Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

A longstanding criticism of charter schools is that they exacerbate racial and socioeconomic segregation across schools. Yet there is an emerging group of intentionally diverse charter schools and charter management organizations (CMOs) whose mission includes a specific focus on intentional diversity and integration. Despite the proliferation of these diverse-by-design (DBD) schools, little is known about whether students who attend DBD charters actually experience more integrated learning environments, the outcomes of attending DBD charters, or the school-level policies and practices that facilitate or hinder their diversity goals. In this mixed-methods paper, we begin to fill this gap by examining the impacts and implementation of DBD charter schools in New York City (NYC), Denver, and California.

To do so, we recruited a total of 46 DBD charter schools across five jurisdictions, containing a mix of CMO and independent charters. These schools are oversubscribed and use a lottery or similar process for student admission, enabling comparison with traditional public school competitors.

Our quantitative analyses in NYC and Denver rely on student-level administrative data on demographics and outcomes. In California, we rely on publicly available school-level information. To address concerns about selection in NYC and Denver, we exploit random assignment of students to oversubscribed schools. In California, we rely on regression models to compare the outcomes of DBD charters with outcomes of traditional public and other charter schools located within a 5 mile radius.

We begin by examining whether and to what extent DBD charter school students attend more racially and socioeconomically integrated schools than their peers. Next, we examine the impact of DBD charter schools on a variety of outcomes including performance on standardized tests, attendance, discipline, and graduation. Finally, we use qualitative methods to explore policies and practices at DBD charters that help explain outcomes. To do so, we collected and analyzed qualitative data from 101 semi-structured interviews with school principals, their leadership teams, and CMO home office staff, 61 classroom observations in 4th, 8^th, and 11th grades, and 40 focus groups with teachers and school leadership teams in the sample schools and CMO network offices.

Preliminary results from Denver and California suggest that DBD students attend more racially diverse schools, perform better in English Language arts, and are less likely to be suspended. In Denver, we find that the reduction in suspension is driven almost entirely by lower suspension rates among black students. Qualitative data suggest these findings may be attributed to the use of instructional strategies (e.g., small group instruction, project-based learning, social-emotional curricula, culturally-responsive materials), the use of restorative justice practices, efforts to recruit diverse staff and students, and ongoing coaching, mentorship and teacher professional development.

This work stands to contribute both to the literature on charter school impacts and the effects of integration more broadly. In addition, findings from this study can provide guidance to federal, state, and local policy-makers seeking to create and maintain diverse educational spaces as well as charter and traditional public schools working to serve diverse students.