Latino Migration and Trends in Private and Charter School Enrollments

Jacob Hibel, University of California, Davis
Matthew Hall, Cornell University

In this paper, we offer an assessment of how growth in local Latino populations is associated with changes in the availability of alternative schooling options (i.e., charter and private schools), as well as with changes in the racial/ethnic composition of these “schools of choice” compared to traditional public schools in the same communities. We are specifically interested in the possibility that Latino in-migration is associated with expanding use of charter and public schools, especially by non-Latino white families. We further examine the possibility that the association between Latino migration and local educational responses varies across immigrant destination contexts, with Latino in-migration having more dramatic social and political consequences in new Latino gateways than in regions with longer histories of Latino settlement.