Is Charter School Competition in California Improving the Performance of Traditional Public Schools?

• Author: Ron Zimmer,Richard Buddin
• Date: 01 September 2009
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2009.02033.x
• Published date: 01 September 2009

Charter School Competition in California 831

Ron Zimmer

Michigan State University

Richard Buddin

RAND Corporation

Is Charter School Competition in California Improving

the Performance of Traditional Public Schools?

Tough Public

Policy Choices

Confronting

America

Ron Zimmer is an associate professor at

Michigan State University. His research fo-

cuses on school choice and school f‌i nance.

E-mail: rzimmer@msu.edu

Richard Buddin is a senior economist

at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica,

California. His research focuses on how

school choice, teacher quality, and educa-

tion reforms affect student outcomes.

E-mail: buddin@rand.org

[V]ouchers have not gained

traction in the United

States and … advocates

have gravitated toward

charter schools as a means of

introducing competition into

the provision of educational

services.…

A premise of charter school

initiatives has been that these

schools have direct benef‌i ts for

the students attending them

and indirect benef‌i ts for other

students by creating competition

for traditional public schools

to improve their performance.

 is study uses a two-pronged

approach to assess whether

California charter schools

are having indirect ef‌f ects on

students in traditional public schools. First, we examine

how traditional public school principals react to the

introduction of charter schools. Second, we assess whether

competition from nearby charters is af‌f ecting student

achievement outcomes for students that remain in

traditional public schools.  e survey results show that

traditional public school principals felt little competitive

pressure from charters. Similarly, the student achievement

analysis shows that charter competition was not

improving the performance of traditional public schools.

 ese results suggest that California charter schools are

having little ef‌f ect on the climate of traditional public

schools.

In recent decades, the role of market forces in

the provision of services by the public sector has

intensif‌i ed. Pro-market advocates argue that the

introduction of market forces through privatization

or outsourcing can produce higher-quality services at

lower costs (Caves et al. 1987).1

Market critics counter that

the introduction of market

forces may lead to inequitable

outcomes and argue that greater

ef‌f‌i ciency should not supersede

goals of equity (Haque 1996;

Honig 1991; Wells 1993).  is

debate has recently intensif‌i ed

in the provision of education,

as a vocal group has argued that

families need greater “school

choice” in educating their

children.  ese advocates trace

much of their argument back

to Milton Friedman’s seminal

work in 1955, which argued

that greater school choice can

reduce the monopolization of

public schools and improve

ef‌f‌i ciency and ef‌f ectiveness by

forcing schools to compete for

student enrollment. Initially,

these school choice proponents

advocated the use of school vouchers as a means of

forcing schools to compete (Friedman 1955).

However, vouchers have not gained traction in the

United States, and these advocates have gravitated

toward charter schools as a means of introducing com-

petition into the provision of educational services.

Charter schools, which are publicly supported, au-

tonomously operated schools of choice, have expe-

rienced strong growth as the movement has evolved

from a single school in Minnesota in 1992 to more

than 4,000 schools in 40 states plus the District of

Columbia in 2005. Supporters hope that the au-

tonomy given to charter schools will not only raise the

achievement of students who attend them, but also

promote healthy competitive pressure on the existing

K–12 educational system. In fact, given that charter

schools will probably never educate a substantial

portion of the nation’s student population, charter

schools may have their greatest

impact through systemic ef-

fects—enhancing the perform-

ance of students who do not

attend charter schools (McCabe

and Vinzant 1999).

Despite these arguments, the

ef‌f ect that charter schools have

on choosers has received the

lion’s share of attention from

policy makers, educators, and

Supporters hope that the

autonomy given to charter

schools will not only raise the

achievement of students who

attend them, but also promote

healthy competitive pressure on

the existing K–12 educational

system.