Many Options in New Orleans Choice System: School Characteristics Vary Widely.

As the school-choice movement accelerates across the country, several major cities--including Cincinnati, Detroit, Memphis, Milwaukee, and Washington, D.C.--are expanding their charter-school portfolios. Historically, communities have used charter schools not only in hopes of spurring traditional schools to improve but also to increase the variety of options available to families. If family preferences vary, and schools are given the autonomy to innovate and respond to market pressures, the theory holds, then we should expect a rich variety of schools to emerge. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] But does this theory hold up in practice? First, it is not clear that parents do have distinct preferences when shopping for schools. If parents are uncertain about their child's skills, they may play it safe and seek out a generic basket of school services. Second, charter schools always face the possibility of closure for low performance, and this threat may pressure the schools to avoid risk by imitating successful charter models. Government regulations might also inhibit a school's capacity to offer a unique program. And finally, large charter management organizations (CMOs) may attempt to leverage economies of scale by replicating a single model at multiple schools. Conceivably, the market strategies of charter schools and large CMOs, rather than the needs of families and students, could drive the market, leading to more imitation and less diversity. The city of New Orleans offers an ideal laboratory for examining how much true choice resides in a public school market. With 93 percent of its public-school students attending charter schools, New Orleans has the largest share of students enrolled in charters of any U.S. city. In some ways, the New Orleans system is unique, having been launched in the wake of a terrible disaster. However, the city's student population--majority minority and mostly eligible for lunch subsidies--is typical of other urban centers where school reform is growing. Furthermore, the CMOs in New Orleans are supported by many of the same national foundations that support charter schools across the U.S., suggesting that similar patterns might emerge in other expanding charter markets. This study examines public schools in the Big Easy, investigating how--and how much--schools have differentiated themselves in a citywide school-choice system. A New Approach Previous studies have focused on the differences between charter schools and district schools, treating all charters within a community as essentially alike. In effect, these studies take a approach, assuming that the governance of the school (charter versus district) determines the nature of the school. This approach may be appropriate where charter schools are few and their role is to fill service gaps. By contrast, our study adds a approach, focusing not on governance but on salient school characteristics such as instructional hours, academic orientation, grade span, and extracurricular activities--factors that determine what students and families actually experience. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] We ask, are New Orleans schools homogeneous or varied? Is this answer different when we use the bottom-up approach based on school characteristics rather than the top-down analysis based on school governance? And finally, to what degree is the New Orleans school market composed of unique schools, multiple small segments of similar schools, and larger segments of similar schools? Grouping schools by key characteristics, we find considerable differentiation among schools in New Orleans. Furthermore, schools operated by the same CMO or governed by the same agency are not necessarily similar to one another. In fact, the differences and similarities among schools appear to be somewhat independent of what organizations and agencies are in charge. Overall, we find that the market comprises a combination of large segments of similar schools and smaller segments of like institutions, but also some schools that are truly unique. …