Growing numbers of students are educated in charter schools, including students with disabilities (SWD). Prior research suggests that charter schools educate a smaller percentage of SWD than traditional public schools, leading to a special education gap between sectors. We used data from a large urban district to examine how choice, mobility, and…

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 to switch to traditional public schools. To…

We exploit information about parental preference and a randomized component in the assignment of students to schools within a deferred acceptance (DA) mechanism to estimate the causal effect of enrolling in a charter school in Newark, New Jersey, on student test scores. The estimates incorporate variation from students attending about 70% of the…

This report estimates the effect of enrolling in a charter school on student standardized test scores in Newark, New Jersey. The results indicate that attending a Newark charter school that participated in the city's common enrollment system leads to large improvements in math and reading scores, and the effect is especially large for students who…

When the number of charter schools in a given area increases, are students who remain in traditional public schools worse off? This is a claim often made by opponents of school choice; gains made by students in charter schools, they say, come at the expense of students left behind. There is scant evidence to support this view in the existing…

Charter schools in the U.S. experience higher rates of student and teacher turnover than traditional public schools (TPS). Less is known, however, about principal turnover, despite the important role that a principal plays in a school's success. This paper evaluates principal turnover in New York City's charters and TPS during 2008-18. It finds…

We use administrative data to measure whether attending a charter school in Denver, Colorado, reduces the likelihood that students are newly classified as having a disability in primary grades. We employ an observational approach that takes advantage of Denver's Common Enrollment System, which allows us to observe each school that the student…

Though charter schools are revolutionizing U.S. urban education, critics often assert that charters post higher test scores than surrounding traditional public schools because they systematically remove their most difficult-to-educate students. To substantiate this claim, charter critics note that smaller percentages of charter students are…

Critics of charter schools in New York City, America's largest school district, often allege that charters score better on standardized tests, on average, than traditional public schools because charters "cream-skim" (i.e., attract) the brightest, most motivated, students. Yet this accusation neglects the fact that not all traditional…