The share of students attending charter schools has been rising. There is evidence that charter school growth has increased socioeconomic segregation of students between schools. In this paper, we assess whether charter school growth affects how students are organized within nearby traditional public schools (TPS). We use administrative data from…

Approximately 20 percent of the public school students in the City of Los Angeles attend a charter school. Los Angeles is home to the second-largest school district in the nation. The School Choice Demonstration Project research team has documented disparities between traditional public school (TPS) and charter school funding in Los Angeles…

School districts are an integral part of the U.S. education system. Every state in the nation guarantees citizens free public education. To ensure all students are served, the states divide their land into school districts intended to provide all students with reasonable access to a school near where they live. These districts exist as units of…

I calculate the cost-effectiveness of private schools participating in school voucher programs, independent charter schools, and district-authorized charter schools, compared to traditional public schools in Wisconsin for the 2017-18 school year. I calculate cost-effectiveness by dividing the Accountability Report Card score for each school by the…

This report provides information on enrollment in the Texas public school system from the 2012-13 through 2022-23 school years, based on data collected through the Texas Student Data System. Enrollment data are provided by grade, race/ethnicity, gender, and economically disadvantaged status, and for instructional programs, nontraditional school…

This report provides information on enrollment in the Texas public school system from the 2011-12 through 2021-22 school years, based on data collected through the Texas Student Data System. Enrollment data are provided by grade, race/ethnicity, gender, and economically disadvantaged status, and for instructional programs, nontraditional school…

South Carolina's Charter School Act of 1996 was passed for the primary reason of improving education for the state. A part of this improvement would come by way of charter schools providing innovative ways of teaching and learning. In 2017 WCSD was established, in hopes of answering the call of the 1996 Charter School Act by providing innovative…

The subject of public charter schools and students with disabilities is both important and sensitive. These students have the potential to benefit greatly from the smaller size and specialized focus of many public charter schools, but questions persist regarding whether all or even most charters are as receptive to enrolling students with…

This study explores segregation and privatization in NYC public schools through the lens of early childhood music education. On a "macro level" (district/citywide), this article compares access to music in charter schools and traditional public schools serving kindergarten through third grade (K-3) and examines how different…

Since Minnesota passed the first charter school law in 1991, charter schools have become one of the most prominent school reforms in the U.S. While charter schools educate a small portion of public school enrollments, their existence has prompted various responses from traditional public school (TPS) districts. This paper explores education…

Just as schools receive charters to run independently of districts, this brief proposes that teachers could receive charters to run classrooms independently of schools. In addition to providing teachers with more autonomy, charter teachers would give families the opportunity to select not the school their child attends but the individual who…

School districts altered instructional delivery from solely in-person to a combined virtual/in-person model in the 2020-2021 school year in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Houston Independent School District (HISD) offered in-person and virtual instruction to early learners at school-based programs (SBP), early childhood centers (ECC), and…

"Disrupting Disruption" shows how three racially and ethnically diverse school districts--Union NJ, Union City OK, and Roanoke City VA--have defied the demographic odds, boosting overall graduation rates while shrinking or eliminating the opportunity gap. These districts resemble many others in their student population. What makes them…

School buses may be a critical education policy lever, breaking the link between schools and neighborhoods and facilitating access to school choice. Yet little is known about the commute for bus riders, including the average length of the bus ride or whether long commutes harm academic outcomes. We begin to fill this gap using data from New York…

The data used in this report come from the Principal Questionnaire of the 2015-16 National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS), a nationally representative sample survey of public K-12 schools, principals, and teachers in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. In the 2015-16 NTPS, public school principals were asked to identify their top…