Thursday, August 23, 2012

Parsing Poverty: Charter Market Segmentation across & Within U.S. Cities « School Finance 101

Parsing Poverty: Charter Market Segmentation across & Within U.S. Cities « School Finance 101:


Parsing Poverty: Charter Market Segmentation across & Within U.S. Cities

Late Thursday, I posted a follow up on the distribution of children with disabilities by disability classification across charter and district schools in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. This post explores the distribution of children who qualify for free lunch in charter schools and district schools within the city limits of major cities. Note that the unit of analysis – the charter market, per se – that I am using here is the “city limits” and all schools – charter and district that lie within specific large central cities (urban centric locale code 11). Why does this matter? And why do I do it this way? One reason is data convenience. Another is that it’s important to recognize that many U.S. Cities are carved into multiple school districts, often times relating to a long history of housing and school segregation. I’ll provide some Kansas City examples below. In other words, the traditional district system already creates some artificial boundaries of segregation, onto which the charter system is now being superimposed.
Again, in this post, I’m focusing on low income children. When it comes to low income children, Charter schools