In “Direct and indirect impact of charter schools’ entry on traditional public schools: New evidence from North Carolina” (Economic Letters, September 2014), Professor Yusuke Jinnai examines North Carolina data from 1997 to 2005 to assess the impact of charter schools on their district school counterparts. Jinnai concludes,
This paper finds small but positive direct impact on overlapping grades at nearby traditional schools and insignificant indirect impact on non-overlapping grades.*
He speculates that the cap on charter schools, which existed during the period examined in the study, likely limited the size of the effect.
In addition, Professor Jinnai dismissed the notion that charter schools somehow harmed nearby district schools.
At the same time, my study does not find any empirical evidence that charter schools harm nearby traditional public schools. Critics of the charter school system argue that charter schools lure away high-performing students as well as public funding from neighboring traditional schools, lowering the quality of traditional schools and the entire public education system. However, charter schools in North Carolina attract low-achieving students, and the decline in enrollment (and thus public funding) at traditional schools is small, which offers evidence against opponents of charter school programs.
Finally, he criticizes previous studies of charter schools in North Carolina for underestimating the direct impact (overlapping grades) and overestimating the indirect impact (non-overlapping grades). The implication is that “it is bene ficial to open charter schools that provide the same grade levels as their traditional counterparts, because it is students in overlapping grades at nearby traditional schools whose achievement increases as charter schools enter their neighborhood.”
* Note: All quotes are from a previous draft of the study and may be different than the final published version. The findings were the same.
