A new study in the Journal of School Choice explores whether charter schools open in “high-demand” areas of New York City. In particular, the authors ask whether they situate themselves in high-density areas with lots of children, near schools with low academic performance, or in neighborhoods where parental satisfaction is low.
The study examines fifty-six new elementary charter schools that opened between 2009 and 2013, along with 571 traditional elementary schools. Data sources include parental satisfaction survey data from the New York City Department of Education (with 2008 as the base year for the traditional public schools), school proficiency rates on math (because math scores are more school-dependent than reading scores), and Census data on poverty and population.
The analysts compare parents’ dissatisfaction with their children’s current schools (relative to the number of charter openings in the area) and that area’s poverty rate. They find pockets of parental dissatisfaction scattered throughout southwest Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens. Yet charter schools didn’t open in these areas. They tended to locate instead in clusters around central Brooklyn and along a stretch in western Manhattan, where parent satisfaction varied but was generally moderate or high.
Next, they detect a modest but imperfect relationship between community poverty and charter locations. A majority of new charters opened in communities with at least 20 percent of residents living in poverty. Yet twenty-one of the fifty-six new charters located in areas with less than 20 percent poverty, and other really poor areas have no charters at all.
The strongest correlation observed by the authors was between weak math proficiency rates and charter openings. Forty-nine of the new charters opened in locations close to low-performing traditional schools.
Finally, it was found that many charters sprouted up in comparatively sparsely populated areas. Conversely, there were no charters at all in many dense areas.
Of course, charter school locations can also be influenced by many factors that the analysts don’t examine, such as the cost and availability of real estate in a city, the politics of school authorization, the influence of a city’s charter school cap, and the overall quality of a given charter. Nevertheless, the fact that low parental satisfaction with neighborhood schools appears not to inform charter school location is good to know. The more charter advocates know, the better.
SOURCE: Andrew Saultz, Dan Fitzpatrick, and Rebecca Jacobsen, "Exploring the Supply Side: Factors Related to Charter School Openings in NYC," Journal of School Choice: International Research and Reform, vol. 9 no. 3 (August 2015).
