Charters have a “spillover” effect on nearby traditional government schools, and the closer the proximity to a charter school, the greater the positive effect on the students in the nearby schools, Sarah A. Cordes, assistant professor of policy, organizational, and leadership studies at Temple University, reports in “Charters and the Common Good: The spillover effects of charter schools in New York City,” published by EducationNext in spring 2018.
Cordes studied more than a decade’s worth of student achievement data for 876,731 students attending 584 elementary schools in community school districts in New York City (NYC) with at least one charter school serving children in similar grades.
“These findings shed new light on the public debate over the effects of charter schools on non-charter students,” Cordes writes. “Rather than sapping resources and putting students at district schools at a disadvantage, the data in New York City show that students do better when charters open nearby. In particular, students at co-located district schools, where their school shares a building with a charter school, experience the most sharply positive spillover effects. Importantly, the effects of co-location appear to be specific to charter schools, as students in district schools that are co-located with other district schools do not experience similar performance gains.”