to meeting students’ educational needs, to provide students with diverse classroom settings? I would argue, yes. Further, there has been an increased focus on Civil Rights Office at the U.S. Department of Education, and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has identified education “as a key civil right.” The Department recently released guidelines on voluntary ways schools can make reasonable, fair, and legal efforts to encourage diverse enrollment, summarized here by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

I look forward to your feedback and plan to revisit this topic in the near future, especially as it relates to special education, English Language Learners, and successful strategies independent charter schools have used to ensure their schools are true reflections of their communities.

What are you seeing that works, or doesn’t work, in your school or community?

The views expressed in Charter Notebook blogs represent the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Center for Educational Innovation-Public Education Association or the U.S. Department of Education.

Since the first charter school was established in 1992, over 5,000 charter schools have opened and are still operating in 39 states (and the District of Columbia). Collectively, these schools have educated 1.54 million students (Center for Education Reform, 2010).  Now in their second decade, the demand for charter schools is no longer just an urban phenomenon. Pockets of suburban charter schools have taken hold in 39 states. Choice is expanding rapidly in schools spanning a full range of geographic contexts: rural, urban, and suburban.

New trends in demographic and settlement patterns are redefining what it means to follow public investments in the services, natural amenities, housing stock, and public schools (including charters) out in the suburbs. The Census Bureau broadly defines a "suburb" as any area outside a principal city.  Allard (2009) and Kneebone and Garr (2011) have blurred the urban-suburban distinction by recent findings claiming that poverty rates have increased at a faster pace in suburban areas than that of central cities in the last ten years. For example, Allard and Roth (2010) noted that the minority, low-income suburbs are associated with many of the social challenges characteristic of urban neighborhoods and lack a cadre of local safety nets to address their suburban challenges. Conversely, the continual influx of middle class minorities in more affluent suburbs (the outlying suburbs) with high tax bases and little affordable housing are also acquiring the concomitant problems of school overcrowding and school district fiscal stress (Massey & Fisher, 2000). 

As suburbs have become more demographically, economically, and socially varied, charter schools have established a significant presence in the suburbs of a few states. To identify which states have had success in attracting suburban charter schools, I created a database of all charter schools in the United States in 2010 and categorized them urban, suburban, town, or rural as assigned by the National Center for Education Statistics. To understand this coding system, charter schools are divided into four categories according to the NCES local code typologies:

• City (Territory inside an urbanized area and inside a principal city)
• Suburb (Territory outside a principal city and inside an urbanized area)
• Town (Territory inside an urban cluster but outside an urbanized area)
• Rural (Census-defined rural territory that is outside an urbanized area and outside an urban cluster).

Notes: (1) Local Education Agency (LEA), Regional/Intermediate Agency (RIA), State Education Agency (SEA), Independent Chartering Board (ICB), Higher Education Institution (HEI), Municipal Office (MUN), Non-For-Profit Organization (NFP). (2) Percentages shown in column five refer to the percent of charter school.

Sources: National Association of Charter School Authorizers (2011). State-by-State overview, see http://www.qualitycharters.org/state-by-stateoverview-53; National Alliance for Public Charter Schools; U.S. Dept. of Education, NCES, Common Core of Data surveys, 2010.

It is problematic to draw inferences about the underlying factors affecting the number of suburban charter schools per state from aggregate data, and it can also be risky to primarily attribute to charter laws and multiple authorizers the growth of charter schools in the suburbs. For example, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia have the highest proportions of suburban charter schools, ranging from 25 percent to 58 percent. In several of these states, population density is high outside of urban cores, which may explain the market share of charter schools in the suburbs (Jain, 2002). In addition, anecdotal evidence suggests that a state with a high share of smaller suburban districts, low-density areas, as well as declining school-age population growth in suburban pockets, may contribute to the slow pace of charter school growth in the suburbs (Jain, 2002; Arsen, Plank & Sykes, 2001). However, we do not know how these local (or geographic and demographic) conditions may have stalled opportunities for students in these suburban areas.  Even though suburban charters are widespread and growing, it could be that programs are too thin and far between — that few, if any, some suburban neighborhoods have reached a critical mass of choice options necessary to elevate competitive incentives as a primary consideration in opening new suburban charters.

There are many empirical questions about suburban charter schools. I divide these questions into four broad outcome dimensions constructed to reflect the explicit and implicit goals present in the arguments of both the supporters and the opponents of suburban charter schools. 

• Choice - One reason that charter schools may arise is that parents have diverse preferences (Schneider & Buckley, 2002), especially among minority parents who may prefer to have their children attend schools in the matter that they see fit, culturally, linguistically, philosophically, and in lifestyle. This may result in specialized or "boutique-style" charter schools, such as the approval of a Mandarin language immersion charter in an affluent suburb of New Jersey. Under a ‘market-like’ schooling arrangement, students and their parents are matched to the types of schooling that meet their needs because of the variety of charter schools that could emerge and the incentives of charter schools to be responsive to the needs of clientele. Thus, questions remain over the parental demand for charters in the suburbs. What are the characteristics of parents making school choices in suburban charters? Are the parents' reasons for choice in suburban charters similar to those in urban charters? How do we explain the differences/similarities in the educational decisions made in the two market contexts?
• Equity - Will suburban charter schools be available to those who presently lack such options, reduce the integration of students across and within public schools and communities by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status? Detractors of suburban charters deal with the concern as to whether education management organizations (i.e., EMOs and CMOs), as well as parent-driven and parent-founded schools, would in fact respond to the diversity of suburbs and the disparities between suburbs, particularly if they also have the option of locating in areas of high growth, low levels of poverty and minorities.
• Academic Achievement - Will suburban charters promote the academic skills, knowledge, and attainment of their students? How will they affect the achievement of those who remain in assigned public schools? In examining student achievement, the results for charter schools' performance relative to traditional public schools is mixed. To date, studies comparing charter schools with regular, public schools find no differences or only small differences in test results (Bettinger, 2005; Bifulco & Ladd, 2006; CREDO, 2009). However, a recent achievement study by Angrist, Pathak, and Walters (2011) using admissions lotteries in 19 Massachusetts charter schools across the state found negative impact on student achievement attending non-urban charters compared to large achievement gains for students attending urban charter schools. Their findings show that urban charter schools are most effective for low-income, minority students and low baseline achievers, while non-urban charter schools fail to raise academic achievement for any group. Indeed, the academic effectiveness of suburban charter schools must be examined in a larger number of states over a longer period of time.
• Social cohesion and Social capital - A choice-based system that responds to school differentiation (i.e., charter schools categorized as “multicultural,” “at-risk,” “back-to-basics,” “arts/experimental” and “thematic focus”) may segregate some parents from other groups, thus undermining a common educational experience necessary for democratic participation and social and civic responsibility (Levin, 2001). Will suburban charters prepare their students for democratic citizenship, participation and opportunity, or will they promote stratification and balkanization in curriculum? Do suburban charters represent the degree of social cohesion among suburban places (i.e., incorporating the disparity in residential location between minorities and comparable whites). How does social capital vary among suburban charter schools? Do suburban charters influence patterns of parental engagement and information flows, and neighborhood social networks? Are suburban charter schools self-selecting or “creaming” a particular subset of parents who are highly motivated and better-educated households to make up their parent body?   

Each of these broad outcome dimensions must be as fully developed as possible so that detailed comparisons of the effects of charter schools in different suburbs and states can be ascertained.

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This blog post is part of the Charter Notebook, sponsored by the Network of Independent Charter Schools, a project of the Center for Educational Innovation - Public Education Association.

The views expressed in Charter Notebook blogs represent the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Center for Educational Innovation-Public Education Association or the U.S. Department of Education.

References

Allard, S. (2010).  Out of Reach:  Place, Poverty, and the New American Welfare  State.  New Haven:  Yale University Press.

Allard, S. & Roth, B (2010). Strained Suburbs: The Social Service Challenges of Rising Suburban Poverty. Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.

Angrist, J., Pathak, P., & Walters C. (20101). Evaluating charter school effectiveness. NBER Working paper, 17332.

Arsen, D., Plank, D. N. and Sykes, G. (2001, Winter). A Work in Progress. Education Next, 14-19.

Bettinger, E. (2005). The Effect of Charter Schools on Charter Students and Public Schools. Economics of Education Review 24(2): 133-147.

Bifulco, R., & Ladd, H. (2006).  The impacts of charter schools on student achievement: Evidence from North Carolina. Journal of Education Finance and Policy 1:50-90.

Center for Education Reform (2010).  Annual Survey of America’s Charter Schools, 2010.  Edited by Jeanne  Allen and Alison Consoletti.  Washington, D.C.: Author.

CREDO. (2009). Multiple Choice: Charter Performance in 16 States. Stanford University: Center for Research on Education Outcomes.

Jain, P. (2002). The Approval Barrier to Suburban Charter Schools.  Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, Washington, D.C.

Kneebone, E., & Garr, E.. (2011).  Responding to the New Geography of Poverty:  Metropolitan Trends in the Earned Income Tax Credit. Washington, DC:  The Brookings Institution.

Levin, H. (2001). Privatizing education. Can the market deliver freedom of choice, productive efficiency, equity and social cohesion? Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Massey, D., & Fischer, M. (2000). How Segregation Concentrates Poverty. Ethnic and Racial Studies 23(4): 670-691.

Schneider, M., & Buckley, J. (2002). What do parents want from schools? Evidence from the Internet.  Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 24(2), 133-144.

The views expressed in Charter Notebook blogs represent the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Center for Educational Innovation-Public Education Association or the U.S. Department of Education.