A new EdChoice report examines the potential effect of charter schools on family relocation and urban revitalization. The authors focus on the Orange County School of the Arts (OCSA) in Santa Ana, a charter school serving grades 7–12 that was established as part of an urban renewal effort in one of the poorest places in Southern California. Families with school-age children were avoiding the area, worsening its economic issues. Indeed, they appeared to be fleeing. Compared to all of Orange County, 11 percent fewer elementary school kids lived in Santa Ana than would be expected based on the number of preschool children. The question, then, was whether a charter school could draw families (and school employees) into the area and stimulate the local economy.
The authors looked at home residence data for 7,000 students who attended OCSA between 2000–01 and 2013–14, and separated them into students who started at OCSA in ninth grade and those who enrolled in one of the other five grades.
Of those 7,000 students, 1,217 changed addresses after being admitted, with 55 percent of them relocating closer to the school. For students who entered the school in ninth grade, their families were 50 to 59 percent more likely to move closer to OCSA than would be expected by random chance, compared with 37 to 43 percent for those entering in other grades. (The researchers speculate that this is likely because ninth grade is a “gateway grade” for high school.) Add to this the daily commute of several hundred OCSA employees into downtown Santa Ana, as well as the school’s many evening activities that keep families and faculty there into the later hours, and its plausible to posit that OCSA has helped reverse Santa Ana’s blight. And indeed, this coincides with an influx of business and a reduced crime rate.
This was simply a case study, so authors could not establish causation, and factors unique to OCSA must also be considered, along with neighborhood characteristics. OCSA, for example, is an arts-based charter and serves just six grades. Still, it’s likely that opening appealing charters could help revitalize struggling communities in other parts of the country. How great it would be if that happened in more places.
SOURCE: Bart Danielsen, David Harrison, and Jing Zhao, “New Case Study Research Out of Santa Ana Finds School Choice Plays Role in Urban Renewal,” EdChoice (March 2017).
