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Title: Technical Report: How New York City Charter Schools Affect Achievement
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2009
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Abstract: We analyze the achievement of 93 percent of the New York City charter school students who wereenrolled in test-taking grades (grades 3 through 12) in 2000-01 through 2007-08. More than 94percent of charter school applicants participate in admissions lotteries. The lotteries are crucial forremedying the self-selection problem because charter school applicants are substantially morelikely to be black and poor than students in the traditional public schools. Using the lotteries toform an intention-to-treat variable, we instrument for actual enrollment and compute the charterschools' average treatment-on-the-treated effects on achievement. These are 0.09 standarddeviations per year of treatment in math and 0.06 standard deviations per year of treatment inreading. These results are robust, as shown by specification tests for various issues: non-matching,attrition, retention-in-grade, returning to the traditional public schools, and so on. The results donot differ statistically significantly by the race/ethnicity of the student, the gender of the student,the number of years we observe the student, or the lotteried-in percentage of the school. Weestimate associations (not causal relationships) between charter schools' policies and their effectson achievement. Policies with fairly consistent positive associations with achievement include along school year; a greater number of minutes devoted to English during each school day; a smallrewards/small penalties disciplinary policy; teacher pay based somewhat on performance or duties,as opposed to a traditional pay scale based strictly on seniority and credentials; and a missionstatement that emphasizes academic performance, as opposed to other goals.
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Authors: Murarka, Sonali; Hoxby, Caroline M.; Kang, Jenny L.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Education
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