Education Next: "Massachusetts Charter Cap

Holds Back Disadvantaged Students by Sarah

Cohodes plus 2 more
Massachusetts Charter Cap Holds Back Disadvantaged Students by Sarah Cohodes
My Mixed Feelings on XQs Super Schools by Frederick Hess
Would Martin Luther King Have Supported Charter Schools? by Education Next

Massachusetts Charter Cap Holds Back Disadvantaged Students by Sarah Cohodes

Posted: 19 Sep 2016 06:23 AM PDT
Executive Summary
This November, Massachusetts voters will go to the polls to decide whether to expand the states quota on
charter schools. The ballot initiative would allow 12 new, approved charters over the current limit to open each
year.
Would the ballot proposal be good for students in Massachusetts? To address this question, we need to know
whether charter schools are doing a better job than the traditional public schools in districts where the cap
currently limits additional charter school seats.
There is a deep well of rigorous, relevant research on the performance of charter schools in Massachusetts. This
research exploits random assignment and student-level, longitudinal data to examine the effect of charter
schools in Massachusetts.
This research shows that charter schools in the urban areas of Massachusetts have large, positive effects on
educational outcomes. The effects are particularly large for disadvantaged students, English learners, special
education students, and children who enter charters with low test scores.
In marked contrast, we find that the effects of charters in the suburbs and rural areas of Massachusetts are not
positive. Our lottery estimates indicate that students at these charter schools do the same or worse than their
peers at traditional public schools. Notably, the charter cap does not currently constrain charter expansion in
these areas. The ballot initiative will therefore have no effect on the rate at which these charters expand.
Massachusetts charter cap currently prevents expansion in precisely the urban areas where charter schools are
doing their best work. Lifting the cap will allow more students to benefit from charter schools that are
improving test scores, college preparation, and college attendance.

This November, Massachusetts voters will go to the polls to decide whether to expand the states quota on

charter schools. The Lift the Cap referendum has generated enormous controversy, with supporters and
opponents canvassing neighborhoods, running ads, and blitzing social media.
As is true with many policy debates, the back-and-forth about the referendum has generated a lot of heat but
not much light.
There is a deep well of rigorous, relevant research on the performance of charter schools in Massachusetts. In
fact, it is hard to think of an education policy for which the evidence is more clear.
As policies are debated, we often have to rely on research that is ill-suited to the task. Its methodology is
frequently too weak to form a firm foundation for policy. Or, the population, design, and setting of the research
study are so different from the policy in question that the findings cannot be easily extrapolated.
This is not one of those times. We have exactly the research we need to judge whether charter schools should be
permitted to expand in Massachusetts. This research exploits random assignment and student-level,
longitudinal data to examine the effect of charter schools in Massachusetts.
To preview the results: Charter schools in the urban areas in Massachusetts have large, positive effects on
educational outcomes, far better than those of the traditional public schools that charter students would
otherwise attend. The effects are particularly large and positive for disadvantaged students, English learners,
special education students, and children who enter charters with low test scores. By contrast, the effects outside
the urban areas (where the current cap does not constrain charter expansion) are zero to negative. This pattern
of results accords with research at the national level, which finds positive impacts in urban areas and among
disadvantaged students.[i]
Massachusetts charter cap currently prevents expansion in precisely the urban areas where charter schools are
doing their best work. Lifting the cap will allow more students to benefit from charter schools that are
improving test scores, college preparation, and college attendance.
Massachusetts charter school ballot question
Before we turn to a detailed discussion of the research, lets summarize the ballot proposal and how it would
alter the states charter law.
Current law sets a cap on the number of charter schools statewide, as well as the share of each districts funds
that can flow to charters. Massachusetts now has 78 charter schools.
Since 2010, a smart cap has given priority to applications from charter providers with a proven track record
that seek to expand in low-performing districts.[ii] Even with the additional expansion permitted under the
current smart cap, the charter cap constrains expansion in many urban areas, including Boston, Springfield,
Malden, and Lawrence. Tens of thousands of students are on waiting lists for charter schools in these
districts.[iii] The states low-income, immigrant, Hispanic, and Black students are concentrated in these cities.
The ballot initiative would raise the cap, allowing 12 new, approved charters over the current limit to open each
year.[iv]New and expanding charters would have to go through the current application and review process,
which is one of the most rigorous in the country.[v] An indicator of the robustness of the states oversight: since

1997, 17 charter schools that the state deemed ineffective or mismanaged have closed.
The states board of education would review any applications that seek to go above the current cap, as it does all
charter applications. In contrast, in Ohio (where presidential candidate Donald Trump recently made a visit to
a charter school), the state has 69 authorizers, including school districts, higher education institutions, and
nonprofit organizations.[vi] Each authorizer has its own standards for approval, renewal, and revocation.
Ohios arrangement, in comparison to that in Massachusetts, makes it difficult for the state to set consistent,
high standards for charter schools. We suspect that the robust system of accountability in Massachusetts
underpins the strong performance of its charter sector.
Estimating charter school impacts
Would the ballot proposal, which allows the expansion of charter schools in low-performing districts, be good
for students in Massachusetts? To address this question, we need to know whether charter schools are doing a
better job than the traditional public schools in districts where the cap currently limits additional charter school
seats.
In short, the answer is Yes. In urban, low-income districts of Massachusetts, charter students are learning
more than children in the traditional public schools.
We base this statement on rigorous, peer-reviewed research. Since 2007, when we were both researchers at
Harvard, we have collaborated with researchers at Harvard and MIT, including professors Joshua Angrist,
Thomas Kane, Parag Pathak, and Chris Walters (who is now at Berkeley). In cooperation with the states
department of education, which provided the student-level, longitudinal data necessary for this research, we
have evaluated the effect of charter schools on student achievement, high school graduation, preparation for
college, and college attendance.
Measuring the effectiveness of any school is challenging. Parents choose their kids schools, either by living in a
certain school district or sending them to a private or charter school. As a result, some schools are filled with
children of parents who are highly motivated and/or have extensive financial resources. This is selection bias,
the key challenge in evaluating the effectiveness of schools.
Charters are required to run lotteries when they have more applicants than seats. And since many charter
schools in Massachusetts have long waiting lists, there are many lotteries each year across the state.
The charter school lotteries are natural experiments, each their own randomized trial. Randomization is the
gold standard for social-science research, allowing an apples-to-apples comparison. At the time of
application, there are no differences (on average) between those who win and lose the admissions lottery.
Should we observe differences in student outcomes after the lottery, we can be confident this is due to charter
school attendance.[vii]
The evidence on Massachusetts charter schools
So what have we learned from our research?
Charter schools in Boston (where charter enrollment has almost reached the cap) produce very large increases

in students academic performance.[viii] Education researchers often express test score differences in standard
deviations, which allow for comparison across different tests, populations, and contexts. According to the most
recent estimates, one year in a Boston charter middle school increases math test scores by 25 percent of a
standard deviation. The annual increases for language arts are about 15 percent of a standard deviation.[ix] Test
score gains are even larger in high school.
These differences for middle school and high school can be seen in the two graphs below, with the results
disaggregated for subgroups of students. Values above zero indicate that charter school students score higher
than their traditional public school counterparts. A shaded bar indicates a statistically significant positive effect.
How big are these effects? The test-score gains produced by Bostons charters are some of the largest that have
ever been documented for an at-scale educational intervention. They are larger, for example, than the effect of
Head Start on the cognitive outcomes of four-year-olds (about 20 percent of a standard deviation).[x] The effect
of one year in a Boston charter is larger than the cumulative effect of the Tennessee STAR experiment, which
placed children in small classes for four years (17 percent of a standard deviation).[xi]
Another gauge of magnitude: the gap in test scores between Blacks and Whites nationwide (and in Boston) is
roughly three-quarters of a standard deviation. One year in a Boston charter therefore erases roughly a third of
the racial achievement gap.
One concern is that charter schools are just teaching to the test. To stay open, charter schools need to
demonstrate they are effective, and performance on the MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment
System, the statewide test) is an important part of that assessment. If the charter schools are simply coaching
students on the skills they need to succeed on the MCAS, they may have little impact on real, lasting learning.
But we found positive effects of Bostons charters beyond the MCAS test,[xii] and no evidence that they inflate
MCAS scores.[xiii] These effects are represented in the figure below comparing the percent of charter vs.
noncharter students attaining particular outcomes.[xiv] For example, the lottery studies show Boston charters
substantially increase SAT scores. This is not explained by differential selection into this optional test, since
charter students are just as likely as their peers in traditional public schools to take the SAT.
Boston charters double the likelihood of taking an Advanced Placement (AP) exam. They substantially increase
the AP exam pass rate, with ten percent of charter students passing the AP calculus test, compared with just one
percent of students in Bostons other public schools.
Students at Bostons charters are just as likely as their peers at traditional public schools to graduate high
school, though they are more likely (by 14 percentage points) to take five years rather than four years to do so.
Boston charter students enter high school with scores far below the state mean, and even further below the
typical scores in the wealthy suburbs where AP courses are the norm. It is therefore unsurprising that it takes
some students five years in high school to successfully complete AP courses (which are required by some
Boston charters).
Boston charter students are far more likely to attend a four-year college than their counterparts in traditional
public schools. This is likely due, at least in part, to their better academic preparation, as just explained. The
difference is large: 59 percent attend a four-year college as compared to 41 percent for their counterparts who
did not attend charters.

Reminder: All of these results are based on comparisons of applicants who randomly won or lost admission to
charter schools. The estimates are therefore not biased by demographic differences between students at
charters and traditional public schools.
Some might be concerned that the charter students have unusually motivated parents, as demonstrated by their
willingness to apply to charters. But by this metric, all of the children in our lottery studies have motivated
parents. Yet the students who dont win admission to charters (and so are more likely to go to the traditional
public schools) do far worse than those who win.
Its also important to note here that more than a third of students in Boston Public Schools apply to charters, so
any cream skimming goes pretty deep. As charters have expanded in Boston, differences between applicants
and non-applicants in the city have narrowed considerably, and are now quite small.[xv]
Beyond Boston, charters in the other urban areas of Massachusetts also boost test scores.[xvi] Most of these
schools are young compared to the Boston charters, and we have not yet evaluated their effects on long-term
outcomes such as college attendance.
Across the board, we find that urban charters produce the biggest boosts for students who most need help.
Score effects are largest for students who enter charters with the lowest scores. Urban charters are particularly
effective for low-income and non-white students. The score gains for special education students and English
learners are just as large as they are for students who are not in these specialized programs.[xvii]
In marked contrast, we find that the effects of charters in the suburbs and rural areas of Massachusetts
are not positive. Our lottery estimates indicate that students at these charter schools do the same or worse than
their peers at traditional public schools.
Many students in these non-urban districts have access to excellent schools, so it is not surprising that charters
dont produce better outcomes than the traditional public schools. In fact, the excellent schools are a draw for
families who have the financial resources to move to high-performing, wealthy districts like Newton, Wellesley,
and Weston. Low-income families cant afford homes in these districts. Their choice is the local charter school.
Importantly, the charter cap does not constrain charters in the suburbs where they appear to have zero to
negative effects.Current law allows charter schools to expand in these districts. The cap, if lifted, would expand
choice in the urban areas where charters have been highly successful with disadvantaged students who most
need access to better schools.
No one (including social scientists!) can predict the future. There is no guarantee that new charter schools will
be as successful as existing charter schools. The research we have summarized here, and the states track record
in carefully vetting schools, strongly suggest that if allowed to grow the charter schools in the urban areas of
Massachusetts will continue to improve learning, especially among disadvantaged children.
The voters decision
The research we have summarized here is irrelevant to the decisions of some voters. Some oppose charter
schools on principle, because they prefer the governance and structure of traditional public schools. Thats their
prerogative.

What we find distressing, and intellectually dishonest, is when these preferences are confounded
with evidence about the effectiveness of charter schools. The evidence is that, for disadvantaged students in
urban areas of Massachusetts, charter schools do better than traditional public schools.
Voters are free to decide that the proven benefits that Massachusetts charter schools provide for disadvantaged
students are outweighed by a principled opposition to charters. Its our job as researchers to make clear the
choice that voters are making.
Sarah Cohodes and Susan Dynarski
Sarah Cohodes is an Assistant Professor of Education and Public Policy at Teachers College, Columbia
University. Susan Dynarski is a professor of public policy, education and economics at the University of
Michigan.

This post originally appeared as part of Evidence Speaks, a weekly series of reports and notes by a standing
panel of researchers under the editorship of Russ Whitehurst.

Notes:
[i] See, for example, Gleason, Philip, Melissa Clark, Christina Clark Tuttle, Emily Dwoyer, and Marsha
Silverberg. 2010. The Evaluation of Charter School Impacts: Final Report. NCEE 2010-4029. Washington, DC:
U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of
Education Sciences.
[ii] Massachusetts General Laws, An Act Relative to the Achievement Gap, 2010.
[iii] Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Massachusetts Charter School
Waitlist Updated Report for 2015-2016 (FY16). See attached spreadsheet for location-specific waitlist numbers.
[iv] https://ballotpedia.org/Massachusetts_Authorization_of_Additional_Charter_Schools_and_Charter_Sch
ool_Expansion,_Question_2_(2016)
[v] National Association of Charter School Authorizers: Massachusetts.
[vi] National Association of Charter School Authorizers: Ohio.
[vii] The lottery analyses are conducted using two-stage least-squares (2SLS). Winning the lottery is used as an
instrument for attending a charter school. Throughout, when we refer to the effect of charter school

attendance, we mean the 2SLS estimate of the effect of charter attendance, with winning the lottery used to
instrument for attendance.
[viii] Abdulkadiroglu, Atila, Joshua D. Angrist, Susan M. Dynarski, Thomas J. Kane, and Parag A. Pathak.
2011.Accountability and Flexibility in Public Schools: Evidence from Bostons Charters and Pilots. Quarterly
Journal of Economics 126(2): 669748.
[ix]Cohodes, Sarah R., Elizabeth M. Setren, Christopher R. Walters, Joshua D. Angrist, and Parag A. Pathak.
2013. Charter School Demand and Effectiveness: A Boston Update. The Boston Foundation.
[x] Puma, Mike, Stephen Bell, Ronna Cook, Camilla Heid, Pam Broene, Frank Jenkins, Andrew Mashburn, and
Jason Downer. 2012. Third Grade Follow-up to the Head Start Impact Study Final Report, OPRE Report #
2012-45, Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and
Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
[xi] Dynarski, Susan, Hyman, Joshua. and Schanzenbach, Diane. W. 2013. Experimental Evidence on the
Effect of Childhood Investments on Postsecondary Attainment and Degree Completion. Journal of Policy
Analysis and Management 32: 692717.
[xii] Angrist, Joshua D., Sarah R. Cohodes, Susan M. Dynarski, Parag A. Pathak, and Christopher R. Walters.
2016. Stand and Deliver: Effects of Bostons Charter High Schools on College Preparation, Entry, and
Choice. Journal of Labor Economics 34(2).
[xiii] Cohodes, Sarah. 2016. Teaching to the Student: Charter School Effectiveness in Spite of Perverse
Incentives.Education Finance and Policy 11(1): 1-42.
[xiv] In the graph, the percentages for charter students are the 2SLS estimates of effect of charter attendance
added to relevant noncharter mean. The percentages for the noncharter students are the proportion who attain
each outcome, for students in the sample who do not attend a charter school.
[xv] Cohodes, Sarah R., Elizabeth M. Setren, Christopher R. Walters, Joshua D. Angrist, and Parag A. Pathak.
2013. Charter School Demand and Effectiveness: A Boston Update. The Boston Foundation.
Setren, Elizabeth. 2015. Special Education and English Language Learners in Boston Charter Schools: Impact
and Classification. School Effectiveness and Inequality Institute (SEII) Discussion Paper 2015.05.
[xvi] Angrist, Joshua D., Parag A. Pathak, and Christopher R. Walters. 2013. Explaining Charter School
Effectiveness.American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 5(4): 127.
[xvii] Setren, Elizabeth. 2015.Special Education and English Language Learners in Boston Charter Schools:
Impact and Classification. School Effectiveness and Inequality Institute (SEII) Discussion Paper 2015.05.

My Mixed Feelings on XQs Super Schools by Frederick Hess

Posted: 19 Sep 2016 06:20 AM PDT

Last week, the organizers of XQ: The Super School Project announced the ten winners of its competition to
reimagine the American high school. Each winner took home $10 million to help turn its design into reality.
I think the idea is appealing. I wholly agree with the premise that high school needs to be rethought, and that
the work is best done by educators and entrepreneurs in real schools and communities, not by politicos,
bureaucrats, well-fed consultants, or us self-impressed think tank types.
I also like that the project is helmed by the talented, dynamic Russlynn Ali. While I had differences with Russ
about some big decisions made during her tenure running the U.S. Department of Eds Office of Civil Rights, I
think shes razor-sharp and well-suited to lead this effort.
So far, so good. But I start to get nervous when I see this whole goofy super schools stuff, and got more so
yesterday when I saw the fanboy enthusiasm with which self-professed education reform outlets greeted the
announcement.
The promise of the super schools themselves probably depends on how one feels about various educational
tropes. For instance, Furr High School in Texas, which happened to be the first listed on the XQ site, promises:
Furr High School will activate learning through a project- and place-based model grounded in the rigors of
environmental and nutritional sciences. This large public high school will transform its culture with
restorative justice, connect the dots between students and community, and combine Socratic seminars,
university and business partnerships, and wrap-around services. Students and teachers will pair with their
university counterparts to become green ambassadors in important environmental-sustainability research

projects.
For one thing, theres enough jargon there to choke a horse. For another, these paper promises are, at best, an
unreliable guide to what happens in practice. Thats the problem with these design competitions in education
its a lot easier to say things than to do them.
Will the Furr design work? Is it even an especially good idea? Well see. It kind of points to the problem of this
kind of contest, especially when there seems to be so much checking of predictable right-answer boxes (e.g.
restorative justice, university partnerships, wrap-around services, green ambassadors). I dont know how the
judging for XQ went down, but long experience leads me to suspect that there were code words and projects
that made it to the top of the pileespecially since instructional merit turns out to be brutally hard to judge
from a paper proposal.
And thats all fine, as far as it goesespecially if these things were billed as interesting attempts and not as
super schools. After all, its worth keeping in mind that this is hardly the first time something like this has
been attempted. The results have generally been mixed, though that can get lost because so few school
reformers seem inclined to consider the lessons of even relatively recent history.
For instance, perhaps the most notable school redesign competition got its start a quarter-century ago in
1991, when a bunch of CEOs responded to President George H.W. Bushs 1991 proposal for model schools by
launching the New American Schools Development Corporation (NASDC, later shortened to New American
Schools, or NAS). As historian Jeff Mirel recounted in the pages of Education Next, it was:
A privately funded, nonprofit organization devoted to supporting the design and dissemination of whole
school reform models. NASDCs founders envisioned a complete overhaul of American education stimulated
by the spread of these innovative designs. As one put it, school reformers who hoped to receive NASDC grants
had to cast aside their old notions about schooling-to start with a clean sheet of paper, and be bold and
creative in their thinking, and to give us ideas that address comprehensive, systemic change for all students
for whole schools.
The results? The effort wound up celebrating familiar ideas which had been gussied up in new jargon. It was
dominated by the usual suspects. It gave rise to school models shaped by faddish enthusiasms. The major AIR
evaluation found that 21 of 24 models showed no significant impact on learning, and the RAND study of results
in scale-up jurisdictions revealed equally uninspiring outcomes. It came to an inglorious end after more than a
decade and is now another name on the list of largely forgotten disappointments.
As Mirel concluded back in 2002, At its inception New American Schools held the promise of being an
extremely exciting research-and-development initiative in education. It would sponsor the creation of
innovative designs, pilot test them in a select group of schools, and decide whether they were effective enough
to warrant wide dissemination. And then it ultimately turned into something else.
I think thats right. If XQ can avoid those same missteps, temper the enthusiasm of its well-wishers, resist the
faddish impulses that always plague these exercises, and avoid the temptation to be defensive about the
endeavors it has now touted as socially-just super schools, this could be a terrific contribution to school
improvement. But putting things that way should make clear why I think the jury is so clearly still out.

Frederick Hess
Frederick Hess is director of education policy studies at AEI and an executive editor at Education Next. This
post originally appeared on Rick Hess Straight Up.

Would Martin Luther King Have Supported Charter Schools? by Education Next
Posted: 19 Sep 2016 12:39 AM PDT
Would Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., have been a fan of charter schools? Emphatically yes, says his closest aide
and fellow civil rights legend, Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker. So notes an article for RealClearLife.

As the piece notes, Walker was executive director of the

Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Dr. Kings chief of staff during the critical Civil Rights
Movement years of 1960 to 1964. In 1967, Walker moved to Harlem to become Senior Minister at the Canaan
Baptist Church of Christ. In 1999, during his tenure at the church, Dr. Walker became a key founder of the firstever charter school in New York State. This school is now named the Sisulu-Walker Charter School of Harlem
in honor of Dr. Walker and of Walter Sisulu, a close ally of Nelson Mandela. An award-winning book, A Light
Shines in Harlem, has been written about Walkers work with his co-founders to start the Sisulu-Walker school.
In June 2016, Dr. Walker was awarded the Charter Schools Lifetime Achievement Award by the National
Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the article explains. In a video interview with Dr. Walker given prior to his
acceptance of the award, he described charter schools as a key human rights initiative. When asked whether Dr.
King would have also supported charter schools, Dr. Walker replied: Oh, yes, without a doubt. The full video
interview with Dr. Walker can be viewed here.
Please read the full article (which appears here in condensed form), Would Martin Luther King Have
Supported Charter Schools? which appeared on RealClearLife on September 13, 2016.
Education Next