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

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 "top­-down" 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, this study adds a "bottom­-up" 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. This study asks the following questions: (1) Are New Orleans schools homogeneous or varied?; (2) Is this answer different when using the bottom-­up approach based on school characteristics rather than the top-down analysis based on school governance?; and (3) 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, researchers find considerable differentiation among schools in New Orleans. Furthermore, schools operated by the same charter management organizations (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 which organizations and agencies are in charge. Overall, findings reveal 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.