Replication data for: What Can We Learn from Charter School Lotteries?

We take a closer look at what can be learned about charter schools by pooling data from lottery-based impact estimates of the effect of charter school attendance at 113 schools. On average, each year enrolled at one of these schools increases math scores by 0.08 standard deviations and English/language arts scores by 0.04 standard deviations relative to attending a counterfactual public school. There is wide variation in impact estimates. To glean what drives this variation, we link these effects to school practices, inputs, and characteristics of fallback schools. In line with the earlier literature, we find that schools that adopt an intensive "No Excuses" attitude towards students are correlated with large positive effects on academic performance, with traditional inputs like class size playing no role in explaining charter school effects. However, we highlight that No Excuses schools are also located among the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in the country. After accounting for performance levels at fallback schools, the relationship between the remaining variation in school performance and the entire No Excuses package of practices weakens. No Excuses schools are effective at raising performance in neighborhoods with very poor performing schools, but the available data have less to say on whether the No Excuses approach could help in nonurban settings or whether other practices would similarly raise achievement in areas with low-performing schools. We find that intensive tutoring is the only No Excuses characteristic that remains significant (even for nonurban schools) once the performance levels of fallback schools are taken into account.

本研究通过汇总113所特许学校（charter school）就读效应的抽签评估数据，深入剖析特许学校办学的可借鉴经验。平均而言，相较于就读对照公立学校，在这类特许学校就读的每一年可使数学成绩提升0.08个标准差，英语/语言艺术成绩提升0.04个标准差，但各评估结果的差异幅度较大。为探明该差异的驱动因子，本研究将上述效应与特许学校的办学实践、资源投入及备选就读学校的特征进行关联分析。与既往研究成果一致，本研究发现，对学生推行严格"无借口（No Excuses）"办学理念的学校，其学生学业成绩提升效应显著，而班级规模这类传统办学投入无法解释特许学校的办学效应差异。但本研究同时指出，采用"无借口"模式的特许学校大多坐落于美国国内社会经济条件最薄弱的社区。在控制备选就读学校的学业表现水平后，特许学校办学绩效的剩余差异与整套"无借口"办学举措间的关联强度有所减弱。"无借口"模式的特许学校在周边学校学业表现极差的社区中，确实能有效提升学生学业表现，但现有数据尚无法充分验证两个问题：一是该模式能否在非城市地区发挥效用，二是其他办学举措是否也能在低绩效学校所在区域同样提升学生学业表现。本研究还发现，在控制备选就读学校学业表现水平后，精细化辅导是唯一仍具有显著效应的"无借口"办学特征（即使针对非城市地区的学校亦是如此）。