Where are the most economically segregated charter schools? (& why does it matter?)
Posted on November 27, 2013
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In this first of several posts, I explore economic variation in charter enrollments in the states of Massachusetts, New Jersey and Connecticut.
I’m taking a fairly simple, easily replicable approach here and encourage any data savvy readers to take their own shot at it. For this analysis I’m using the most recent three years of non-preliminary school level enrollment data from the National Center for Education Statistics Common Core of Data, Public School Universe Survey.
I’m only using a handful of variables here. I’m using:
- City of location (lcity)
- Total school enrollment (member)
- Total number of free lunch qualified children (frelch)
- Charter school indicator (chartr)
For each year of the data, I sum the enrollment of all schools in the city of location, including charters and district schools and magnets or other special schools. That gives me the total number of all kids enrolled in a city (yeah… it’s a little messy in that some cities include schools that also enroll kids from outside the city – I limit the final lists to large enough enrollment areas where such cases should not substantively distort final numbers). I do the same for kids qualified for free