Explaining Charter School Effectiveness

Joshua Angrist, Parag Pathak and Christopher Walters

No 17332, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Estimates using admissions lotteries suggest that urban charter schools boost student achievement, while charter schools in other settings do not. We explore student-level and school-level explanations for these differences using a large sample of Massachusetts charter schools. Our results show that urban charter schools boost achievement well beyond ambient non-charter levels (that is, the average achievement level for urban non-charter students), and beyond non-urban achievement in math. Student demographics explain some of these gains since urban charters are most effective for non-whites and low-baseline achievers. At the same time, non-urban charter schools are uniformly ineffective. Our estimates also reveal important school-level heterogeneity in the urban charter sample. A non-lottery analysis suggests that urban schools with binding, well-documented admissions lotteries generate larger score gains than under-subscribed urban charter schools with poor lottery records. We link the magnitude of charter impacts to distinctive pedagogical features of urban charters such as the length of the school day and school philosophy. The relative effectiveness of urban lottery-sample charters is accounted for by over-subscribed urban schools' embrace of the No Excuses approach to education.

JEL-codes: H75 I21 I22 I28 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-lab, nep-ltv and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

Published as Joshua D. Angrist & Parag A. Pathak & Christopher R. Walters, 2013. "Explaining Charter School Effectiveness," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(4), pages 1-27, October.

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Related works:
Journal Article: Explaining Charter School Effectiveness (2013)
Working Paper: Explaining Charter School Effectiveness (2012)
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