Christopher R. Walters

The Demand for Effective Charter Schools

This paper models decisions to apply to and attend charter schools in Boston using a generalized Roy selection framework linking preferences to the achievement gains generated by charter attendance. The model is estimated with instruments based on randomized admission lotteries and distance to charter schools. Charter schools generate larger gains for disadvantaged students, but demand for charters is stronger among more advantaged students. Similarly, gains are inversely related to unobserved preferences for charters. As a result, counterfactual simulations indicate that charter expansion is likely to be most effective when accompanied by efforts to target students who are unlikely to apply.

Do Parents Value School Effectiveness

School choice may lead to improvements in school productivity if parents’ choices reward effective schools and punish ineffective ones. This mechanism requires parents to choose schools based on causal effectiveness rather than peer characteristics. We study relationships among parent preferences, peer quality, and causal effects on outcomes for applicants to New York City’s centralized high school assignment mechanism. We use applicants’ rank-ordered choice lists to measure preferences and to construct selection-corrected estimates of treatment effects on test scores, high school graduation, college attendance, and college quality. Parents prefer schools that enroll high-achieving peers, and these schools generate larger improvements in short- and long-run student outcomes. Preferences are unrelated to school effectiveness and academic match quality after controlling for peer quality.