It’s widely acknowledged that a bit of healthy competition is a good thing in most contexts. Among other things, it pushes businesses to create better products and athletes and musicians to train longer and harder.
But what about in education?
Over the past decade, charter schools have driven much of the growth in competition experienced by traditional public schools across the country. And they are delivering impressive results. According to Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes, charter schools produce, on average, more year-to-year academic growth than comparable district schools, particularly in urban areas and for students from traditionally underserved communities.
Still, many critics believe that this success comes at the expense of the students who remain in traditional public schools. So it’s worth reviewing the empirical research on this point.
How do charter schools affect traditional public schools?
The research on charters’ academic spillovers is positive overall, with at least a dozen studies finding that the arrival of new charter schools increases the achievement of students who remain in traditional public schools. Consistent with this finding, average test scores for all publicly enrolled students in a geographic region rise when the number of charter schools increases.
Positive effects have also been detected for other academic outcomes. For example, some research shows that charter school competition can reduce student absenteeism and the probability of grade retention in traditional public schools. And one national analysis found that geographic school districts’ graduation rates increased by about 2–4 percentage points when new charter schools were introduced.
Finally, charter schools may have some important fiscal spillovers. For example, districts that experience enrollment losses may struggle to reduce their fixed costs and consequently become less efficient. Still, these challenges tend to fade as districts adjust. In the long run, the evidence suggests that charter schools may actually make traditional public schools more efficient—and that most of their fiscal spillovers are perhaps best understood as transition costs.
That said, there are some counterexamples. At least four studies have found that charters have negative effects on the achievement of students remaining in district schools, while at least seven others have found null impacts.
When are charters’ competitive effects strongest?
Research suggests that three conditions are associated with stronger competitive effects.
First, charter schools seem to have stronger competitive effects when they are in direct competition with traditional public schools. For example, effects seem to be bigger when charters are physically located closer to traditional public schools. Similarly, research suggests that competitive effects are strongest in grade levels that are served by both the charter school and traditional public schools.
Second, some research suggests that non-district sponsored charter schools have stronger positive competitive effects—which makes sense, since a principal goal of the charter movement is to break the district monopoly.
Finally, multiple studies have found that higher-achieving charters have more positive effects on students in traditional public schools, presumably because they create more competitive pressure.
What explains these effects?
Ultimately, any number of mechanisms could be driving charters’ competitive effects. For example, some research suggests that charter school entry can encourage traditional public schools to devote more resources to teacher salaries or other instructional inputs. Or perhaps it leads to increased effort from teachers and administrators or to structural changes, such as reforms to teacher tenure, evaluation, and pay scales.
According to one recent study, charter-driven enrollment losses lead to the closure of low-performing district schools—which probably helps the students who would have attended them, insofar as they wind up in better schools.
The bottom line
In a country with upwards of ten thousand school districts, there can be no universal truths. Yet what we know of charters’ effects on traditional public schools is promising.
While charters may negatively affect districts’ finances in the short run, the competition they introduce ultimately has a positive effect on the academic achievement of students in traditional public schools, as well as other outcomes. In other words, a little competition in education—as in other sectors, contexts, and walks of life—is almost certainly healthy.
