(Digitally) Connecting Students, Schools, and Districts: Measuring the Size and Popularity of K-12 Public and Charter School District Websites

As open enrollment charter districts have continued to grow in Texas, researchers and policymakers have continued to investigate how charter districts market themselves to the public in an effort to recruit students, teachers, and finances. Although a wealth of research has examined how charter districts recruit students, teachers, and finances through traditional methods, recent developments in computer science now allows researchers to measure the size and visibility of district websites on the Internet. As a result, this study uses the Texas Education Agency and SEMrush data from the 2018-2019 school year to compare the website size and popularity of charter school district and traditional public school district websites to understand how these districts invest in their robustness of their web presence. Results suggest that when compared to traditional public school districts in Texas, charter school districts publish smaller websites (p < 0.001) and are less popular on the Internet (p < 0.001) than traditional public peers. Implications for research, policy, and competition between open enrollment charter districts and traditional public school districts are addressed.