| Linda Renzulli
University of Georgia
School choice whose choice?
FINAL REPORT:
Our research examines the conditions in which white students attend charter schools dominated by a white student population. To achieve this goal we extend competition theory and the white flight hypothesis to the current context of educational choice in the United States. Specifically, we argue that as integration levels in school districts increases, so too does White flight out of public schools and in to schools of choice. We hypothesize that charter schools that are in school districts with integrated schools will be more likely to have a greater percent of white students than those in more segregated districts.
The data sources for our study come from national datasets collected by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). We link the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) 1999-2000 charter school data (school survey) to the Common Core of Data (CCD) to investigate charter school composition. By linking the two data sets, it is possible to measure the district integration by getting the average levels of school integration. In addition, we have collected a substantial amount of data on district test scores and combined it with the SASS and CCD data. Our dataset is the first of its kind to include test score data in such a large scale.
The key independent variables for the analysis are integration or relative interracial contact and composition. We use a measure that takes into account the evenness to which whites and nonwhites are distributed across schools in a district. Our analysis examines charter schools in their district context, with controls for the variation in school types, missions, and curricula. We use multivariate OLS regression to test our hypotheses about racial contact.
Our results indicate racial composition and racial contact in public schools matter to the level of white enrollment in charter schools. Our models confirm that as the level of integration went up in a school district, the greater the percent of white students would be in the local charter schools, net of other variables. In other words, when schools within districts are more integrated Ð that is minorities and whites are distributed evenly among schools-- there is a greater proportion of white students in the local charter schools.
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