NCJ Number
240998
Date Published
April 2009
Length
64 pages
Annotation
This article analyzes the demographics of students who enroll in New York City's charter schools and how the charter schools affect their achievement.
Abstract
All but a few of the 47 charter schools operating in New York City in 2005-06 were analyzed. The charter schools tend to be located in disadvantaged neighborhoods and serve students who are substantially poorer than the average public school student in New York City. The schools also attract numbers of Black applicants to an unusually degree, not only relative to New York City but also relative to the traditional public schools from which they draw. The vast majority of applicants are admitted in lotteries that the schools hold when oversubscribed, and the vast majority of the lotteries are balanced, meaning that one cannot reject the hypothesis that there are no differences in the observable characteristics of lotteried-in and lotteried-out students. Using the lotteries to form an intention-to-treat variable, this instrument used was for actual enrollment and computed the charter schools' average treatment-on-the-treated effects on achievement; these are 0.09 standard deviations per year of treatment in math and 0.04 standard deviations per year in reading. Correlations between charter schools' policies and their effects on achievement are estimated. The policy with the most notable and robust association is that a longer school year improves the achievement; the school year can be as long as 220 days in the New York City charter schools. References, tables, figures, and appendixes