The Segregative Effects of Charter Schools

I study the effects of charters on student racial segregation, identifying a novel mechanism: the assignment of White and non-White students to regular classrooms within their school-grade. Exploiting almost 100 entries of elementary charters in North Carolina from 1997 to 2015, I show that the announcement of an opening significantly increases classroom segregation within public schools nearby, relative to schools farther away, especially within non-majority-White schools and for charter openings that enroll a relatively large share of White students. Accounting for classrooms is unlikely to reverse the literature’s conclusion that the charter effects on student segregation are modest in magnitude. (JEL H75, I21, I24, I28, J15)