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Do Charter Schools Threaten Public Education? Emerging Evidence From Fifteen Years Of A Quasi-Market For Schooling, James Forman Jr.

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Supporters of public education have long feared that charter schools will threaten the public system, both by 1) creaming off the most advantaged students and 2) undermining political support for the public system. These fears have not been borne out. Blacks are disproportionately in charters, whites are disproportionately in traditional public schools, and Hispanics are fairly evenly distributed between the two. Looking at class measures, poor students are distributed fairly equally between the two types of schools. And turning to other measures of privilege, the evidence does not point strongly in either direction. My conclusions are not without qualification. The …