Urban Catholic Schools in Expanding Charter School Markets: Enrollment Shifts and School Closures.

Abstract

Urban elementary and secondary Catholic schools have experienced substantial enrollment declines and closures over the past half-century. Recent competitive pressure from charter schools has potentially accelerated the decline of Catholic schools. I describe two theories—the parental school choice process and the location decisions of charter schools—that form the basis of a conceptual model used to study the impact of charter schools on nearby Catholic school enrollments and school closures. I use longitudinal data from the population of public and private schools within ten large U.S. cities located in the Great Lakes/“Rust Belt” region for this investigation. I estimate the effect of charter schools over time on the elementary and middle grade enrollment levels of nearby Catholic schools using a school fixed-effects model. I also estimate the charter school impact over time on nearby Catholic school closures using a discrete-time hazard model. I test both models for heterogeneous effects across grade levels, cities, neighborhoods, and school race/ethnicity compositions. Charter schools located near Catholic schools exacerbate the decline of Catholic school enrollment levels by approximately three percent annually. Though initially lower, Catholic schools facing competition from charter schools are 1.4 times as likely to close with each additional year in comparison to schools not facing competition. Charter school impacts were most pronounced in the elementary grades while some cities experienced stronger effects than others. I discuss implications of the findings for parents living in areas of cities where Catholic schools are declining and for stakeholders in Catholic schools that might consider solutions to boost enrollments amidst growing competition.