NOTE: This editorial is adapted from Michael J. Petrilli's public comment on the U.S. Department of Education's proposed Charter Schools Program regulations, available here.
Thirty years ago, when the charter school movement was just getting off the ground, devotees of big-city school systems worried that these new options would drain critical funding, hurt the kids left behind, and worsen an unequal and unjust system. It wasn’t a crazy concern, given what had happened over the previous thirty years—from the 1960s through the 1980s—when White flight (and middle-class Black flight) from the cities to the suburbs very much hurt urban schools, leaving them with less money and a significantly less-advantaged pupil population.
In recent years, however, it has become ever clearer that this concern about charter-inflicted damage was misplaced. Indeed, one of the most consistent findings of modern social science is that the expansion of charter schools has helped, not hurt, students who remain in district-operated public schools. And in at least a handful of big cities, including Washington, Miami, and Indianapolis, the growth of charters has sparked vigorous reforms to school systems that are paying off in terms of stronger student outcomes. Charter expansion turns out to be a rising tide that lifts all boats, not a life raft that leaves some children behind.
Yet this positive news seems not to have reached officials at 400 Maryland Avenue, Southwest, headquarters for the U.S. Department of Education. Its draft regulations for charter school start-up and replication grants, published last month, rest on the faulty, outdated notion that charter school expansion has a negative impact on traditional public schools. If these regulations go into effect, they could grind the charter movement to a halt. That would be bad for all students—those enrolled in public charter schools, for sure, but also those attending traditional public schools.
In its draft regulations, the Department proposes that all applicants for charter start-up or replication grants submit “a community impact analysis that demonstrates that there is sufficient demand for the proposed project and that the proposed project would serve the interests and meet the needs of students and families in the community or communities from which students are, or will be, drawn to attend the charter school.” The analysis must include, among many other provisions, “Evidence that demonstrates that the number of charter schools proposed to be opened, replicated, or expanded under the grant does not exceed the number of public schools needed to accommodate the demand in the community, including projected enrollment for the charter schools based on analysis of community needs and unmet demand and any supporting documents for the methodology and calculations used to determine the number of schools proposed to be opened, replicated, or expanded.”
This language indicates that Department officials believe that new charter schools should only be launched in communities with rising student enrollment or some shortage of school capacity. Yet, as folks surely know, almost every school district in the country, and especially large urban districts, are facing flat or declining enrollment currently because of the post–Great Recession “baby bust,” the pandemic-era slowdown in immigration, and the exodus of students to nondistrict options in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. Thus, few applicants will be able to provide evidence that “the number of charter schools proposed to be opened, replicated, or expanded under the grant does not exceed the number of public schools needed to accommodate the demand in the community.”
Furthermore, this language is at odds with the statute itself. The Every Student Succeeds Act states that one purpose of the Charter Schools Program (CSP) is to “increase the number of high-quality charter schools available to students across the United States.” Requiring evidence that “the number of charter schools proposed to be opened, replicated, or expanded under the grant does not exceed the number of public schools needed to accommodate the demand in the community” clearly contradicts the statutory purpose of the CSP.
Rather than ask whether there are enough seats in public schools writ large, the Department might wonder whether there are enough seats in high-quality public schools—in either the district or charter sector. That question would result in a very different answer in terms of community demand.
Moreover, slowing or stopping the growth of public charter schools in communities with flat or declining enrollment is bad for racial equity. That is the clear takeaway of two recent studies finding that the growth of charter schools boosts achievement overall for students in a given community, including students in traditional public schools, while it also closes racial achievement gaps.
The first, a 2019 Fordham Institute report titled Rising Tide: Charter School Market Share and Student Achievement, found a positive relationship between the percentage of Black and Hispanic students who enrolled in a charter school at the district level and the average achievement of students in these groups—at least, in the largest urban districts. The second, by Tulane University’s Feng Chen and Douglas N. Harris, found a positive relationship between the percentage of all students who enrolled in charter schools and the average achievement of all publicly enrolled students, especially in math.
Now, both of those studies—which include more than nine out of ten American school districts and nearly twenty years of data on charter school enrollment—have been updated in 2022 with additional years of data and estimates, and their findings continue to converge.
Both studies find that charter schools’ overall effects are overwhelmingly positive. For example, according to the Tulane study, moving from 0 to greater than 10 percent charter school enrollment share boosts the average school district’s graduation rate by at least three percentage points. Meanwhile, the Fordham study suggests that a move from 0 to 10 percent charter school enrollment share boosts math achievement for all publicly enrolled students by at least one-tenth of a grade level.
Both studies also find that achievement gains are concentrated in major urban areas, consistent with much prior research on charter school performance. For example, according to the Tulane study, moving from 0 to greater than 10 percent charter enrollment share in the average school district is associated with a 0.13 standard-deviation increase in math achievement. But in metropolitan areas, this change is associated with a 0.21 standard-deviation increase in math scores.
Finally, both studies find that poor, Black, and Hispanic students see big gains. For example, according to the Fordham study, a move from 0 to 10 percent charter school enrollment share boosts math achievement for these children by about 0.25 grade levels. Poor students also see a 0.15 grade-level increase in reading achievement.
These findings are incredibly important, given longstanding concerns that the growth of charter schools would hurt students in traditional public schools. That appears to be the motivation behind the Department’s proposed Community Impact Analysis. Yet that’s simply not true.
As charter schools grow and replicate, parents gain access to high-quality schools that better meet their children’s needs, students who remain in traditional public schools see better outcomes, and racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps that have resisted many other well-intentioned reforms begin to close. It’s likely that this is happening because the expansion of high-quality charter schools encourages districts to improve in order to retain families and because better charter schools squeeze bad charter schools out of the local market.
Furthermore, another recent Fordham Institute study, this one by self-professed charter skeptic Mark Weber, found that the fiscal impact of charter school growth on traditional public schools is not negative, as charter opponents claim. In most states, an increase in the percentage of students attending independent charter schools was associated with a significant increase in their host districts’ total revenue per pupil, total spending per pupil, local revenue per pupil, and per-pupil spending on support services. Notably, host districts’ instructional spending per pupil also remained neutral to positive in all twenty-one states.
At the very least, the federal Education Department should revise its required community impact analysis to look at capacity in high-quality schools, rather than total capacity in schools writ large. It could also ask applicants to provide data on other indicators of demand, such as charter school waiting lists.
Even better would be to rethink these proposed regulations altogether, given that they fail to “follow the science.” That’s no cardinal sin; as my coeditors and I write in our recent book Follow the Science to School, “the science” is always changing. That’s why we must follow it. Concerns about the “community impact” of charter schools weren’t unreasonable thirty years ago, but now we can put them to rest—which is what the Biden Administration should do with these proposed rules.
