Americans with more education vote at higher rates. Some studies have found evidence of a causal relationship, while others have not. The available data also tell us little about why and how education increases voting. The authors looked the educational trajectories and adult voting records of students who attend charter schools in Boston. The…

The presence of tablets and laptops in schools has burgeoned in recent years, with $4.9 billion spent on over 10.8 million devices in 2015. Despite the large and increasingly prevalent monetary and time investments in education technology, little causal evidence of its effectiveness exists. I estimate the effect of a Math and English Language Arts…

Evidence-based practices in concussion management (CM) have been codified into legislation. However, legislation is varied, and implementation is narrowly evaluated. School nurses hold a unique position to assess the implementation of health policies. The implementation of concussion management policies across Massachusetts high schools was…

In early 2020, the global COVID-19 pandemic closed schools for the rest of the 2019-20 school year (fiscal year 2020 or FY20). The United States Congress deployed funds to help K-12 schools adjust and plan for reopening via the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, including the initial $13.2 billion installment through the…

Agency, or the capacity to take intentional actions, is considered one of the primary affordances of virtual reality (VR) for learning. VR is expected to increase learners' agency because it allows for full-body interactivity from a first-person perspective, giving them novel ways of interacting with the digital environment. Yet, agency in…

In the United States, people with more education vote more. But, we know little about why education increases political participation or whether higher-quality education increases civic participation. We study applicants to Boston charter schools, using school lotteries to estimate charter attendance impacts for academic and voting outcomes.…

Three decades after the first charter school law passed in the United States, myths about these public schools not only persist but continue to fuel strong claims and divisive debates. Commentators point to education management organizations (EMOs), for-profit organizations which manage or operate a network of charter schools, as examples of…

There's considerable public debate about charter schools and students with specialized needs, focused mainly on the extent to which charters enroll students who are classified to receive special-education services. A new study by Elizabeth Setren of Tufts University shows that critics, who often charge that charters do not serve as many…

Can schools that boost student outcomes reproduce their success at new campuses? We study a policy reform that allowed effective charter schools in Boston, Massachusetts to replicate their school models at new locations. Estimates based on randomized admission lotteries show that replication charter schools generate large achievement gains on par…

The Boston Charter Research Collaborative (BCRC) is a multiyear research-practice partnership (RPP) among six high-performing charter management organizations (CMOs). These organizations combine their expertise to conduct research and improve practice to support the development of students' social-emotional competencies (SEC) and the cognitive…

This document provides the appendix to the report, "Charter School Funding: Support for Students with Disabilities" (see ED615383). "Charter School Funding" studies the funding surrounding the education of students with disabilities in public charter schools using data from fiscal year 2018 in 18 cities where charters hold a…

A controversial innovation within the field of teacher education is the relocation of teacher preparation to new graduate schools of education (nGSEs). nGSEs are state-authorized institutions of higher education that prepares teachers, endorse candidates for teacher licensure, and grant master's degrees, yet are not university-based. This paper…

From 1910 to 1940, a grassroots effort in America called the high school movement led to a "spectacular educational transformation" in this country. Enrollment of 18-year-olds grew from 19 percent to 71 percent, and graduation rates rose from 9 percent to more than 50 percent--lifting the US to the forefront of educational attainment in…

Over the past 15 years, cities across the country have experienced rapid growth in the number of public charter schools serving their students. When implemented with fidelity, the charter formula -- autonomy, choice, diversity of school designs, and real accountability -- produces continuous improvements in school quality, with impressive student…

On November 8, 2016, while the rest of the world anxiously awaited the outcome of the U.S. presidential election, a subset of voters with a keen interest in education had their eyes on Massachusetts. This was the day Bay Staters would vote on Ballot Question 2, a proposal to raise the state's cap on public charter schools by up to 12 new schools…