| Natalie Lacireno-Paquet
George Washington University
Charter school responses to policy regimes and markets: The effect on service to disadvantaged students
Using two NCES surveys, the Schools and Staffing Survey and the Common Core of Data, my dissertation research seeks to identify the important policy characteristics and school organizational forms that influence charter schools service to traditionally disadvantaged, at-risk, and under served students. The central research question is: How do different types of charter schools respond to varying policy and market contexts, particularly in terms of their service to disadvantaged students? Unlike most previous research on charter schools, I will disaggregate charter schools into those that are operated by comprehensive, for-profit management firms (EMOs) because theory suggests that driven by motives to maximize profit, these firms will seek to minimize cost and maximize achievement. Cream-skimming or under serving more costly to educate students, such as those with disabilities, language or other special needs, may be one way to do so. Because charter schools do not solely operate in the marketplace, this research contextualizes charter schools behaviors by taking into account the policy environment in which the schools are located. Thus, in addition to school organizational characteristics, the principal variables for explaining charter schools service of disadvantaged students will be characteristics of the state charter school legislation, specifically (1) funding, (2) number and type of permitted schools, (3) number and type of chartering authorities, and (4) the permitted location of schools. The districts in which charter schools are located, and districts that are geographically contiguous, are used to construct comparison groups to the charter schools. Appropriate multivariate techniques, such as GLM, which provides a nice menu of link functions, will be used to test for relationships between the policy characteristics and school organizational form variables and school-level cream-skimming outcomes. As charter schools continue to proliferate, it is important to examine the equity implications of this policy on the most vulnerable students in the public system. More importantly, policymakers have control over many of the variables that are expected to influence charter schools service to disadvantaged students. Thus the findings of this research will be of interest to policymakers considering modifying or enacting their state charter school legislation.
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