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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.

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.

We study the impact of a public school choice lottery in Charlotte-Mecklenburg (CMS) on postsecondary attainment. We match CMS administrative records to the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC), a nationwide database of college enrollment. Among applicants with low-quality neighborhood schools, lottery winners are more likely than lottery losers to graduate from high school, attend a four-year college, and earn a bachelor's degree. They are twice as likely to earn a degree from an elite university. The results suggest that school choice can improve students' longer-term life chances when they gain access to schools that are better on observed dimensions of quality.

"is it possible that the mere act of losing out in a charter school lottery changes some parents' behavior? With their hopes dashed, do they give up? Do they gradually stop taking an interest in their child's education? Do they become fatalistic about the prospect of success and stop prodding their kids to do their homework, behave in class, and get to school on time? And if some substantial fraction of them do, how much overall impact does this have on the aggregate test scores of the lottery-losing children?"

We study the impact of a public school choice lottery in Charlotte-Mecklenburg (CMS) on postsecondary attainment. We match CMS administrative records to the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC), a nationwide database of college enrollment. Among applicants with low-quality neighborhood schools, lottery winners are more likely than lottery losers to graduate from high school, attend a four-year college, and earn a bachelor's degree. They are twice as likely to earn a degree from an elite university. The results suggest that school choice can improve students' longer-term life chances when they gain access to schools that are better on observed dimensions of quality.

Two popular Los Angeles charter schools have allowed some families to bypass a lottery for admission in exchange for providing special services or a substantial volunteer commitment.

The success of school-choice initiatives is commonly measured in reading and math scores. But how does being admitted to a preferred school affect other parts of a student's life? In an article in Education Next, Harvard University's David J. Deming argues for looking beyond school-based outcomes, suggesting that that kind of growth can be achieved in ways that do not necessarily lead to long-term success. Instead, he analyzes the impact of winning a school choice lottery on the criminal activity of students in North Carolina's Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district over a period of seven years.

The feeling when your teacher data report arrives by e-mail is akin to going over the crest of a roller coaster, realizing you've lost your wallet, and stepping where the last stair ought to have been, all rolled into one nauseating package. It's an event that you know may have drastic implications for your career, but you also know the result is as random as a scratch-off lottery ticket.

This paper presents findings from the first national randomized study of the impacts of charter schools on student achievement, which included 36 charter middle schools across 15 states. The paper compares students who applied and were admitted to these schools through randomized admissions lotteries with students who applied and were not admitted. It finds that, on average, charter middle schools in the study were neither more nor less successful than traditional public schools in improving student achievement. However, impacts varied significantly across schools and students, with positive impacts for more disadvantaged schools and students and negative impacts for the more advantaged. 

Parents may have important effects on their children, but little work in economics explores how children's schooling opportunities impact parents' investment in children. We analyze data from the Head Start Impact Study, in which a lottery granted randomly-chosen preschool-aged children the opportunity to attend Head Start. We find that Head Start causes a substantial and significant increase in parents' involvement with their children-such as time spent reading to children, math activities, or days spent with children by fathers who do not live with their children-both during and after the period when their children are potentially enrolled in Head Start. We discuss a variety of mechanisms that are consistent with our findings, including a simple model we present in which Head Start impacts parent involvement in part because parents perceive their involvement to be complementary with child schooling in the production of child qualities.

Many uptown Manhattan parents hope that winning the lottery for a seat at Harlem Success Academy I will put their child on the path to academic achievement. But just because a child gets into Harlem Success does not mean he or she will complete 5th grade there. The school -- part of Eva Moskowitz's Success Academy network -- has a high attrition rate, leading critics to charge that the school may push out low achieving or difficult students.

Our educational system, historically a major engine for equal opportunity and a pathway to the American Dream, is under severe stress. Along with it, the working- and middle-class and immigrant dream of rising out of economic anxiety is evaporating, as our public education system, from preschools through public universities, has lost broad support. This is evidenced by declining state commitments to public education-relative to health-care and prison expenditure-by property-tax caps in communities and states that affect the quality of schools, and by expenditure cuts rather than tax increases at the federal level of the kind we just witnessed in the debt-ceiling agreements. We make decisions and deals like these at our peril.

Long after they should have been settled in school, Boston public school students are still engaged in a prolonged game of musical chairs. School opened with almost 10,000 students - nearly 18 percent of the student body - still on waiting lists, trying to get into different schools than they were assigned.

Here is the story of Karen Sprowal and her son Matthew, that Mike Winerip of the NY Times writes about here. While charter schools have advertised themselves as open to all students through random lotteries, many have been shown to enroll relatively few numbers of special needs children and English language learners, and to have high rates of student attrition.  The charter school described below is a member of the Success Academy chain, the fastest growing chain in NYC.  Its rapid expansion has been enthusiastically supported by the DOE, and by their authorizer, the NY State University Board of Trustees, whose charter committee is headed  by Prof. Pedro Noguera.  There are currently seven Success Academies, all co-located in NYC public school buildings, with two more planned for the fall, and three more authorized by SUNY to open in NYC in 2012.

In 2008, when Katherine Sprowal's son, Matthew, was selected in a lottery to attend the Harlem Success Academy 3 charter school, she was thrilled. "I felt like we were getting the best private school, and we didn't have to pay for it," she recalled.

"The New York Times Magazine has a long article about Eva Moskowitz and her chain of charter schools in New York City. The charter chain was originally called Harlem Success Academy, but Moskowitz dropped the word "Harlem" when she decided to open new schools in gentrifying neighborhoods and wanted to attract white and middle-class families. I spent a lot of time on the phone with the author, Daniel Bergner. When he asked why I was critical of Moskowitz, I said that what she does to get high test scores is not a model for public education or even for other charters. The high scores of her students is due to intensive test prep and attrition. She gets her initial group of students by holding a lottery, which in itself is a selection process because the least functional families don't apply. She enrolls small proportions of students with disabilities and English language learners as compared to the neighborhood public school. And as time goes by, many students leave."

"The nation's largest charter management organization is the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP). KIPP schools are emblematic of the No Excuses approach to public education, a highly standardized and widely replicated charter model that features a long school day, an extended school year, selective teacher hiring, strict behavior norms, and a focus on traditional reading and math skills. No Excuses charter schools are sometimes said to focus on relatively motivated high achievers at the expense of students who are most diffiult to teach, including limited English proficiency (LEP) and special education (SPED) students, as well as students with low baseline achievement levels. We use applicant lotteries to evaluate the impact of KIPP Academy Lynn, a KIPP school in Lynn, Massachusetts that typifies the KIPP approach. Our analysis focuses on special needs students that may be underserved. The results show average achievement gains of 0.36 standard deviations in math and 0.12 standard deviations in reading for each year spent at KIPP Lynn, with the largest gains coming from the LEP, SPED, and low-achievement groups. The average reading gains are driven almost completely by SPED and LEP students, whose reading scores rise by roughly 0.35 standard deviations for each year spent at KIPP Lynn."

A public school offers a free education to every child in the community - that's what makes it public. A private school charges tuition and accepts students through a competitive selection process. Larchmont was bridging public and private by exploiting a loophole. Under federal guidelines, charter schools can give admissions priority to "founding parents." That's why these parents were being asked to "found" a school that had opened in 2004.