Charter schools
The Differential Sorting of Disadvantaged Students in the Competitive K-12 Market
Topics: School ChoiceSchool choice options offer potential educational gains for disadvantaged students, but do they take advantage of such options? I study the sorting patterns of students with prior child welfare reports (12 percent of incoming kindergartners) across traditional public, magnet, charter, and… more →
Does Charter School Autonomy Improve Matching of Teacher Attributes with Student Needs?
Topics: MethodsTags: Charter schoolsWe examine the efficiency of traditional school districts versus charter schools in providing students with teachers who meet their demographic and education needs. Using panel data from the state of Michigan, we estimate the relationship between enrollment of Black, Hispanic, special education… more →
Charter School Expansion, Catholic School Enrollment, & the Equity Implications of School Choice
Topics: School ChoiceTags: Equity, Charter schoolsCatholic schools have seen more than a 30% decline in enrollment over the past 20 years. While some of the decline in enrollment may have been spurred by secular trends or the Church abuse scandal, the increase in schools of choice, principally public charter schools, may explain at least some… more →
Competitive Effects of Charter Schools
Topics: School ChoiceTags: Charter schoolsUsing a rich dataset that merges student-level school records with birth records, and leveraging three alternative identification strategies, we explore how increase in access to charter schools in twelve districts in Florida affects students remaining in traditional public schools (TPS). We… more →
For-profit milk in nonprofit cartons? The case of nonprofit charter schools subcontracting with for-profit education management organizations
Topics: School ChoiceTags: Charter schools, EquityThere is growing concern that some nonprofit public service providers may be nonprofit in name but not in fact. We consider this concern in the context of nonprofit charter schools, which sometimes subcontract their daily operations to for-profit management organizations. We use unique data from… more →
Virtual Charter Students Have Worse Labor Market Outcomes as Young Adults
Virtual charter schools are increasingly popular, yet there is no research on the long-term outcomes of virtual charter students. We link statewide education records from Oregon with earnings information from IRS records housed at the US Census Bureau to provide evidence on how virtual charter… more →
The Causal Impact of Charter Schools on Private Tutoring Prevalence
Topics: School ChoiceGreater school choice leads to lower demand for private tutoring according to various international studies, but this has not been explicitly tested for the U.S. context. To estimate the causal effect of charter school appearances on neighboring private tutoring prevalence, we employ a… more →
A Kindergarten Lottery Evaluation of Core Knowledge Charter Schools: Should Building General Knowledge Have a Central Role in Educational and Social Science Research and Policy?
David Grissmer, Thomas White, Richard Buddin, Mark Berends, Daniel Willingham, Jamie DeCoster, Chelsea Duran, Chris Hulleman, William Murrah, Tanya Evans.Tags: Charter schools, CurriculumThe Core Knowledge curriculum is a K-8 curriculum focused on building students General Knowledge about the world they live in that is hypothesized to increase reading comprehension and Reading/English-LA achievement. This study utilizes an experimental design to evaluate the long term effects of… more →
School reopening decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic: What can we learn from the emerging literature?
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceAfter near-universal school closures in the United States at the start of the pandemic, lawmakers and educational leaders made plans for when and how to reopen schools for the 2020-21 school year. Educational researchers quickly assessed how a range of public health, political, and demographic… more →
Choice and Change: The Implications of Charter School Expansion for School and Neighborhood Diversity in NYC
Topics: School ChoiceIn this paper we estimate the effect of charter schools on the diversity of nearby traditional public schools (TPSs) and neighborhoods in New York City. We employ a difference-in-differences approach that exploits the differences in the expansion of the charter sector between grades in the same… more →
How Do Charter Schools Affect System-Level Test Scores and Graduation Rates? A National Analysis
Topics: School ChoiceTags: Charter schoolsWe study the combined effects of charter schools, and their various mechanisms, on a national level and across multiple outcomes. Using difference-in-differences and fixed effects methods, we find that charter entry (above 10 percent market share) increases high school graduation rate in… more →
Why Does Education Increase Voting? Evidence from Boston’s Charter Schools
Topics: School ChoiceTags: Charter schoolsIn the United States, people with more education vote more. But, we know little about why education increases political participation or whether higher-quality education increases civic participation. We study applicants to Boston charter schools, using school lotteries to estimate charter… more →
Charter Schools and the Segregation of Students by Income
Topics: School ChoiceTags: Charter schools, PovertyThe segregation of students by socioeconomic status has been on the rise in American public education between schools during the past several decades. Recent work has demonstrated that segregation is also increasing within schools at the classroom level. In this paper, we contribute to our… more →
Equity- oriented accountability for charter schools: Lessons from Massachusetts
Topics: School ChoiceTags: Charter schools, EquityBecause of the many special characteristics of charter schools, policy makers who aim to promote a system of charters schools that ensures fair access to, and fair treatment of, disadvantaged students will need a public accountability system oriented, at least in part, to equity concerns.… more →
A Descriptive Analysis of Cream Skimming and Pushout in Choice versus Traditional Public Schools
Topics: School ChoiceOne of the controversies surrounding charter schools is whether these schools may either “cream skim” high-performing students from traditional public schools or “pushout” low-achieving students or students with discipline histories, leaving traditional public schools to educate the most… more →
Moving On Up? A Virtual School, Student Mobility, and Achievement
Topics: School ChoiceVirtual charter schools provide full-time, tuition-free K-12 education through internet-based instruction. Although virtual schools offer a personalized learning experience, most research suggests these schools are negatively associated with achievement. Few studies account for differential… more →
The Effect of Charter Schools on School Segregation
Topics: School ChoiceWe conduct a comprehensive examination of the causal effect of charter schools on school segregation, using a triple differences design that utilizes between-grade differences in charter expansion within school systems, and an instrumental variable approach that leverages charter school opening… more →
Regulatory Arbitrage in Teacher Hiring and Retention: Evidence from Massachusetts Charter Schools
We study personnel flexibility in charter schools by exploring how teacher retention varies with teacher and school quality in Massachusetts. Charters are more likely to lose their highest and lowest value-added teachers. Low performers tend to exit public education, while high performers tend… more →
Charter School Growth and the Evolution of Local Teacher Labor Markets
Topics: School ChoiceTags: Charter schoolsSince their introduction in the 1990s, charter schools have grown from a small-scale experiment to a ubiquitous feature of the public education landscape. The current study uses the legislative removal of a cap on the maximum number of charters, and the weakening of regulations on these new… more →
How Increased School Choice Affects Public School Enrollment and School Segregation
Topics: School ChoiceWe investigate the determinants and consequences of increased school choice by analyzing a 22-year school panel matched to county-level demographic, economic, and political data. Using an event-study design exploiting the precise timing of charter school enrollment change, we provide… more →