The Segregative Effects of Charter Schools

Angela Crema

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2026, vol. 18, issue 2, 242-74

Abstract: I study the effects of charters on student racial segregation, identifying a novel mechanism: the assignment of White and non-White students to regular classrooms within their school-grade. Exploiting almost 100 entries of elementary charters in North Carolina from 1997 to 2015, I show that the announcement of an opening significantly increases classroom segregation within public schools nearby, relative to schools farther away, especially within non-majority-White schools and for charter openings that enroll a relatively large share of White students. Accounting for classrooms is unlikely to reverse the literature's conclusion that the charter effects on student segregation are modest in magnitude.

JEL-codes: H75 I21 I24 I28 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20230539 (application/pdf)
https://doi.org/10.3886/E237541V1 (text/html)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/materials/25004 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/materials/25005 (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aejpol:v:18:y:2026:i:2:p:242-74

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

DOI: 10.1257/pol.20230539

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy is currently edited by Matthew Shapiro

More articles in American Economic Journal: Economic Policy from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().