Charter Schools and the Segregation of Students by Income

Abstract

The share of students attending charter schools has been rising. There is evidence that charter school growth has increased socioeconomic segregation of students between schools. In this paper, we assess whether charter school growth affects how students are organized within nearby traditional public schools (TPS). We use administrative data from North Carolina to estimate the impact of charter school openings on segregation by income within nearby TPS. Our models exploit variation in the presence and location of charter schools over time between 2007 and 2014 for students in Grades 3 to 8. We find limited evidence that the segregation of students by income at the classroom level increases when charters open nearby. We find some evidence of increasing segregation in third grade and fourth grade math and third grade ELA classrooms at TPS within 2 miles of new charters in large urban districts schools. Our results vary somewhat depending on how we control for underlying trends and measure segregation. We find no effect of charter school growth on income segregation in higher grades.