Education Commons^™

Centropoly: The Structure Of Educational Failures In The U.S., Martha Bradley-Dorsey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

How did a country birthed in individual liberty and voluntary associations create just the opposite in its inflexible, layered, government-controlled public education system? Here, using public choice theory, I explain how near-sighted and unrelated reforms, often based in private motives, gave us what I call the public education centropoly – a hybrid government organization consisting of a set of monopolies layered beneath two additional government levels that especially fails disadvantaged students.

After defending the use of public choice theory (Chapter 1) and summarizing the U.S. public education system formation (Chapter 2), in Chapter 3 I examine the Elementary and Secondary …

Enrollment Trends In Northwest Arkansas Charter Schools, Sarah C. Mckenzie, Josh B. Mcgee

Policy Briefs

Northwest Arkansas is home to nine public charter schools, with plans to open a new charter school for the 2020-21 school year. These schools, which serve unique missions, are some of the most highly ranked schools in the State of Arkansas. While critics argue that public charter schools segregate based on race or academic ability, national evidence finds that these claims are highly context specific. What conclusions can we draw about northwest Arkansas charter schools based on enrollment trends in recent years?

Expanding Outcomes In Educational Program Evaluation: Student Outcomes, Systemic Effects, And Policy Implications, Heidi Lauren Holmes

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Education policy debates over the last twenty years have focused on the need to increase students’ test scores. The federal government and states have implemented and expanded a variety of test-based, school accountability policies. Accountability pressures have incentivized schools to narrow their curriculum, decrease time allocated to extracurricular activities, and focus on short-term student outcomes. This dissertation focuses on expanding outcomes in educational program evaluations and demonstrates the value of looking beyond the goal of increasing student test scores. The first chapter, using random assignment, estimates the causal effects of culturally enriching field trips on various student outcomes. Such field …

You Can’T Always Get What You Want: Using “Broken Lotteries” To Check The Validity Of Charter School Evaluations Using Matching Designs, Leesa M. Foreman, Kaitlin P. Anderson, Gary W. Ritter, Patrick J. Wolf

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

We consider situations in which public charter school lotteries are neither universally conducted nor consistently documented. Such lotteries produce “broken” Randomized Control Trials, but provide opportunities to assess the internal validity of quasi-experimental research designs. Here, we present the results of a statewide charter school evaluation using a broad-based student matching evaluation design, and run two additional analyses using the charter application wait-lists as robustness checks. Our additional models, which address concerns of self-selection by using only charter applicants as matched comparison students, yield similar effect estimates and thus provide support for the use of matching designs in charter school …

The Waivers Sought By Arkansas Charters: Should They Be Extended To All?, Sarah C. Mckenzie, Gary W. Ritter

Policy Briefs

Should traditional public school districts be allowed to use the same waivers as nearby charter schools? Perhaps the flexibility afforded to charters might be helpful for all schools by allowing them to become nimble, responsive organizations, less governed by inertia and more guided by innovation. House Bill 1377 proposes such an extension of waivers. In this brief, we examine the most common waivers that charter schools request to assess what types of waivers could be available to traditional public schools if House Bill 1377 were signed into law.

Charter School Facilities Funding, Sarah C. Mckenzie, Gary W. Ritter

Policy Briefs

The equity and adequacy of facilities funding for charter schools (as well as traditional public schools (TPS)) is a topic of hot debate in Arkansas and across the country. Proponents of charters argue that charter schools are burdened due to a lack of facilities funding. Other argue that there are great needs in our TPS districts as well, and that these needs should be met first. This brief describes what facilities funding is currently available to charter schools in Arkansas and what other states are doing that we could possibly leverage here in the Natural State.

Traditional Public School And Charter School Funding In Arkansas (Updated), Sarah C. Mckenzie, Gary W. Ritter

Policy Briefs

The existence and expansion of charter schools in Arkansas continue to be controversial. Proponents of charters argue that charter schools are unfairly burdened because they do not have access to local property tax revenue. Critics of charters, on the other hand, argue that charter schools pull funding away from traditional public schools. This brief examines the funding of traditional public schools and charter schools across the state and in the particular regions in which most Arkansas charter schools are located.

2011-12 Arkansas Open-Enrollment Charter School Test Results, Reed Greenwood, Gary W. Ritter

Policy Briefs

Charter schools are receiving more attention in Arkansas and across the nation, as the number of these public schools of choice in Arkansas fluctuates each year. Some charters have been closed, while new ones have been opened. Further, in many media outlets, charter schools are often lumped together as one entity. However, ‘charter school’ is not a blanket term. They are separate schools run under separate charter documents with different operators. In Arkansas, there are two types of charter schools: conversion charter schools and openenrollment charter schools. Conversion charter schools are governed by the leadership in the district in which …

Updated Analysis Of Racial Segregation In Pulaski County Charter And Traditional Public Schools, Nathan C. Jensen, Gary W. Ritter

Arkansas Education Reports

In September of 2009, the Office for Education Policy (OEP) released a report titled “An Analysis of Charter Schools on Desegregation Efforts in Little Rock, Arkansas.” In this report, we presented data from the 2005 to 2009 schools years for students who transferred to open-enrollment charter schools in Pulaski County from the Little Rock School District (LRSD). The aim of this report was to show what impacts – if any – these transfers were having on the desegregation efforts of the LRSD. The motivation for this report was an ongoing legal debate about how charter schools impact desegregation, in which …

An Analysis Of The Impact Of Charter Schools On Desegregation Efforts In Little Rock, Arkansas, Nathan C. Jensen, Gary W. Ritter

Arkansas Education Reports

The aim of this report is to address the challenge by the Little Rock School District (LRSD) that open-enrollment charter schools in Pulaski County (PC) are impeding the efforts of the three PC school districts (Little Rock, North Little Rock (NLRSD), and Pulaski County Special (PCSSD)) to become racially integrated. A key motivation for this analysis is the ongoing debate about how expanded school choice, in this case charter schools, impacts racial segregation. Critics of charter schools argue that these schools lead to greater racial segregation, whereas proponents of charter schools suggest that there is no necessary link between racial …