This website uses cookies.

By clicking the "Accept" button or continuing to browse our site, you agree to first-party and session-only cookies being stored on your device to enhance site navigation and analyze site performance and traffic. For more information on our use of cookies, please see our Privacy Policy.

  1. Home
  2. Journals
  3. American Economic Review
  4. July 2016
  5. Charters without Lotteries: Testing Takeovers in New Orleans and Boston

American Economic Review

ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)

Charters without Lotteries: Testing Takeovers in New Orleans and Boston

  • Atila Abdulkadiroğlu
  • Joshua D. Angrist
  • Peter D. Hull
  • Parag A. Pathak
American Economic Review
vol. 106, no. 7, July 2016
(pp. 1878–1920)
Download Full Text PDF
(Complimentary)

Abstract

Charter takeovers are traditional public schools restarted as charter schools. We develop a grandfathering instrument for takeover attendance that compares students at schools designated for takeover with a matched sample of students attending similar schools not yet taken over. Grandfathering estimates from New Orleans show substantial gains from takeover enrollment. In Boston, grandfathered students see achievement gains at least as large as the gains for students assigned charter seats in lotteries. A non-charter Boston turnaround intervention that had much in common with the takeover strategy generated gains as large as those seen for takeovers, while other more modest turnaround interventions yielded smaller effects.

Citation

Abdulkadiroğlu, Atila, Joshua D. Angrist, Peter D. Hull, and Parag A. Pathak. 2016. "Charters without Lotteries: Testing Takeovers in New Orleans and Boston." American Economic Review, 106 (7): 1878–1920. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20150479

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • D44 Auctions
  • H75 State and Local Government: Health; Education; Welfare; Public Pensions
  • I21 Analysis of Education
  • I28 Education: Government Policy