Did the emergence of Ohio charter schools help or harm students who remained in district schools?

For more than twenty-five years, public charter schools have served Ohio families and communities by providing quality educational options beyond the local school district. But it’s no secret that we’ve also had a long-standing debate over whether increasing school choice impacts students who remain in traditional districts.

In important—and sometimes impassioned—discussions such as these, rigorous research is critical to ground conversations in facts and evidence.

Our latest report offers an analysis of the rapid scale-up of Ohio charter schools during the late 1990s and early 2000s. It finds that charters slightly boosted the graduation and attendance rates of traditional district students, while having no significant impacts on their state exam scores.

These results follow a body of research from various locales showing that expanding educational choice—whether via public charter schools or private schools—consistently yields neutral to slightly positive impacts on traditional districts.