ERIC Number: EJ1458093
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Feb
Pages: 28
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0013-1245
EISSN: EISSN-1552-3535
Incoming! Spatial Enrollment Competition between Charter Schools and Traditional Public Schools
Brock Hicks; Michael C. Lens
Education and Urban Society, v57 n2 p100-127 2025
The meteoric rise in charter schools has several implications for traditional public schools and their students. One understudied implication is the geographic competition for students. Given traditional public school boundaries are often fixed while charter school boundaries are more flexible, charter schools can draw students away from existing traditional public schools, and we have very little information about how distance matters in the competition for students. Because of this, traditional public schools and school districts have little ability to plan for enrollment changes in the face of charter school growth. Our paper uses data on enrollments and demographics in all charter and traditional public schools in Los Angeles from 2000 to 2013 to better understand these dynamics. We find that traditional public school enrollments clearly decline with competition from nearby charter schools. However, we also observe that charter schools tend to locate where traditional public school enrollments are on the decline. Competition is more relevant for elementary schools at short distances--within about 1 mi appears to be where the associations between charter school enrollments and TPS enrollment declines are the strongest. For middle and high schools, those connections are apparent within 2 to 6 mi in some models.
Descriptors: Enrollment, Charter Schools, Public Schools, Competition, Geographic Location, Enrollment Rate, Declining Enrollment, Elementary Schools, Middle Schools, High Schools, Demography, Institutional Characteristics
SAGE Publications. 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Tel: 800-818-7243; Tel: 805-499-9774; Fax: 800-583-2665; e-mail: journals@sagepub.com; Web site: https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2993
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Education; Junior High Schools; Middle Schools; Secondary Education; High Schools
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: California (Los Angeles)
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A