Results
After a new charter school opens nearby, enrollment at local Catholic schools falls by 2 percent, or about six students in the average size school, within two years (see Figure 2). The negative impact on enrollment increases over the next decade. The risk of a Catholic school closing increases after a charter school opens, as well. In K–8 schools, a Catholic school’s likelihood of closing rises to about 1 to 3.5 percentage points in each year beyond the second year after a charter school opening. Together with the enrollment impacts, this suggests that across five years, enrollment at a K–8 Catholic school newly located within a five-mile radius of a charter school will drop by nearly 10 percent and the risk the school will close grows by more than 4 percentage points.
We also look at how a charter opening affects the racial composition of nearby Catholic schools. After a charter opens, the share of white students in nearby Catholic schools shrinks by 1.4 percent, while a school’s percentages of both Black and Hispanic students increase slightly.
Our analysis relies on the assumption that both affected and unaffected Catholic schools had parallel enrollment trends before a charter opens and would have continued on the same parallel path had the new school not come to town. However, another complicating factor was at play during the study period. The rapid charter-school expansion of the early 2000s occurred just as revelations of clergy sex abuse were most prominently in the news, which may have influenced families’ decisions to enroll or continue in Catholic schools. Indeed, a study by Ali Moghtaderi found that reports of abuse after 2002, when media coverage expanded dramatically nationwide, had a pronounced and lasting negative impact on Catholic school enrollment declines and closures.
We do not believe that the timing and impact of the scandal affect our findings. Because all Catholic schools were potentially associated with the church sex abuse scandal, every school experienced the negative impact regardless of whether a charter school opened nearby. As an extra check, we separately analyze enrollment and closure impacts from 1998 through 2002—the four years before the most novel and substantial reports of abuse were made public—and find the same general results as those for the full study period.
Changing attitudes and state policies to limit the growth of charter schools could also influence impacts on Catholic schools. We compare impacts in states that cap charters to those that do not limit growth; in states without caps, Catholic schools experience stronger and more pronounced enrollment declines and increased risk of closure. On average in a state without a charter cap, Catholic school enrollment drops by 2.5 percent two years after a new charter opens nearby compared to 2 percent in a state that limits charter growth.
