Are low-performing students more likely to exit charter schools? Evidence from New York City and Denver, Colorado

Winters, Marcus A.; Clayton, Grant; Carpenter, Dick M.

doi:10.1016/j.econedurev.2016.12.002

Cited by 8 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…The poor-behavior message ties to a contention that some schools push out or screen children with behavior issues (Zimmer and Guarino, 2013). The poor-grades message and the good grades and good attendance message reflects concerns that schools may seek out students or screen students based on their academic performance (Winters, Clayton, and Carpenter, 2017).…”

Section: Messagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Differences in how families choose schools may reflect heterogeneous preferences rather than schools steering away applicants. Observational studies have focused on specific contexts and have yielded mixed evidence about how choice affects the distribution of students across schools (Lacireno-Paquet et al, 2002;Bifulco et al, 2009;Zimmer et al, 2009;Hoxby and Murarka, 2009;Zimmer and Guarino, 2013;Nichols-Barrer et al, 2015;Walters, 2018). 1 The difficulty in determining whether schools' dissuade certain students from applying fuels controversy regarding the potential expansion of school choice (Cohodes and Dynarski, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Education for All? A Nationwide Audit Study of School Choice

Bergman¹,

McFarlin²

2018

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School choice may allow schools to "cream skim" students perceived as easier to educate. To test this, we sent emails from fictitious parents to 6,452 schools in 29 states and Washington, D.C. The fictitious parent asked whether any student is eligible to apply to the school and how to apply. Each email signaled a randomly assigned attribute of the child. We find that schools are less likely to respond to inquiries from students with poor behavior, low achievement, or a special need. Lower response rates to students with a potentially significant special need are driven by charter schools. Otherwise, these results hold for traditional public schools in areas of school choice and high-value added schools.

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Section: Messagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Education for All? A Nationwide Audit Study of School Choice

Bergman¹,

McFarlin²

2018

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“…However, research is beginning to emerge on the sorting of students by perceived ability in charter schools. 2 Much of this research uses longitudinal student-level data to examine the movement of students from TPSs to charter schools and charter schools to TPSs (Booker, Zimmer, and Buddin 2005;Garcia, McIlroy, and Barber 2008;Zimmer et al 2011;Zimmer and Guarino 2013;Welsh, Duque, and McEachin 2016;Winters, Clayton, and Carpenter 2017). This method allows researchers to examine whether students differentially exit TPSs versus charter schools based on their prior achievement.…”

Section: <A> 3 Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Descriptive Analysis of Cream Skimming and Pushout in Choice versus Traditional Public Schools

Kho

Zimmer

McEachin

2022

Education Finance and Policy

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One of the controversies surrounding charter schools is whether these schools may either “cream skim” high-performing students from traditional public schools or “pushout” low-achieving students or students with discipline histories, leaving traditional public schools to educate the most challenging students. In this study, we use longitudinal statewide data from Tennessee and North Carolina and linear probability models to examine whether there is evidence consistent with these selective enrollment practices. Because school choice programs managed by districts (magnet and open enrollment programs) have a similar ability to cream skim and pushout students, we also examine these outcomes for these programs. Across the various school choice programs, magnet schools have the most evidence of cream skimming, but this might be expected as they often have selective admissions. For charter schools, we do not find patterns in the data consistent with cream skimming, but we do find evidence consistent with pushout behaviors based on discipline records. Finally, some have raised concerns that students may be pushed out near accountability test dates, but our results suggest no evidence consistent with this claim.

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“…They find no systematic difference in the likelihood of exit among special education students in charter and TPS schools. Instead, their results suggest that descriptive differences between charter and TPS in special education enrollments arise through charters' lower likelihood of classifying students as special education and non-special education students entering charter schools at higher rates (see also Winters et al, 2017;Zimmer and Guarino, 2013).…”

Section: Spillover Effects Of Charter Schoolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since Minnesota adopted the first policy allowing local education agencies to provide privately-operated charter schools public funding, a large empirical literature has arisen seeking to test the effectivenss of charters in improving student performance (see Hanushek and Rivkin, 2006;Berends, 2015;Betts and Tang, 2014;Cheng et al, 2017 for reviews), and generally provides mixed evidence. 1 In recent years, as charter schools have grown in number and matured in operations, scholars have examined their effects on other aspects of the education system, including their impacts on student sorting across schools (e.g., Buckley and Schneider, 2005;Dee and Fu, 2004;Lacireno-Paquet et al, 2002;Zimmer and Guarino, 2013;Winters, 2015;Winters et al, 2017) and local teacher labor markets (e.g., Bruhn et al, 2020;Carruthers, 2012b,a;Jackson, 2012). Using updated data from North Carolina public schools, we examine the impact of recent legislative deregulation of the North Carolina charter school sector on charter expansion.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sorting it Out: The Effects of Charter Expansion on Teacher and Student Composition at Traditional Public Schools

Sorensen

Holt

2021

Economics of Education Review

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Since their introduction in the 1990s, charter schools have grown from a small-scale experiment to a ubiquitous feature of the public education landscape. The current study uses the legislative removal of a cap on the maximum number of charters in North Carolina as a natural experiment to assess the impacts of charter school growth on teacher quality and student composition in traditional public schools (TPS) at different levels of local market penetration. Using an instrumental variable difference-in-differences approach to account for endogenous charter demand, we find that intensive local charter entry reduces the inflow of new teachers at nearby TPS, leading to a more experienced and credentialed teaching workforce on average. However, we find that the entry of charters serving predominantly White students leads to reductions in average teacher experience, effectiveness, and credentials at nearby TPS. Overall these findings suggest that the composition of the teacher workforce in TPS will continue to change as charter schools further expand, and that the spillover effects of future charter expansion will vary by the types of students served by charters.

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Are low-performing students more likely to exit charter schools? Evidence from New York City and Denver, Colorado

Cited by 8 publications

References 16 publications

Education for All? A Nationwide Audit Study of School Choice

Education for All? A Nationwide Audit Study of School Choice

A Descriptive Analysis of Cream Skimming and Pushout in Choice versus Traditional Public Schools

Sorting it Out: The Effects of Charter Expansion on Teacher and Student Composition at Traditional Public Schools

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