New Home, Same Education: Charter School Enrollment and the Impact of Residential Mobility

• In Event: School Choice Research: Understanding Persistent Problems Through New Lenses

Abstract

Residential mobility is a fact of life for most families, but for low income and minoritized groups who rent their homes, it can be a major disruption to a child’s education. Charter schools, because they do not have catchment areas, could limit the harm of residential mobility by keeping school constant while home shifts. We examine whether the impact of residential and school mobility differs for students in charter and traditional neighborhood schools using student level administrative data and home addresses from an entire state. Impacts for residential mobility favor charters, but school mobility effects are quite large for charter students largely because students who switch into and out of charters do better in traditional neighborhood schools.

Author

• Douglas L. Lauen, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill