New Article: The Unknown World of Charter High Schools

By Education Next 02/10/2010

Ed Next has published a new study on its website today—an evaluation of the impact of charter school attendance on the likelihood that a student will graduate from high school and attend college.  Data for the study are drawn from Chicago and Florida.

The authors write

We find evidence that charter high schools in both locations have substantial positive effects on both high school completion and college attendance. Controlling for key student characteristics (including demographics, prior test scores, and the prior choice to enroll in a charter middle school), students who attend a charter high school are 7 to 15 percentage points more likely to earn a standard diploma than students who attend a traditional public high school. Similarly, those attending a charter high school are 8 to 10 percentage points more likely to attend college.

Although a number of recent studies analyze the relationship between charter school attendance and student achievement, this is the first analysis of the impact of charter school attendance on educational attainment.

The study’s authors are Kevin Booker (Mathematica), Tim Sass (Florida State), Brian Gill (Mathematica), and Ron Zimmer (Michigan State).

A press release summarizing the study’s findings is here.

You can also watch an interview with Brian Gill, one of the authors of the study, here: