Abstract

For-profit charter schools are a controversial new development in public education. They combine a structural imperative to maximize profit for private shareholders with the social good of providing public education. This dissertation describes two analyses of for-profit charter schools designed to explore their impact on racial and socioeconomic segregation. The analyses utilize geographic information systems, multilevel modeling, and logistic regression to determine whether and how for-profit charter schools are likely to locate in demographically different neighborhoods, and/or educate demographically different student populations from other types of public schools. The results indicate that for-profit charter schools are less likely than other types of schools to locate in low-income neighborhoods and educate low-income students. Further, in districts where there are significant numbers of for-profit charter schools, there may be a market-effect whereby other types of charter schools in those districts are more likely to behave in profit-maximizing ways akin to for-profit charter schools.

Committee Chair

Odis Johnson

Committee Members

William Tate, Cindy Brantmeier, Bret Gustafson, Mark Hogrebe,

Comments

Permanent URL: https://doi.org/10.7936/K70Z71KK

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Author's Department

Education

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

Spring 5-15-2016

Language

English (en)

Author's ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1593-8408

Download

Included in

Education Commons

Share

COinS