Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Charter schools have been a polarizing issue in U.S. public education. One of the most contentious debates surrounding charter schools is how greater parental choice could affect stratification along racial/ethnic lines, socioeconomic levels, and student ability. Charter advocates argue that decoupling school assignment from already intensely segregated residential neighborhoods should have a net positive impact on school system integration. Charter critics, however, are concerned that parental choice could to increased stratification that exacerbates segregation in school systems. To date, the question of charter schools’ effect on school system segregation has been insufficiently explored through piecemeal studies with limited generalizability. In this study, we provide the first nationally comprehensive examination of the effects of charter schools on school system segregation. Using a generalized differences-in-differences research design, we identify the contribution of charter schools to school system segregation in a causal framework that exploits within- and between-district charter growth and changes in segregation across school grade levels. We find that charter schools both increase within-district segregation and decrease between-district segregation for Black and Hispanic students, with the net effect being statistically indistinguishable from zero. Our results are robust to a range of measurement choices and model specifications. We also find that the effect of charters on segregation is heterogeneous across school district types and geographical areas, in some instances exacerbating segregation and in others diminishing it.