New NC Charter Schools: A Causal and Demographic Inquiry
Creators: name: Kaplan, Zachary R.
Publisher: name: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
Year: 2015

description: On a fateful day in May, 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States declared the segregation of students in public schools throughout the nation to be unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education, forever eliminating the previously prevailing “separate but equal” mentality and taking a monumental step towards racial equality in American education. Since that day, however, and particularly in the past few decades, many more complex and pressing issues have emerged in the American system of education including low teacher pay, inadequate funding and resources, and large achievement gaps between communities, races, and socioeconomic levels, to name a few. Politicians, non-profits, and community leaders alike have identified the dire need for substantive education reform in the United States, and many ideas have been tested throughout the nation, with varying success.
Among the many efforts to improve the quality and equality of public education in the United States since Brown v. Board has emerged the charter school movement. From Long Island to Little Rock to Los Angeles and in countless communities in between, charter schools have been established to pursue the goals of greater school flexibility with simultaneous accountability to high standards within the public model. Despite the two decades that have passed since the first charter schools emerged in the United States, however, the jury is still out regarding the overall national effectiveness of these hybrid institutions. Rather, more localized studies have proven more effective in determining the overall success of charter schools in comparison to traditional public schools.
The goal of this thesis is to provide just such a localized preliminary analysis of new North Carolina charter schools through the lens of demographic representation and balance rather than pure academic achievement. Its theory, methods, and analysis investigate the effectiveness of new North Carolina charter schools in creating comprehensive education reform by maintaining the equal access to education proclaimed decades ago in Brown v. Board, and more recently supported and incentivized in President Obama’s 2009 Race to the Top program. This thesis takes a two-pronged approach to its investigation of new North Carolina charter schools. First, it seeks to identify factors that significantly contribute to the establishment of new charter schools in certain locations, attempting to answer the simple question “what factors contribute to whether or not a charter school emerges in a certain community in North Carolina?” Second, it investigates the demographic balance of new North Carolina charter schools in comparison with those of corresponding traditional public schools, attempting to answer the question “do new North Carolina charter schools serve a representative population of their communities?”
This investigation will approach these questions with the following hypotheses: H1: Counties with larger demographic changes, more diverse populations, higher and more dense populations, and lower-performing traditional public schools are more likely to have a new charter school than counties with smaller demographic changes, less diverse populations, lower and less dense populations, and higher-performing traditional public schools. H2: Demographics of new North Carolina charter schools are not representative of their communities or balanced with their corresponding traditional public school. In investigating these hypotheses, this thesis will use the following structure. After providing necessary historical background information and a review of existing literature regarding racial diversity in education, the charter school movement, and the current status of racial diversity and charter schools within North Carolina, I will describe the ways in which this research contributes to the existing body of knowledge about the topic. Subsequently, I will explain my hypothesis, the theoretical structure in which it is grounded, and the methods through which it was researched. I will then present the data collected for both hypotheses with any necessary logistical explanations. Finally, I will present an analysis of the data, a subsequent conclusion about the validity of my hypotheses, its structural limitations, and the ways in which it can be improved or expanded upon in future research.