We examine the effect of the expansion of charter schools on socioeconomic segregation in American public education. Using a district-level panel data set from 1998 to 2015, we describe and model changes in within-district segregation of low-income students, proxied by free-lunch eligibility (FLE). We show that the segregation of FLE students from non-FLE students increased by about 15% in large school districts and find that charter school penetration and growth played a role in increasing socioeconomic segregation within districts. We estimate that a one standard deviation increase in charter enrollment rates increases the dissimilarity index in a district by 6% of a standard deviation. Although this impact is modest, we do find that segregation is more pervasive in the charter sector. So, continued growth of charter schools could exacerbate socioeconomic segregation.

Over the past three decades, children from low-income families have increasingly been attending different public schools than those from more affluent families. Though recent work has helped us understand patterns of income segregation between districts and schools within districts, we know little about segregation of students as they experience school: in the classroom. We attempt to advance knowledge of segregation of students by income at the classroom level. We use data from North Carolina that includes information on classroom assignments and students’ economically disadvantaged (ED) status. We assess whether ED students are clustered/segregated into different classrooms than other students. We find that within-school segregation rose by about 10% between 2007 and 2014 in elementary and middle schools we study.

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The share of students attending charter schools has been rising. There is evidence that charter school growth has increased socioeconomic segregation of students between schools. In this paper, we assess whether charter school growth affects how students are organized within nearby traditional public schools (TPS). We use administrative data from North Carolina to estimate the impact of charter school openings on segregation by income within nearby TPS. Our models exploit variation in the presence and location of charter schools over time between 2007 and 2014 for students in Grades 3 to 8. We find limited evidence that the segregation of students by income at the classroom level increases when charters open nearby. We find some evidence of increasing segregation in third grade and fourth grade math and third grade ELA classrooms at TPS within 2 miles of new charters in large urban districts schools. Our results vary somewhat depending on how we control for underlying trends and measure segregation. We find no effect of charter school growth on income segregation in higher grades.

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