Can Successful Schools Replicate? Scaling Up Boston’s Charter School Sector

Cohodes, Sarah; Setren, Elizabeth; Walters, Christopher

doi:10.3386/w25796

Cited by 28 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…But the track record for charter lottery estimates is encouraging. In addition to the fact that lottery estimates have been replicated in many large urban districts, Cohodes, Setren, and Walters (2016) showed that a recent wave of Boston charter expansions, a policy innovation prompted by a legislative change, produced achievement gains very much in line with earlier lottery estimates.…”

Section: Summary and Directions For Further Workmentioning

confidence: 73%

Research Design Meets Market Design: Using Centralized Assignment for Impact Evaluation

Abdulkadiroğlu¹,

Angrist²,

Narita³

et al. 2017

Econometrica

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A growing number of school districts use centralized assignment mechanisms to allocate school seats in a manner that reflects student preferences and school priorities. Many of these assignment schemes use lotteries to ration seats when schools are oversubscribed. The resulting random assignment opens the door to credible quasi‐experimental research designs for the evaluation of school effectiveness. Yet the question of how best to separate the lottery‐generated randomization integral to such designs from non‐random preferences and priorities remains open. This paper develops easily‐implemented empirical strategies that fully exploit the random assignment embedded in a wide class of mechanisms, while also revealing why seats are randomized at one school but not another. We use these methods to evaluate charter schools in Denver, one of a growing number of districts that combine charter and traditional public schools in a unified assignment system. The resulting estimates show large achievement gains from charter school attendance. Our approach generates efficiency gains over ad hoc methods, such as those that focus on schools ranked first, while also identifying a more representative average causal effect. We also show how to use centralized assignment mechanisms to identify causal effects in models with multiple school sectors.

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Section: Summary and Directions For Further Workmentioning

confidence: 73%

Research Design Meets Market Design: Using Centralized Assignment for Impact Evaluation

Abdulkadiroğlu¹,

Angrist²,

Narita³

et al. 2017

Econometrica

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“…This raises additional challenges in terms of identification. Ample evidence shows that charter students differ from non-charter students and that this selection changes when charter schools expand (Epple et al, 2015;Baude et al, 2014;Cohodes et al, 2016). Restricting achievement outcomes to non-charter students, as we do for expenditures outcomes, would bias estimations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Fiscal and Education Spillovers from Charter School Expansion

Ridley¹,

Terrier²

2018

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Cabral, and the staff of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for data, suggestions, and assistance. Special thanks to Eryn Heying for excellent administrative support. Terrier acknowledges support from the Walton Family Foundation under grant 2015-1641. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

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“…The federal Investing in Innovation program provided grants to applicants shown to have improved student achievement and attainment, including about $70 million to five charter school networks between 2010 and 2016 . Finally, states such as Massachusetts have passed legislation limiting growth in the charter sector to networks with evidence of success (Cohodes et al., ). This approach of targeting support to successful networks involves a trade‐off, as it may limit innovation in the charter sector.…”

Section: Have Lessons From Charter Schools Been Applied Elsewhere?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Boston, the lifting of a cap on charters doubled their concentration from 16 to 31 percent of students. New charter schools opened during this period remained effective, and the overall effectiveness of Boston's charter sector increased (Cohodes, Setren, & Walters, ). Tuttle et al.…”

Section: Can We Learn More From the Charter School Experiment?mentioning

confidence: 99%