The Revolving Door: The Effect of Race on Charter School Closures

• In Event: 060 - Regular Session. School Choice and Educational Inequality

Abstract

Although not the original intention of the charter school movement, charter schools have come to be promoted by policy makers and advocates as a way to reduce educational inequality. Indeed, charter schools tend to enroll higher proportions of Black students than do traditional public schools, bolstering this contention. However, the accountability function of charter schools means that these schools are also far more likely to close than traditional public schools. High incidence of closure among charter schools can lead to educational instability with students moving in and out of charter schools and traditional schools over time as the charter schools open and then fail. In this paper, we build on prior work examining the factors that may promote or constrain charter school closure by examining the connection between race and school closure. Specifically, we ask, how do the racial demographics of a charter school impact its likelihood of closure? We hypothesize that closure processes may be particularly detrimental to black students, with charter schools that serve black students at greater risk of closure—what we call the revolving door hypothesis. In line with our hypothesis, our findings reveal that as the proportion of black students in a charter school increases, so too does its likelihood of closings. This finding remains even after controlling for other factors that have been shown to impact school closure. Ultimately our work suggests that the promotion of charter schools as avenues of racial equity may be misleading.

Authors

• Rebecca L. Boylan, University of Georgia

• Maria T. Paino, Oakland University

• Linda Renzulli, University of Georgia